Hi all,
I have a question regarding the ability of the SHC algorithm to find a decent answer.
Basically, the algorithm I'm referring to - **broken link removed** - chooses a set of 8 items out of a reserve bag of 48 possible items then proceeds to perform a number of random mutations/tweaks on this set. Each tweak swaps out 1 (randomly chosen) of the 8 items with any (randomly chosen) of the remaining items in the reserve bag.
After each tweak the suitability of the new set is checked, and if better than the last set, may be kept for the next generation of mutations. If it is worse, then the previously best set will be used again for the next gen of mutations.
Their pseudo-code for this process is shown in the attached image, duplicated from their paper.
Eight items must be chosen out of a bag of 48; the algorithm attempts to find the best combination (of 377,348,994 possible) using a total of 1800 guesses (30 rounds of 60 mutations). Some of the items complement each other, others are just duplicates and others might be mainly noise.
How likely is it that this method gets a good result given the massive search space and the small query size? I think I must be coming from the wrong angle.
I have a question regarding the ability of the SHC algorithm to find a decent answer.
Basically, the algorithm I'm referring to - **broken link removed** - chooses a set of 8 items out of a reserve bag of 48 possible items then proceeds to perform a number of random mutations/tweaks on this set. Each tweak swaps out 1 (randomly chosen) of the 8 items with any (randomly chosen) of the remaining items in the reserve bag.
After each tweak the suitability of the new set is checked, and if better than the last set, may be kept for the next generation of mutations. If it is worse, then the previously best set will be used again for the next gen of mutations.
Their pseudo-code for this process is shown in the attached image, duplicated from their paper.
Eight items must be chosen out of a bag of 48; the algorithm attempts to find the best combination (of 377,348,994 possible) using a total of 1800 guesses (30 rounds of 60 mutations). Some of the items complement each other, others are just duplicates and others might be mainly noise.
How likely is it that this method gets a good result given the massive search space and the small query size? I think I must be coming from the wrong angle.