Quality measures to adapt the participation in MOS

Multiple offspring sampling (MOS) is a hybrid algorithm where different evolutionary approaches can coexist simultaneously. The algorithm dynamically evaluates the quality of the solutions produced by each of these algorithms (or techniques, as they are called within MOS) and adjusts their participation in the overall evolutionary process according to this quality value. In this paper we use two alternative measures to evaluate the quality of a reproductive technique and therefore perform the dynamic adjustment of the participation ratios. One of these measures considers the fitness values of the solutions, while the other one determines how difficult the problem is for an evolutionary approach. These two measures are tested and compared over four problems of different complexity and domain (three of them are continuous while the fourth one is discrete). Results show analogies and differences among the used measures and confirm that a good dynamic selection based on a quality measure can boost the performance of the hybrid algorithm.