Neutral Variations Cause Bloat in Linear GP

Abstract. In this contribution we investigate the influence of different variation effects on the growth of code. A mutation-based variant of linear GP is applied that operates with minimum structural step sizes. Results show that neutral variations are a direct cause for (and not only a result of) the emergence and the growth of intron code. The influence of non-neutral variations has been found to be considerably smaller. Neutral variations turned out to be beneficial by solving two classification problems more successfully.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: EUROGP
• Authors: Markus Brameier, Wolfgang Banzhaf
• Keywords: Different Variation Effects, EUROGP 2003, Minimum Structural Step, Neutral Variations