Trading accuracy for simplicity in evolutionary algorithms

Many evolutionary algorithms efficient to solve a wide range of problems have been proposed and validated in the literature. We call the problem addressed in this paper “the problem of refining the design”. Given an evolutionary algorithm that includes many operators, we would like to assess if all of the latter are really relevant to accomplish the former's performance. In this paper, we present a framework to evaluate an evolutionary algorithm that has already been designed. The goal of this evaluation is to study the choices that we have to simplify the code in respect to its results accuracy. The results show that an efficient tuner can assist us in this task by obtaining information that help design decisions.