Computational Complexity Results for Genetic Programming and the Sorting Problem

Genetic Programming (GP) has found various applications. Understanding this type of algorithm from a theoretical point of view is a challenging task. The first results on the computational complexity of GP have been obtained for problems with isolated program semantics. With this paper, we push forward the computational complexity analysis of GP on a problem with dependent program semantics. We study the well-known sorting problem in this context and analyze rigorously how GP can deal with different measures of sortedness.Comment: 12 page

Statistical and Computational Tradeoff in Genetic Algorithm-Based Estimation

When a Genetic Algorithm (GA), or a stochastic algorithm in general, is employed in a statistical problem, the obtained result is affected by both variability due to sampling, that refers to the fact that only a sample is observed, and variability due to the stochastic elements of the algorithm. This topic can be easily set in a framework of statistical and computational tradeoff question, crucial in recent problems, for which statisticians must carefully set statistical and computational part of the analysis, taking account of some resource or time constraints. In the present work we analyze estimation problems tackled by GAs, for which variability of estimates can be decomposed in the two sources of variability, considering some constraints in the form of cost functions, related to both data acquisition and runtime of the algorithm. Simulation studies will be presented to discuss the statistical and computational tradeoff question.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Information content of colored motifs in complex networks

We study complex networks in which the nodes of the network are tagged with different colors depending on the functionality of the nodes (colored graphs), using information theory applied to the distribution of motifs in such networks. We find that colored motifs can be viewed as the building blocks of the networks (much more so than the uncolored structural motifs can be) and that the relative frequency with which these motifs appear in the network can be used to define the information content of the network. This information is defined in such a way that a network with random coloration (but keeping the relative number of nodes with different colors the same) has zero color information content. Thus, colored motif information captures the exceptionality of coloring in the motifs that is maintained via selection. We study the motif information content of the C. elegans brain as well as the evolution of colored motif information in networks that reflect the interaction between instructions in genomes of digital life organisms. While we find that colored motif information appears to capture essential functionality in the C. elegans brain (where the color assignment of nodes is straightforward) it is not obvious whether the colored motif information content always increases during evolution, as would be expected from a measure that captures network complexity. For a single choice of color assignment of instructions in the digital life form Avida, we find rather that colored motif information content increases or decreases during evolution, depending on how the genomes are organized, and therefore could be an interesting tool to dissect genomic rearrangements.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Artificial Lif

A Computationally Efficient Limited Memory CMA-ES for Large Scale Optimization

We propose a computationally efficient limited memory Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy for large scale optimization, which we call the LM-CMA-ES. The LM-CMA-ES is a stochastic, derivative-free algorithm for numerical optimization of non-linear, non-convex optimization problems in continuous domain. Inspired by the limited memory BFGS method of Liu and Nocedal (1989), the LM-CMA-ES samples candidate solutions according to a covariance matrix reproduced from $m$ direction vectors selected during the optimization process. The decomposition of the covariance matrix into Cholesky factors allows to reduce the time and memory complexity of the sampling to $O(mn)$, where $n$ is the number of decision variables. When $n$ is large (e.g., $n$ > 1000), even relatively small values of $m$ (e.g., $m=20,30$) are sufficient to efficiently solve fully non-separable problems and to reduce the overall run-time.Comment: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'2014) (2014