Methods for the Analysis of Evolutionary Algorithms on Pseudo-Boolean Functions

Abstract

Many experiments ave shown that evolutionary algorithms are useful randomized search heuristics for optimization problems. In order to learn more about the reasons for their efficiency and in order to obtain proven results on evolutionary algorithms it is necessary to develop a theory of evolutionary algorithms. Such a theory is still in its infancy. A major part of a theory is the analysis of different variants of evolutionary algorithms on selected functions. Several results of this kind have been obtained during the last years. Here important analytical tools are presented, discussed, and applied to well-chosen example functions.