Visual analysis of genetic algorithms while solving 0-1 knapsack problem

Abstract

This paper presents heat map based visual analysis of Genetic Algorithm (GA) solving 0-1 Knapsack Problem (KP). The current work is a preliminary investigation to understand the search strategy of GA solving KP through visual means. A simple GA has been employed to solve 50, 100 and 500 items 0-1 KP. Heat map based visualization of best chromosomes shows clearly the explorative and exploitative search strategies of GA in conjunction with convergence characteristics. This paper demonstrates the potential of visualization to analyze and understand Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) in general.