Negative Slope Coefficient: A Measure to Characterize Genetic Programming Fitness Landscapes

摘要

Negative slope coefficient has been recently introduced and empirically proven a suitable hardness indicator for some well known genetic programming benchmarks, such as the even parity problem, the binomial-3 and the artificial ant on the Santa Fe trail. Nevertheless, the original definition of this measure contains several limitations. This paper points out some of those limitations, presents a new and more relevant definition of the negative slope coefficient and empirically shows the suitability of this new definition as a hardness measure for some genetic programming benchmarks, including the multiplexer, the intertwined spirals problem and the royal trees.