Talk:Evolutionary algorithm: Difference between revisions
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The Python solution makes the mutation rate depend on the distance to the target. This sounds to me like cheating, because the target (and therefore the distance to it) should ideally be unknown. Note that I don't see a principal problem with modifying the mutation rate; the problem is using information about the distance to the target in determining it. The mutation rate could well itself evolve, but the knowledge about the target should only be used for selection, not for mutation. --[[User:Ce|Ce]] 09:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC) |
The Python solution makes the mutation rate depend on the distance to the target. This sounds to me like cheating, because the target (and therefore the distance to it) should ideally be unknown. Note that I don't see a principal problem with modifying the mutation rate; the problem is using information about the distance to the target in determining it. The mutation rate could well itself evolve, but the knowledge about the target should only be used for selection, not for mutation. --[[User:Ce|Ce]] 09:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC) |
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: Looks like it's within the letter of the task, but as to the spirit, I don't know. Intuition tells me that knowing the true distance to optimal will help avoid problems of local minima, and some (but certainly not all!) problems that evolutionary algorithms are applied to have true distance (or a close approximation of such) available. This may be a good case for splitting the task and specifying a goal-agnostic algorithm. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 16:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC) |
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