A step counting hill climbing algorithm

This paper presents a new single-parameter local search heuristic named Step Counting Hill Climbing algorithm (SCHC). It is a very simple method in which the current cost serves as an acceptance bound for a number of consecutive steps. This is the only parameter in the method that should be set up b...

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Main Authors: Bykov, Yuri, Petrovic, Sanja
Format: Article
Published: Springer 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32920/
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author Bykov, Yuri
Petrovic, Sanja
author_facet Bykov, Yuri
Petrovic, Sanja
author_sort Bykov, Yuri
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper presents a new single-parameter local search heuristic named Step Counting Hill Climbing algorithm (SCHC). It is a very simple method in which the current cost serves as an acceptance bound for a number of consecutive steps. This is the only parameter in the method that should be set up by the user. Furthermore, the counting of steps can be organized in different ways; therefore the proposed method can generate a large number of variants and also extensions. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of the three basic variants of SCHC on the university exam timetabling problem. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method shares the main properties with the Late Acceptance Hill Climbing method, namely its convergence time is proportional to the value of its parameter and a non-linear rescaling of a problem does not affect its search performance. However, our new method has two additional advantages: a more flexible acceptance condition and better overall performance. In this study we compare the new method with Late Acceptance Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing and Great Deluge Algorithm. The Step Counting Hill Climbing has shown the strongest performance on the most of our benchmark problems used.
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spelling nottingham-329202020-05-04T20:01:39Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32920/ A step counting hill climbing algorithm Bykov, Yuri Petrovic, Sanja This paper presents a new single-parameter local search heuristic named Step Counting Hill Climbing algorithm (SCHC). It is a very simple method in which the current cost serves as an acceptance bound for a number of consecutive steps. This is the only parameter in the method that should be set up by the user. Furthermore, the counting of steps can be organized in different ways; therefore the proposed method can generate a large number of variants and also extensions. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of the three basic variants of SCHC on the university exam timetabling problem. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method shares the main properties with the Late Acceptance Hill Climbing method, namely its convergence time is proportional to the value of its parameter and a non-linear rescaling of a problem does not affect its search performance. However, our new method has two additional advantages: a more flexible acceptance condition and better overall performance. In this study we compare the new method with Late Acceptance Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing and Great Deluge Algorithm. The Step Counting Hill Climbing has shown the strongest performance on the most of our benchmark problems used. Springer 2016-08 Article PeerReviewed Bykov, Yuri and Petrovic, Sanja (2016) A step counting hill climbing algorithm. Journal of Scheduling, 19 (4). pp. 479-492. ISSN 1099-1425 Optimisation Metaheuristics Simulated Annealing Late Acceptance Hill Climbing Step Counting Hill Climbing Exam Timetabling http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10951-016-0469-x doi:10.1007/s10951-016-0469-x doi:10.1007/s10951-016-0469-x
spellingShingle Optimisation
Metaheuristics
Simulated Annealing
Late Acceptance Hill Climbing
Step Counting Hill Climbing
Exam Timetabling
Bykov, Yuri
Petrovic, Sanja
A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title_full A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title_fullStr A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title_full_unstemmed A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title_short A step counting hill climbing algorithm
title_sort step counting hill climbing algorithm
topic Optimisation
Metaheuristics
Simulated Annealing
Late Acceptance Hill Climbing
Step Counting Hill Climbing
Exam Timetabling
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32920/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32920/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32920/