Hello,

This post is not directly related to ECJ, but if there exists a solution in
ECJ, I would be glad. The background is that I have an optimization problem
in which six variables (real valued, range: 1-40) must be tuned for
minimizing a fitness function. From literature I know a good, general
solution but I want to find a better one which is optimized for my input
data. I know that I could start modifying this solution to find a better
one, but that's not my intention. I want to find an algorithm which is able
to find a good solution without this prior knowledge.

I have tried different algorithms (with different parameter combinations, of
course) like genetic algorithm, differential evolution and particle swarm
optimization. Although the algorithms infer good solutions, they do not come
close to the one which I already know. I think that the major disadvantage
of these population based solutions is that their candidates get more and
more similiar to each other. Usually, this is a good idea because it allows
the algorithm to fine-tune the candidate solutions. However, the whole
optimization process gets very sensitive to the initial distribution of
candidate solutions in the first generation because after some runs the
majority of candidate solutions starts to form clusters in search space like
a swarm. In this example, I don't want this behavior. I mean, why should
1,000 individuals in each generation concentrate on a tiny subspace whereas
the vast majority of the search-space is still undiscovered? Instead I want
some kind of anti-swarm behavior where some individuals form only small
groups but multiple groups are spread over the search-space. Then the
estimated optimum would be the maximum of all groups.

Do you have an idea how this could be accomplished? One of my ideas was to
use some kind of grid of the search space where a specific number of
individuals is put in every grid cell and no individual is allowed to move
across grid cell borders. The disadvantage is that a large number of
individuals would be necessary and if the grid cells get very small it would
lead to an exhaustive search.