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Genetic Algorithms

Aug 15, 201

Evolution

Heres a very oversimplified description of how evolution works


in biology
Organisms (animals or plants) produce a number of offspring
which are almost, but not entirely, like themselves

Some of these offspring may survive to produce offspring of their


ownsome wont

Variation may be due to mutation (random changes)


Variation may be due to sexual reproduction (offspring have some
characteristics from each parent)

The better adapted offspring are more likely to survive


Over time, later generations become better and better adapted

Genetic algorithms use this same process to evolve better


programs

Genotypes and phenotypes

Genes are the basic instructions for building an


organism
A chromosome is a sequence of genes
Biologists distinguish between an organisms genotype
(the genes and chromosomes) and its phenotype (what
the organism actually is like)

Example: You might have genes to be tall, but never grow to


be tall for other reasons (such as poor diet)

Similarly, genes may describe a possible solution to a


problem, without actually being the solution
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The basic genetic algorithm

Start with a large population of randomly generated


attempted solutions to a problem
Repeatedly do the following:
Evaluate each of the attempted solutions
Keep a subset of these solutions (the best ones)
Use these solutions to generate a new population
Quit when you have a satisfactory solution (or you run out of time)

A really simple example

Suppose your organisms are 32-bit computer words


You want a string in which all the bits are ones
Heres how you can do it:

Create 100 randomly generated computer words


Repeatedly do the following:

Count the 1 bits in each word

Exit if any of the words have all 32 bits set to 1

Keep the ten words that have the most 1s (discard the rest)
From each word, generate 9 new words as follows:
Pick a random bit in the word and toggle (change) it

Note that this procedure does not guarantee that the next
generation will have more 1 bits, but its likely
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A more realistic example, part I

Suppose you have a large number of (x, y) data points

For example, (1.0, 4.1), (3.1, 9.5), (-5.2, 8.6), ...

You would like to fit a polynomial (of up to degree 5) through


these data points

That is, you want a formula y = ax5 + bx4 + cx3 + dx2 +ex + f that gives
you a reasonably good fit to the actual data
Heres the usual way to compute goodness of fit:

Compute the sum of (actual y predicted y)2 for all the data points
The lowest sum represents the best fit

There are some standard curve fitting techniques, but lets assume
you dont know about them
You can use a genetic algorithm to find a pretty good solution
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A more realistic example, part II

Your formula is y = ax5 + bx4 + cx3 + dx2 +ex + f


Your genes are a, b, c, d, e, and f
Your chromosome is the array [a, b, c, d, e, f]
Your evaluation function for one array is:

For every actual data point (x, y), (Im using red to mean actual data)

Compute = ax5 + bx4 + cx3 + dx2 +ex + f


Find the sum of (y )2 over all x
The sum is your measure of badness (larger numbers are worse)

Example: For [0, 0, 0, 2, 3, 5] and the data points (1, 12) and (2, 22):

= 0x5 + 0x4 + 0x3 + 2x2 +3x + 5 is 2 + 3 + 5 = 10 when x is 1


= 0x5 + 0x4 + 0x3 + 2x2 +3x + 5 is 8 + 6 + 5 = 19 when x is 2
(12 10)2 + (22 19)2 = 22 + 32 = 13
If these are the only two data points, the badness of [0, 0, 0, 2, 3, 5] is 13

A more realistic example, part III

Your algorithm might be as follows:

Create 100 six-element arrays of random numbers


Repeat 500 times (or any other number):

For each of the 100 arrays, compute its badness (using all data
points)
Keep the ten best arrays (discard the other 90)

From each array you keep, generate nine new arrays as


follows:
Pick a random element of the six
Pick a random floating-point number between 0.0 and 2.0
Multiply the random element of the array by the random
floating-point number
After all 500 trials, pick the best array as your final answer

Asexual vs. sexual reproduction

In the examples so far,

Each organism (or solution) had only one parent


Reproduction was asexual (without sex)
The only way to introduce variation was through mutation
(random changes)

In sexual reproduction,

Each organism (or solution) has two parents


Assuming that each organism has just one chromosome, new
offspring are produced by forming a new chromosome from
parts of the chromosomes of each parent

The really simple example again

Suppose your organisms are 32-bit computer words,


and you want a string in which all the bits are ones
Heres how you can do it:

Create 100 randomly generated computer words


Repeatedly do the following:

