Fitness proportionate selection

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Example of the selection of a single individual

Fitness proportionate selection, also known as roulette-wheel selection, is a genetic operator used in genetic algorithms for selecting potentially useful solutions for recombination.

In fitness proportionate selection, as in all selection methods, the fitness function assigns a fitness to possible solutions or chromosomes. This fitness level is used to associate a probability of selection with each individual chromosome. If $f i$ is the fitness of individual $i$ in the population, its probability of being selected is $p_i = \frac{f_i}{\Sigma_{j=1}^{N} f_j}$ , where $N$ is the number of individuals in the population. While candidate solutions with a higher fitness will be less likely to be eliminated, there is still a chance that they may be. Contrast this with a less sophisticated selection algorithm, such as truncation selection, which will eliminate a fixed percentage of the weakest candidates. With fitness proportionate selection there is a chance some weaker solutions may survive the selection process; this is an advantage, as though a solution may be weak, it may include some component which could prove useful following the recombination process.

The analogy to a roulette wheel can be envisaged by imagining a roulette wheel in which each candidate solution represents a pocket on the wheel; the size of the pockets are proportionate to the probability of selection of the solution. Selecting N chromosomes from the population is equivalent to playing N games on the roulette wheel, as each candidate is drawn independently.

Other selection techniques, such as stochastic universal sampling [Back, 1996, page 120] or tournament selection, are often used in practice. This is because they have less stochastic noise, or are fast, easy to implement and have a constant selection pressure [Blickle, 1996].

Note performance gains can be achieved by using a binary chop rather than a linear search to find the right pocket.