Superior Genetic Algorithms for the Target Set Selection Problem Based on Power-Law Parameter Choices and Simple Greedy Heuristics

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Doerr, Benjamin, Krejca, Martin S., Vu, Nguyen
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Doerr, Benjamin
Krejca, Martin S.
Vu, Nguyen
author_facet Doerr, Benjamin
Krejca, Martin S.
Vu, Nguyen
contents The target set selection problem (TSS) asks for a set of vertices such that an influence spreading process started in these vertices reaches the whole graph. The current state of the art for this NP-hard problem are three recently proposed randomized search heuristics, namely a biased random-key genetic algorithm (BRKGA) obtained from extensive parameter tuning, a max-min ant system (MMAS), and a MMAS using Q-learning with a graph convolutional network. We show that the BRKGA with two simple modifications and without the costly parameter tuning obtains significantly better results. Our first modification is to simply choose all parameters of the BRKGA in each iteration randomly from a power-law distribution. The resulting parameterless BRKGA is already competitive with the tuned BRKGA, as our experiments on the previously used benchmarks show. We then add a natural greedy heuristic, namely to repeatedly discard small-degree vertices that are not necessary for reaching the whole graph. The resulting algorithm consistently outperforms all of the state-of-the-art algorithms. Besides providing a superior algorithm for the TSS problem, this work shows that randomized parameter choices and elementary greedy heuristics can give better results than complex algorithms and costly parameter tuning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_04018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Superior Genetic Algorithms for the Target Set Selection Problem Based on Power-Law Parameter Choices and Simple Greedy Heuristics
Doerr, Benjamin
Krejca, Martin S.
Vu, Nguyen
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
The target set selection problem (TSS) asks for a set of vertices such that an influence spreading process started in these vertices reaches the whole graph. The current state of the art for this NP-hard problem are three recently proposed randomized search heuristics, namely a biased random-key genetic algorithm (BRKGA) obtained from extensive parameter tuning, a max-min ant system (MMAS), and a MMAS using Q-learning with a graph convolutional network. We show that the BRKGA with two simple modifications and without the costly parameter tuning obtains significantly better results. Our first modification is to simply choose all parameters of the BRKGA in each iteration randomly from a power-law distribution. The resulting parameterless BRKGA is already competitive with the tuned BRKGA, as our experiments on the previously used benchmarks show. We then add a natural greedy heuristic, namely to repeatedly discard small-degree vertices that are not necessary for reaching the whole graph. The resulting algorithm consistently outperforms all of the state-of-the-art algorithms. Besides providing a superior algorithm for the TSS problem, this work shows that randomized parameter choices and elementary greedy heuristics can give better results than complex algorithms and costly parameter tuning.
title Superior Genetic Algorithms for the Target Set Selection Problem Based on Power-Law Parameter Choices and Simple Greedy Heuristics
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04018