Using Average-Fitness Based Selection to Combat the Curse of Dimensionality

It is well known that metaheuristics for numerical optimization tend to decrease in performance as dimensionality increases. These effects are commonly referred to as “The Curse of Dimensionality”. An obvious change to search spaces with increasing dimensionality is that their volume grows exponentially, and this has led to large amounts of research on improved exploration. A recent insight is that the shape of attraction basins can also change drastically with increasing dimensionality, and this has led to selection-based approaches to combat the Curse of Dimensionality. Average-Fitness Based Selection is introduced as a means to reduce the selection errors caused by Fitness-Based Selection. Experimental results show that the rate of selection errors grows much more slowly for Average-Fitness Based Selection with Increasing dimensionality.