Concepts for the Analysis of the ES

In this chapter the theoretical framework will be defined in which the analysis of the ES will be conducted in the following chapters. In particular, the progress measures will be defined here, which can be used in the evaluation of the optimization performance of an EA (i.e. not only ES). These measures describe the local and microscopic behavior of an EA. The macroscopic behavior (i.e. the dynamics of ES) is handled in Sect. 2.4. The calculation of the progress measures requires the selection of appropriate fitness landscapes, which can be used as the models of the real landscapes. Sect. 2.2 is devoted to this topic. The differential-geometric model — which can be used for the approximation of the local (differentiable) fitness landscapes — is introduced in Sect. 2.3.