Modal Mutations in Evolutionary Algorithms

| With this paper Modal Mutation Schemes for Evolutionary Algorithms as a generalization of the Breeder Genetic Algorithm mutation scheme are introduced and analyzed for multimodal continuous parameter optimization problems. A new scaling rule for multiple mutations is formalized and compared with a new step-size scaling for Evolution Strategies. A performance comparison of the Multivalued Evolutionary Algorithm with modal mutations with recently published results concerning the performance of Bayesian/Sampling and Very Fast Simulated Reannealing techniques for global optimization is given.