- author = "W. B. Langdon",
- title = "Fitness Causes Bloat: Simulated Annealing, Hill Climbing and Populations",
- institution = "University of Birmingham, School of Computer Science",
- number = "CSRP-97-22",
- month = "2 " # sep,
- year = "1997",
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming",
-
URL = "
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/W.Langdon/ftp/papers/CSRP-97-22.ps.gz",
-
abstract = "In many cases programs length's increase (known as
``bloat'', ``fluff'' and increasing ``structural
complexity'') during artificial evolution. We show
bloat is not specific to genetic programming and
suggest it is inherent in search techniques with
discrete variable length representations using simple
static evaluation functions. We investigate the
bloating characteristics of three non-population and
one population based search techniques using a novel
mutation operator.
An artificial ant following the Santa Fe trail problem is solved by simulated annealing, hill climbing, strict hill climbing and population based search using two variants of the the new subtree based mutation operator. As predicted bloat is observed when using unbiased mutation and is absent in simulated annealing and both hill climbers when using the length neutral mutation however bloat occurs with both mutations when using a population.
We conclude that there are two causes of bloat.",
- notes = "Published as \cite{langdon:1997:pgSAHCP}",
