abstract = "In this paper we prove that for a variety of practical
situations, the no-free-lunch (NFL) theorem does not
apply to algorithms that search the space of artificial
neural networks, such as evolutionary algorithms. We
find, in particular, that, while conditions under which
NFL applies exist, these require extremely restrictive
symmetries on the set of possible problems which are
unlikely encountered in practice. In other words, not
all algorithms are equally good at finding neural
networks that solve problems under all possible
performance measures: a superior search algorithm for
this domain does exist.",
notes = "GECCO-2009 A joint meeting of the eighteenth
international conference on genetic algorithms
(ICGA-2009) and the fourteenth annual genetic
programming conference (GP-2009).