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Genetic Algorithm

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Jerald Roy
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11 views

Genetic Algorithm

Uploaded by

Jerald Roy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Genetic Algorithm

As we use machine learning for making better and faster decisions, one can use artificial
intelligence method called 'Genetic Algorithm' for optimizing the results further by letting
algorithm evolve as it goes through iterations. Basic premise is that you start with set of
possible solutions (randomly generated and mostly unfit for the problem) and rank them on
fitness score for the given problem. Then you pick the 2 Top solutions (often referred as
parent) that have high fitness score and then create another solution (referred as child) which
takes best of features from both parents. This is done using cross over and mutation
operations. The crossover operation involves swapping random parts of selected pairs
(parents) to produce new and different offspring that become part of the new generation of
solutions. Mutation involves substitution of some random part of a solution with some other
random part of a solution. Finally, the child solution is added to the stack of solution and
again, the solutions are ranked for fitness. This process is done again and again via many
iterations till we reach a solution which is far superior than what we started with. Multiple
runs (dozens to hundreds) are usually necessary to produce a very good result. There are
various application of this technique such as evolving website design, designing games,
automated trading systems and so on. There is very interesting work being done by many
technology organizations in this area including that by Cognizant. Cognizant has an offering
called 'Evolutionary AI' that addresses Evolutionary Computing and Deep Learning. You can
find some of the research here and also follow Babak Hodjat who is a thought leader in this
space

8 Queens problem

There are many applications where Genetic Algorithm can be used especially where one
does not know the exact solution and how to find it. One such problem is '8 Queens' puzzle.
The objective here is to place 8 queens on a Chess board of dimension 8x8 such that they
don’t threaten each other i.e. no 2 queens share the same row, column and diagonal. There are
only 92 solutions which meet the criteria out of 16,777,216 possible combinations.

I tried my hand of solving this problem applying Genetic Algorithm. Some of steps and
results are outlined below. The coding was done in Pytho and here is URL to notebook on
Github

1. Initial Population : First objective is to generating random 15 solutions which can be


used as seed : say as an example below is example solution where the column position
indicates the column in which the Queen is present and the number indicates the row

If one was to visualize this particular solution on chess board , it would look like below
2. Fitness Score: As you can see above there are few queens in positions where they can
attack each other ; so we would develop a function that returns the fitness score of the
solution. The fitness score adds up any possibilities that are there for the queens to attack. So
ideally we are looking to achieve fitness score of 0 and any higher number is not good. Once
all initial 15 models are scored , we would rank them in the ascending order of the fitness
scores.

Solution FitnessScore

0 [6, 3, 7, 0, 5, 3, 1, 4] 4

1 [3, 6, 0, 2, 7, 7, 1, 1] 6

2 [1, 5, 7, 2, 6, 1, 3, 5] 6

3 [6, 3, 6, 5, 2, 4, 6, 7] 7

4 [2, 1, 3, 3, 7, 0, 3, 3] 7

5 [1, 0, 1, 0, 7, 4, 2, 6] 7

6 [1, 7, 1, 1, 6, 4, 4, 0] 8

7 [0, 7, 3, 6, 0, 6, 2, 6] 8

8 [0, 3, 5, 1, 4, 3, 2, 2] 8

9 [0, 7, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 5] 9

10 [5, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 3] 9

11 [6, 5, 0, 5, 3, 3, 0, 5] 10

12 [0, 2, 2, 3, 5, 1, 0, 1] 10

13 [4, 2, 7, 3, 4, 4, 7, 3] 10

14 [2, 3, 6, 3, 0, 5, 2, 5] 11
3. Crossover and Mutation : What we do next is pick the 2 solutions with least fitness
scores and apply Crossover and Mutation techniques. Lets start with the solutions and name
them as Parent 1 and 2

Parent 1 [6, 3, 7, 0, 5, 3, 1, 4] with score 4

Parent 2 [3, 6, 0, 2, 7, 7, 1, 1] with score 6

As we look at creating a cross over solution, given that there are 8 values , we would take
cross over point as 4

Cross over child 1 [6, 3, 7, 0, 7, 7, 1, 1] by combining first half of Parent 1 and second half of
Parent 2

Cross over child 1 [3, 6, 0, 2, 5, 3, 1, 4]by combining second half of Parent 1 and first half of
Parent 2

Then we apply Mutation by randomly changing one of the columns with a random value
between 0-7

Crossover child 1 after Mutation [6, 3, 7, 0, 4, 7, 1, 1] with score of 5 -Not better than one of
parents

Crossover child 2 after Mutation [3, 7, 0, 2, 5, 3, 1, 4] with score of 4 -Better than one of
parents

Now we add these next gen solutions back to our original set of solutions and sort that dataset
again on Fitness Score ascending. Then, we begin from Step 3 again and reiterate in loops
(1000 to begin with). We sort solutions on Fitness score (ascending) before each iteration to
ensure that we would use best solutions to create next generation solution.

Keep in mind that since we are doing the picking of original solution randomly as well as
mutation with random number, while its guaranteed that your solution fitness score improves
with iterations, there is a possibility that your run may not always return a winning
combination. So what does success look like - In an execution that started with above initial
population, only after 27 iterations, I got a solution which solved the problem i.e. fitness
score of 0 or no queens in attack positions . Now, how beautiful is that?

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