On the importance of the artificial bee colony control parameter ‘limit’

Abstract

Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) is a successful meta-heuristic algorithm that has been greatly utilised by researchers. Through our practical experience of ABC, we have noticed that the recommended formula ‘limit’ = ne * D may not be the best choice for different problems. In this work, a set of experiments using horizontal and vertical approaches has been designed and executed with the aim of observing the effect of ‘limit’ on ABC. The results have been statistical analysed using Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) as well as the Chess Rating System for Evolutionary Algorithms (CRS4EAs), which is a novel approach for comparing meta-heuristic algorithms. It is shown that the recommended formula is not the best setting for different problems and approaches. Hence, the control parameter ‘limit’ should be tuned or controlled. The other important result of this study is to show that CRS4EAs is comparable but also shows benefits over NHST.