Kernkonzepte
The core message of this article is that tuning the parameters of a simple Simulated Annealing algorithm to generate discriminatory trajectories can improve the performance of machine learning models for algorithm selection and performance prediction, compared to using either raw trajectory data or exploratory landscape features.
Zusammenfassung
The article addresses the issue of algorithm selection and performance prediction in continuous optimization problems. Previous work has shown that using algorithm-centric data, such as search trajectories, can outperform models trained on exploratory landscape features. However, there are two main weaknesses with this approach: 1) it is difficult to ensure the trajectories are sufficiently discriminatory to train high-performing models, and 2) the approach does not scale well as a trajectory needs to be generated for each solver in the portfolio.
To address these issues, the authors propose a meta-algorithm that tunes the hyperparameters of a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm to generate trajectories that, when used as input to machine learning models, improve the performance metrics (classification accuracy or regression RMSE). The key findings are:
- Models using trajectories from the tuned SA algorithm outperform models using exploratory landscape features, using considerably less computational budget.
- For algorithm selection, at low budget (2 generations), models using SA trajectories have similar median accuracy to those using concatenated trajectories from the full portfolio, but use around 62% of the budget.
- For performance prediction of the three solvers (CMA-ES, DE, PSO), the best RMSE is obtained using an SA trajectory as input.
- While tuning SA individually for each model leads to the best results, using hyperparameters tuned for one solver to obtain trajectories for a different solver results in only a small loss in performance, suggesting potential for further computational savings.
The authors suggest next steps include testing the approach on a larger portfolio of solvers, exploring more advanced time-series classifiers, and further investigating the potential for transfer learning to reduce the computational burden.
Statistiken
The article does not contain any explicit numerical data or statistics. The key results are presented in the form of classification accuracies and regression RMSEs.
Zitate
"The core message of this article is that tuning the parameters of a simple Simulated Annealing algorithm to generate discriminatory trajectories can improve the performance of machine learning models for algorithm selection and performance prediction, compared to using either raw trajectory data or exploratory landscape features."
"Models using trajectories from the tuned SA algorithm outperform models using exploratory landscape features, using considerably less computational budget."
"For algorithm selection, at low budget (2 generations), models using SA trajectories have similar median accuracy to those using concatenated trajectories from the full portfolio, but use around 62% of the budget."