A Representation Scheme To Perform Program Induction in a Canonical Genetic Algorithm

This paper studies Genetic Programming (GP) and its relation to the Genetic Algorithm (GA). GP uses a GA approach to breed successive populations of programs, represented in the chromosomes as parse trees, until a program that solves the problem emerges. However, parse trees are not naturally homologous, consequently changes had to be introduced into GP. To better understand these changes it would be instructive if a canonical GA could also be used to perform program induction. To this end an appropriate GA representation scheme is developed (called EP-I for Evolutionary Programming with Introns). EP-I has been tested on three problems and performed identically to GP, thus demonstrating that the changes introduced by GP do not have any properties beyond those of a canonical GA for program induction. EPI is also able to simulate GP exactly thus gaining further insights into the nature of GP as a GA.