Evolutionary Algorithms

Genetic Algorithm I

FAST-NU, Lahore

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Introduction

A biologically inspired model of intelligence

The principles of biological evolution are applied to find

solutions to difficult problems

The problems are not solved by reasoning logically about

them; rather populations of competing candidate solutions
are spawned and then evolved to become better solutions
through a process patterned after biological evolution

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Introduction

Less worthy candidate solutions tend to die out, while those

that show promise of solving a problem survive and
reproduce by constructing new solutions out of their
components

GA begin with a population of candidate problem solutions

Candidate solutions are evaluated according to their ability

to solve problem instances: only the fittest survive and
combine with each other to produce the next generation of
possible solutions
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Introduction

Thus increasingly powerful solutions emerge in a Darwinian

universe. Learning is viewed as a competition among a
population of evolving candidate problem solutions

This method is heuristic in nature and it was introduced by

John Holland in 1975

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Basic Algorithm

begin
set time t = 0;
initialise population P(t) = {x1t, x2t, …, xnt} of solutions;
while the termination condition is not met do
begin
evaluate fitness of each member of P(t);
select some members of P(t) for creating offspring;
produce offspring by genetic operators;
replace some members with the new offspring;
set time t = t + 1;
end
end
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Basic Attributes of Genetic Algorithm

1. Genetic representation of candidate solutions (Chromosome)

2. Population size
3. Fitness (Evaluation) function
4. Genetic Operators
5. Selection algorithm
6. Generation gap
7. Amount of elitism used
8. Number of duplicates allowed

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Chromosome

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Gene: A basic unit, which represents one characteristic of the

individual. The value of each gene is called an allele

Chromosome: A string of genes; it represents an individual

i.e. a possible solution of a problem. Each chromosome
represents a point in the search space

Population: A collection of chromosomes

An appropriate chromosome representation is important for

the efficiency and complexity of the GA
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Population: A collection of chromosomes

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

The classical representation scheme for chromosomes is

binary vectors of fixed length. However, real valued
chromosomes are also possible

In binary coded chromosomes, every gene has two alleles

In real coded chromosomes, a gene can be assigned any value
from a domain of values

In the case of an n-dimensional search space, each

chromosome consists of n variables with each variable
encoded as a bit string

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Example: Cookies Problem

Two parameters sugar and flour (in kgs). The range for both
is 0 to 9 kgs. Therefore a chromosome will comprise of two
genes called sugar and flour

5 1 Chromosome # 01

2 4 Chromosome # 02

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Example: Expression satisfaction Problem

F = (a  c)  (a  c  e)

 (b  c  d  e)  (a  b  c)
 (e  f)

Chromosome: Six binary genes abcdef e.g. 100111

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Example: Model Learning

Use GA to learn the concept Yes Reaction from the Food

Allergy problem’s data

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Example: Model Learning

A potential model of the data can be represented as a

chromosome with the genetic representation:

Gene # 1 Gene # 2 Gene # 3 Gene # 4

Restaurant Meal Day Cost

The alleles of genes are:

Restaurant gene: Sam, Lobdell, Sarah

Meal gene: breakfast, lunch
Day gene: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Cost gene: cheap, expensive
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2. Population Size

Number of individuals present and competing in an iteration

(generation)

If the population size is too large, the processing time is high

and the GA tends to take longer to converge upon a
solution (because less fit members have to be selected to
make up the required population)

If the population size is too small, the GA is in danger of

premature convergence upon a sub-optimal solution (all
chromosomes will soon have identical traits). This is
primarily because there may not be enough diversity in
the population to allow the GA
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to escape local optima
 Representing Individuals/States

Example: Model Learning

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Initial Population

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3. Fitness Function

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Fitness Function

Also called “evaluation function”

It is used to determine the fitness of a chromosome

Creating a good fitness function is one of the challenging

tasks of using GA

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Fitness Function

Example: Cookies Problem

Two parameters sugar and flour (in kgs). The range for both
is 0 to 9 kgs. Therefore a chromosome will comprise of two
genes called sugar and flour

5 1

2 4

The fitness function for a chromosome is the taste of the

resulting cookies; values can be from 1 to 100
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Example

Find a number: 001010

You have guessed this binary number. If you write a program

to find it, then there are 26 = 64 possibilities

If you find it with the help of Genetic Algorithm, then the

program gives a number and you tell its fitness

The fitness score is the number of correctly guessed bits

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Example

Find a number: 001010

The fitness score is the number of correctly guessed bits

Step 1. Chromosomes produced.

A) 010101 -1
B) 111101 -1
C) 011011 -4*
D) 101100 -3*

Best ones C & D

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Fitness Function

Example: Model Learning

Use GA to learn the concept Yes Reaction from the data

The fitness function can be the score of the classification

accuracy of the rule-set over a set of provided training
examples (number of training samples correctly classified by
a chromosome)

Often other criteria may be included as well, such as the

complexity of the rules or the size of the rule set

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4. Reproduction Operators/Genetic operator

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Reproduction Operators

Genetic operators are applied to chromosomes that are

selected to be parents, to create offspring

Basically of two types: Crossover and Mutation

Crossover operator create offspring by recombining the

chromosomes of selected parents

Mutation is used to make small random changes to a

chromosome in an effort to add diversity to the population

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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

Crossover operation takes two candidate solutions and

divides them, swapping components to produce two new
candidates

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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

Figure illustrates crossover on bit string patterns of length 8

The operator splits them and forms two children whose initial
segment comes from one parent and whose tail comes from
the other

Input Bit Strings

11#0101# #110#0#1

Resulting Strings
11#0#0#1 #110101#
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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

Two genes sugar and flour (in kgs)

