Supervised and unsupervised discretization methods for evolutionary algorithms

This paper introduces simple model-building evolutionary algorithms (EAs) that operate on continuous domains. The algorithms are based on supervised and unsupervised discretization methods that have been used as preprocessing steps in machine learning. The basic idea is to discretize the continuous variables and use the discretization as a simple model of the solutions under consideration. The model is then used to generate new solutions directly, instead of using the usual operators based on sexual recombination and mutation. The algorithms are tested with several functions and the results suggest that combining discretizers with EAs may be an interesting path for future developments.

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