Count the 1 bits in each word

Exit if any of the words have all 32 bits set to 1

Keep the ten words that have the most 1s (discard the rest)
From each word, generate 9 new words as follows:
Choose one of the other words
Take the first half of this word and combine it with the
second half of the other word

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The example continued

Half from one, half from the other:


0110 1001 0100 1110 1010 1101 1011 0101
1101 0100 0101 1010 1011 0100 1010 0101
0110 1001 0100 1110 1011 0100 1010 0101

Or we might choose genes (bits) randomly:


0110 1001 0100 1110 1010 1101 1011 0101
1101 0100 0101 1010 1011 0100 1010 0101
0100 0101 0100 1010 1010 1100 1011 0101

Or we might consider a gene to be a larger unit:


0110 1001 0100 1110 1010 1101 1011 0101
1101 0100 0101 1010 1011 0100 1010 0101
1101 1001 0101 1010 1010 1101 1010 0101

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Comparison of simple examples

In the simple example (trying to get all 1s):

The sexual (two-parent, no mutation) approach, if it succeeds,


is likely to succeed much faster

However, with no mutation, it may not succeed at all

Because up to half of the bits change each time, not just one bit
By pure bad luck, maybe none of the first (randomly generated) words
have (say) bit 17 set to 1
Then there is no way a 1 could ever occur in this position
Another problem is lack of genetic diversity
Maybe some of the first generation did have bit 17 set to 1, but
none of them were selected for the second generation

The best technique in general turns out to be sexual


reproduction with a small probability of mutation
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Curve fitting with sexual reproduction

Your formula is y = ax5 + bx4 + cx3 + dx2 +ex + f


Your genes are a, b, c, d, e, and f
Your chromosome is the array [a, b, c, d, e, f]
Whats the best way to combine two chromosomes into
one?

You could choose the first half of one and the second half of
the other: [a, b, c, d, e, f]
You could choose genes randomly: [a, b, c, d, e, f]
You could compute gene averages:
[(a+a)/2, (b+b)/2, (c+c)/2, (d+d)/2, (e+e)/2,(f+f)/2]

I suspect this last may be the best, though I dont know of a good
biological analogy for it

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Directed evolution

Notice that, in the previous examples, we formed the


child organisms randomly

We did not try to choose the best genes from each parent
This is how natural (biological) evolution works

Biological evolution is not directedthere is no goal

Genetic algorithms use biology as inspiration, not as a set of


rules to be slavishly followed

For trying to get a word of all 1s, there is an obvious


measure of a good gene

But thats mostly because its a silly example


Its much harder to detect a good gene in the curve-fitting
problem, harder still in almost any real use of a genetic
algorithm

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Probabilistic matching

In previous examples, we chose the N best organisms


as parents for the next generation
A more common approach is to choose parents
randomly, based on their measure of goodness

Thus, an organism that is twice as good as another is likely


to have twice as many offspring

This has a couple of advantages:

The best organisms will contribute the most to the next


generation
Since every organism has some chance of being a parent, there
is somewhat less loss of genetic diversity
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Genetic programming

A string of bits could represent a program


If you want a program to do something, you might try to
evolve one
As a concrete example, suppose you want a program to
help you choose stocks in the stock market

There is a huge amount of data, going back many years


What data has the most predictive value?
Whats the best way to combine this data?

A genetic program is possible in theory, but it might


take millions of years to evolve into something useful

How can we improve this?


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Shrinking the search space

There are just too many possible bit patterns!

An incredible improvement would result if we could


somehow restrict the search space to only valid (even if
nonsensical) programs

99.9999% of these dont even represent valid programs

We can do this!

Programs, as you should know by now, can be


represented as trees

Internal nodes are operators: +, *, if, while, ...


Leaves are values: 2.71818, "AAPL", ...
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Programs as trees

Given a program represented as a tree, we can mutate it


by changing one of its operators (or one of its values),
or by adding or removing nodes
Given two trees, we can form a new tree by taking parts
of its two parents
The next big problem: How do we evaluate program
trees that are (initially) nothing at all like what we
want?
I realize this is all very vagueI just wanted to give
you the general idea
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Concluding remarks

Genetic algorithms are

Fun! They are enjoyable to program and to work with

This is probably why they are a subject of active research

Mind-bogglingly slowyou dont want to use them if you


have any alternatives
Good for a very few types of problems

Genetic algorithms can sometimes come up with a solution when you


can see no other way of tackling the problem

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The End

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