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The Importance of Neutral Mutations in GP

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Book cover Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IX (PPSN 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4193))

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Abstract

Understanding how neutrality works in EC systems has drawn increasing attention. However, some researchers have found neutrality to be beneficial for the evolutionary process while others have found it either useless or worse. We believe there are various reasons for these contradictory results: (a) many studies have based their conclusions using crossover and mutation as main operators rather than using only mutation (Kimura’s studies were done analysing only mutations) and, (b) studies often consider problems and representation with larger complexity. The aim of this paper is to analyse how neutral mutations tend to behave in GP and establish how important they are. For this purpose we introduce an approach which has two advantages: (a) it allows us to specify neutrality and, (b) this makes possible to understand how neutrality affects the evolutionary search process.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom

    Edgar Galván-López

  2. IIMAS-UNAM, Circuito Escolar s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Del. Coyoacán, México D.F., 04510, Mexico

    Katya Rodríguez-Vázquez

Authors
  1. Edgar Galván-López
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  2. Katya Rodríguez-Vázquez
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Science Institute, University of Iceland, P.O. Box, Iceland

    Thomas Philip Runarsson

  2. Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Hochschulstr. 1, A-6850, Dornbirn, Austria

    Hans-Georg Beyer

  3. Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Group, School of Computer Science & IT, University of Nottingham, NG8 1BB, Nottingham, UK

    Edmund Burke

  4. Depto. Arquitectura y Tecnologa de Computadores, ETS Ingeiera Informtica, C/Daniel Saucedo Aranda, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Juan J. Merelo-Guervós

  5. Colorado State University, 80523, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    L. Darrell Whitley

  6. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Xin Yao

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Galván-López, E., Rodríguez-Vázquez, K. (2006). The Importance of Neutral Mutations in GP. In: Runarsson, T.P., Beyer, HG., Burke, E., Merelo-Guervós, J.J., Whitley, L.D., Yao, X. (eds) Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IX. PPSN 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4193. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11844297_88

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11844297_88

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-38990-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38991-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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