A parameterized runtime analysis of simple evolutionary algorithms for makespan scheduling

We consider simple multi-start evolutionary algorithms applied to the classical NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem of Makespan Scheduling on two machines. We study the dependence of the runtime of this type of algorithm on three different key hardness parameters. By doing this, we provide further structural insights into the behavior of evolutionary algorithms for this classical problem.Andrew M. Sutton and Frank Neuman

Black-Box Complexity of the Binary Value Function

The binary value function, or BinVal, has appeared in several studies in theory of evolutionary computation as one of the extreme examples of linear pseudo-Boolean functions. Its unbiased black-box complexity was previously shown to be at most $\lceil \log_2 n \rceil + 2$, where $n$ is the problem size. We augment it with an upper bound of $\log_2 n + 2.42141558 - o(1)$, which is more precise for many values of $n$. We also present a lower bound of $\log_2 n + 1.1186406 - o(1)$. Additionally, we prove that BinVal is an easiest function among all unimodal pseudo-Boolean functions at least for unbiased algorithms.Comment: 24 pages, one figure. An extended two-page abstract of this work will appear in proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO'1

ASlib: A Benchmark Library for Algorithm Selection

The task of algorithm selection involves choosing an algorithm from a set of algorithms on a per-instance basis in order to exploit the varying performance of algorithms over a set of instances. The algorithm selection problem is attracting increasing attention from researchers and practitioners in AI. Years of fruitful applications in a number of domains have resulted in a large amount of data, but the community lacks a standard format or repository for this data. This situation makes it difficult to share and compare different approaches effectively, as is done in other, more established fields. It also unnecessarily hinders new researchers who want to work in this area. To address this problem, we introduce a standardized format for representing algorithm selection scenarios and a repository that contains a growing number of data sets from the literature. Our format has been designed to be able to express a wide variety of different scenarios. Demonstrating the breadth and power of our platform, we describe a set of example experiments that build and evaluate algorithm selection models through a common interface. The results display the potential of algorithm selection to achieve significant performance improvements across a broad range of problems and algorithms.Comment: Accepted to be published in Artificial Intelligence Journa

10361 Abstracts Collection and Executive Summary -- Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms

From September 5 to 10, the Dagstuhl Seminar 10361 ``Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general

The Configurable SAT Solver Challenge (CSSC)

It is well known that different solution strategies work well for different types of instances of hard combinatorial problems. As a consequence, most solvers for the propositional satisfiability problem (SAT) expose parameters that allow them to be customized to a particular family of instances. In the international SAT competition series, these parameters are ignored: solvers are run using a single default parameter setting (supplied by the authors) for all benchmark instances in a given track. While this competition format rewards solvers with robust default settings, it does not reflect the situation faced by a practitioner who only cares about performance on one particular application and can invest some time into tuning solver parameters for this application. The new Configurable SAT Solver Competition (CSSC) compares solvers in this latter setting, scoring each solver by the performance it achieved after a fully automated configuration step. This article describes the CSSC in more detail, and reports the results obtained in its two instantiations so far, CSSC 2013 and 2014