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Title: A theoretical comparison of evolutionary algorithms and simulated annealing

Conference ·
OSTI ID:150703

This paper theoretically compares the performance of simulated annealing and evolutionary algorithms. Our main result is that under mild conditions a wide variety of evolutionary algorithms can be shown to have greater performance than simulated annealing after a sufficiently large number of function evaluations. This class of EAs includes variants of evolutionary strategie and evolutionary programming, the canonical genetic algorithm, as well as a variety of genetic algorithms that have been applied to combinatorial optimization problems. The proof of this result is based on a performance analysis of a very general class of stochastic optimization algorithms, which has implications for the performance of a variety of other optimization algorithm.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-76DP00789
OSTI ID:
150703
Report Number(s):
SAND-95-2079C; CONF-960231-1; ON: DE95017881
Resource Relation:
Conference: Evolutionary programming, San Diego, CA (United States), 29 Feb 1996; Other Information: PBD: 28 Aug 1995
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English