Balance between exploration and exploitation in genetic search

Genetic search plays an important role in Evolutionary Computation (EC). There are two important issues in the evolution process of the genetic search: exploration and exploitation. Exploration is the creation of population diversity by exploring the search space; exploitation is the reduction of the diversity by focusing on the individuals of higher fitness, or exploiting the fitness information (or knowledge) represented within the population. We theoretically analyze the impact of the genetic operators on the balance. In order to further explain the impact, some results of our research on ESs are showed. Finally we conclude that to make the algorithm more efficient, it is important to strike a balance between these two factors. Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 69635030) and Doctoral Programme Foundation of China, and National 863 High Technology Project of China Lin Hansheng: born in 1975, Master