Crossover operation on chromosomes

5 1 5 4

2 4 2 1

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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

The place of split in the candidate solution is an arbitrary

choice. This split may be at any point in the solution

This splitting point may be randomly chosen or changed

systematically during the solution process

Crossover can unite an individual that is doing well in one

dimension with another individual that is doing well in the
other dimension

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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

Two types: Single point crossover & Uniform crossover

Single type crossover
This operator takes two parents and randomly selects a
single point between two genes to cut both chromosomes
into two parts (this point is called cut point)
The first part of the first parent is combined with the
second part of the second parent to create the first child
The first part of the second parent is combined with the
second part of first parent to create the second child

1000010 1000001
1110001 1110010
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Reproduction Operators: Crossover

Uniform crossover
The value of each gene of an offspring’s chromosome is
randomly taken from either parent
This is equivalent to multiple point crossover

1000010
1110001 1010010

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Reproduction Operators: Mutation

Mutation is another important genetic operator

Mutation takes a single candidate and randomly changes
some aspect (gene) of it
For example, mutation may randomly select a bit in the
pattern and change it, switching a 1 to a 0 or to # (don’t care)

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Reproduction Operators: Mutation

Mutation is important in that the initial population may

exclude an essential component of a solution

For example, if no member of the initial population has a 1 in

the first position, then crossovers cannot produce a child that
could become a solution

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Reproduction Operators: Mutation

Each gene of each offspring is mutated with a given mutation

rate p (say 0.01)

It is hence possible that no gene may be mutated for many

generations. On the other hand more than one gene may
be mutated in the same generation (or even in the same
chromosome)

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Reproduction Operators: Mutation

For real valued genes, the value is selected randomly from the
alleles

If the rate is too low, new traits will appear too slowly in the
population. If the rate is too high, each generation will be
unrelated to the previous generation

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Reproduction Operators: Crossover (Important Similarities)

Suppose we have these chromosomes and their fitness values

A) 01101 169
B) 11000 576
C) 01000 64
D) 10011 361

If we analyze the strings which have high fitness value, we have observe that they
both have a 1 in the 1st column, whereas the low fitness strings have a 0. In
the second column we have a 1 in B and 0 in D, and 1 in the low fitness
strings. We wonder that if 1 in the 2nd column is associated with low fitness, so
we may improve the score of B by putting a 0 in place of 1 in the 2 nd column

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Example#1

Find a number: 001010

You have guessed this binary number. If you write a program

to find it, then there are 26 = 64 possibilities

If you find it with the help of Genetic Algorithm, then the

program gives a number and you tell its fitness

The fitness score is the number of correctly guessed bits

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Example

Find a number: 001010

Step 1. Chromosomes produced.

A) 010101 -1
B) 111101 -1
C) 011011 -4*
D) 101100 -3*

Best ones C & D

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Example

Find a number: 001010

Mating New Variants Evaluation

C) 01:1011 01:1100 (E) 3
D) 10:1100 10:1011 (F) 4*
C) 0110:11 0110:00 (G) 4*
D) 1011:00 1011:11 (H) 3

Selection of F & G

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Example

Mating New Variants Evaluation

F) 1:01011 1:11000 (H) 3
G) 0:11000 0:01011 (I) 5*
F) 101:011 101:000 (J) 4*
G) 011:000 011:011 (K) 4

Selection of I and J

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Example

Mating New Variants Evaluation

I) 0010:11 0010:00 (L) 5
J) 1010:00 1010:11 (M) 4
I) 00101:1 00101:0 (N) 6 (success) *
J) 10100:0 10100:1 (O) 3

In this game success was achieved after 16 questions, which is

4 times faster then checking all possible 26 = 64 combination

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 Chromosome Encoding for Simplified Time Table

• Courses = 16 (C1, C2, …..C16)

• Teachers = 8 (T1, T2, T3,……T8)
• Days = 5 (Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri)
• Time-Slots = 5 (9-10, 10-11, 11-12, 12-1, 1-2)
• Classrooms = 4 (R1, R2, R3, R4)

• Chromosome encoding (Binary encoding)?

• Size of chromosome?
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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Rules Representation

Rules are often represented by bit strings (because they can

be easily manipulated by genetic operators), but other
numerical and symbolic representations are also possible

Set of if-then rules:

Specific sub-strings are allocated for encoding each
rule pre-condition and post-condition

Example: Suppose we have an attribute “Outlook”

which can take on values: Sunny, Overcast or Rain
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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Rules Representation

We can represent it with 3 bits:

100 would mean the value Sunny,
010 would mean Overcast &
001 would mean Rain

110 would mean Sunny or Overcast

111 would mean that we don’t care about its value

The pre-conditions & post-conditions of a rule are encoding

by concatenating the individual representation of attributes
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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Rules Representation

Example:
If (Outlook = Overcast or Rain) and Wind = strong
then PlayTennis = No

can be encoded as 0111001

Another rule
If Wind = Strong then PlayTennis = Yes

can be encoded as 1111010

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Rules Representation

An hypothesis comprising of both of these rules can be

encoded as a chromosome 01110011111010

Note that even if an attribute does not appear in a rule, we

reserve its place in the chromosome, so that we can have
fixed length chromosomes

Note that 01110011111011

would mean, we do not care whether we play tennis or not

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Representation of Solutions: The Chromosome

Variable size chromosomes

Sometimes we need a variable size chromosome; e.g. to

represent a set of rules
Example:
Suppose we are representing a set of rules by a chromosome

If a1 = T and a2 = F then c = T
If a2 = T then c = F

If there is only the 1st rule in the set, we have 10 01 1

If the rule set has 1st & 2nd rules then we have 10 01 1 11 10 0

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References

Engelbrecht Chapter 8 & 9

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