shrinkage_fraction

Decrease the population size by a percentage

Specification

• Alias: shrinkage_percentage

• Arguments: REAL

• Default: 0.9

Description

As of JEGA v2.0, all replacement types are common to both MOGA and SOGA. They include the roulette_wheel, unique_roulette_wheel, elitist, and below_limit selectors. In roulette_wheel replacement, each design is conceptually allotted a portion of a wheel proportional to its fitness relative to the fitnesses of the other Designs. Then, portions of the wheel are chosen at random and the design occupying those portions are duplicated into the next population. Those Designs allotted larger portions of the wheel are more likely to be selected (potentially many times). unique_roulette_wheel replacement is the same as roulette_wheel replacement, with the exception that a design may only be selected once. The below_limit selector attempts to keep all designs for which the negated fitness is below a certain limit. The values are negated to keep with the convention that higher fitness is better. The inputs to the below_limit selector are the limit as a real value, and a shrinkage_percentage as a real value. The shrinkage_percentage defines the minimum amount of selections that will take place if enough designs are available. It is interpreted as a percentage of the population size that must go on to the subsequent generation. To enforce this, below_limit makes all the selections it would make anyway and if that is not enough, it takes the remaining that it needs from the best of what is left (effectively raising its limit as far as it must to get the minimum number of selections). It continues until it has made enough selections. The shrinkage_percentage is designed to prevent extreme decreases in the population size at any given generation, and thus prevent a big loss of genetic diversity in a very short time. Without a shrinkage limit, a small group of “super” designs may appear and quickly cull the population down to a size on the order of the limiting value. In this case, all the diversity of the population is lost and it is expensive to re-diversify and spread the population. The elitist selector simply chooses the required number of designs taking the most fit. For example, if 100 selections are requested, then the top 100 designs as ranked by fitness will be selected and the remaining will be discarded.