Focusing versus intransitivity: Geometrical aspects of co-evolution

Abstract

Recently, a minimal domain dubbed the numbers game has been proposed to illustrate well-known issues in co-evolutionary dynamics. The domain permits controlled introduction of features like intransitivity, allowing researchers to understand failings of a co-evolutionary algorithm in terms of the domain. In this paper, we show theoretically that a large class of co-evolution problems closely resemble this minimal domain. In particular, all the problems in this class can be embedded into an ordered, n-dimensional Euclidean space, and so can be construed as greater-than games. Thus, conclusions derived using the numbers game are more widely applicable than might be presumed. In light of this observation, we present a simple algorithm aimed at remedying focusing problems and relativism in the numbers game. With it we show empirically that, contrary to expectations, focusing in transitive games can be more troublesome for co-evolutionary algorithms than intransitivity. Practitioners should therefore be just as wary of focusing issues in application domains. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.