A Comparative Study of Genetic Search

We present a comparative study of genetic algorithms and their search properties when treated as a combinatorial optimization technique. This is done in the context of the NP-hard problem MAX-SAT, the comparison being relative to the Metropolis process, and by extension, simulated annealing. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we show that for large and difficult MAX-SAT instances, the contribution of cross-over to the search process is marginal. Little is lost if it is dispensed altogether, running mutation and selection as an enlarged Metropolis process. Second, we show that for these problem instances, genetic search consistently performs worse than simulated annealing when subject to similar resource bounds. The correspondence between the two algorithms is made more precise via a decomposition argument, and provides a framework for interpreting our results. 1 Introduction Genetic algorithms [11] are increasingly being viewed as general-purpose optimization techniques applicable ..