A Rigorous Analysis of the Harmony Search Algorithm: How the Research Community can be Misled by a "Novel" Methodology

In recent years a lot of novel (mostly naturally inspired) search heuristics have been proposed. Among those approaches is Harmony Search. After its introduction in 2000, positive results and improvements over existing approaches have been reported. In this paper, the authors give a review of the developments of Harmony Search during the past decade and perform a rigorous analysis of this approach. This paper compares Harmony Search to the well-known search heuristic called Evolution Strategies. Harmony Search is a special case of Evolution Strategies in which the authors give compelling evidence for the thesis that research in Harmony is fundamentally misguided. The overarching question is how such a method could be inaccurately portrayed as a significant innovation without confronting a respectable challenge of its content or credentials. The authors examine possible answers to this question, and implications for evaluating other procedures by disclosing the way in which limitations of the method have been systematically overlooked. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0270-0.ch005