CODEWITHSUNDEEP
evolutionary-algorithmmutationfitness
Boris Jakovljevic
Boris Jakovljevic

Reputation: 131

A sample task assistance in Evolutionary Computing

I have a sample question from one of the previous exams (2006) from the Evolutionary Computing course. I don't really know how to approach this problem, so any ideas, hints and tips would be appreciated.

A magic square is a N x N square where all integers from 1 to N × N occur exactly once. The integers need to be placed in such a way that the sum of each row, column, and the two mean diagonals return the same value S = [N (N^2 + 1)] / 2. We would like to search for the position of the integers with an evolutionary algorithm.

And the question is:

Specify the most suitable fitness function, representation, mutation operator, and crossover operator you can think of.

I know what fitness function, mutation operator and crossover operator are, but I don't know what they mean by representation. Also, how would they be applicable to this kind of problem?

Please, just don't regard this as some kind of a 'garbage' question where I'm asking for 'homework help', because it's not. I'm just trying to learn something from other people's experience and knowledge.

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 60

Answers (1)

Steffen
Steffen

Reputation: 2431

I think by representation is meant how you would represent a possible solution to this problem by a genotype.

For this problem this may be that one solution is represented by a sequence of $N \times N$ integer variables.

Upvotes: 2

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