Running races with Fraser´s recombination

Several recombination operators have been proposed in evolutionary computation. Standard procedures include one-point, two-point and uniform crossover. Little attention, however, has been given to a recombination operator that preceded each of these, which was offered by A.S. Fraser (1957). Fraser´s recombination assigns a variable probability for crossing over between two solutions at each locus. This operator subsumes the three standard forms of crossover. Experiments are conducted on a set of 10 test functions where individuals in a population are tagged to recombine in one of the four above-mentioned ways. Attention is focused on the relative performance of the various methods of recombination. Uniform crossover is seen to offer the greatest utility on the test functions, and Fraser´s recombination repeatedly outperforms one-point and two-point crossover. Several issues concerning the experimental design are discussed