The Evolutionary Computation Methods No One Should Use

Abstract

The center-bias (or zero-bias) operator has recently been identified as one of the problems plaguing the benchmarking of evolutionary computation methods. This operator lets the methods that utilize it easily optimize functions that have their respective optima in the center of the feasible set. In this paper, we describe a simple procedure that can be used to identify methods that incorporate a center-bias operator and use it to investigate 90 evolutionary computation methods that were published between 1987 and 2022. We show that more than half (47 out of the 90) of the considered methods have the center-bias problem. We also show that the center-bias is a relatively new phenomenon (with the first identified method being from 2012), but its inclusion has become extremely prevalent in the last few years. Lastly, we briefly discuss the possible root causes of this issue.