Selection in the presence of noise

Abstract

For noisy optimization problems, there is generally a trade-off between the effort spent to reduce the noise (in order to allow the optimization algorithm to run properly), and the number of solutions evaluated during optimization. However, for stochastic search algorithms like evolutionary optimization, noise is not always a bad thing. On the contrary, in many cases, noise has a very similar effect to the randomness which is purposefully and deliberately introduced e.g. during selection. Using the example of stochastic tournament selection, we show that the noise inherent in the optimization problem should be taken into account by the selection operator, and that one should not reduce noise further than necessary. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.