Analysis and research models of the Estimation of Distribution Algorithms

The Estimation of Distribution Algorithms (EDAs) is a novel class of evolutionary algorithms which is motivated by the idea of building probabilistic graphical model of promising solutions to represent linkage information between variables in chromosome. Through learning of and sampling from probabilistic graphical model, new population is generated and optimization procedure is repeated until the stopping criteria are met. In this paper, the mechanism of the Estimation of Distribution Algorithms is analyzed. Currently existing EDAs are surveyed and categorized according to the probabilistic model they used, then the strengths and weakness and the future perspective of EDAs are concluded.