Package GoES -

Overview

The GoES package implements an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) for optimization problems. It employs a diagonal variant of the Covariance Matrix Adaptation - Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) algorithm, known for its efficiency and robustness in various optimization tasks.

Functionality

Opt function: This core function performs the CMA-ES optimization. It takes the following arguments:

• fn: A user-defined function representing the objective function to be optimized. This function should accept a slice of float64 values as input and return a single float64 value representing the cost or fitness of the solution.
• mu: An initial mean vector of float64 values, defining the starting point of the search in the solution space.
• sigma: An initial standard deviation vector of float64 values, determining the initial search radius around the mean vector.
• cfg: A configuration object, can be obtained by Config() function to customize optimization parameters (see below).

Configuration

The Config() function: returns a struct that allows fine-tuning the optimization process, it has the following paramets:

• Generations: The maximum number of generations for the EA to run (default: 300).
• PopSize: The population size (number of candidate solutions) per generation (default: automatically determined based on problem dimensionality).
• LR_mu: Learning rate for mean vector update (default: 0.6).
• LR_sigma: Learning rate for standard deviation vector update (default: 0.15).
• Momentum: Momentum coefficient for velocity update (default: 0.93).
• SigmaTol: Tolerance threshold on parameter variance for stopping the optimization (default: 1e-14).
• DeltaFnTol: Tolerance threshold on cost function variance for stopping the optimization (default: 1e-14).
• Seed: A uint64 value to seed the optimiser rng.
• Verbose: Flag to enable detailed logging of optimization progress during each generation (default: false).

Convenience Function Documentation

Positive(z float64) float64

• This function converts the potentially unbounded input z into a value between 0 and +Inf.

Probability(z float64) float64

• This function converts the potentially unbounded input z into a valid probability value between 0 and 1.

Bounded(x, a, b float64) float64

• This function takes a value x and a range defined by a (lower bound) and b (upper bound), and uses a probability value derived from x to position the output within that range.

Usage Examples

Example 1: Sphere Function Optimization

This example minimizes the sphere function, a common benchmark for optimization algorithms:

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	GoES "github.com/francescoalemanno/GoES"
)

func sphere(x []float64) float64 {
	var sum float64
	for int_i, v := range x {
		i := float64(int_i)
		sum += (v - i) * (v - i)
	}
	return sum
}

func main() {
	dim := 10                     // Dimensionality of the problem (number of variables)
	mu := make([]float64, dim)    // Initialize mean vector with zeros
	sigma := make([]float64, dim) // Initialize standard deviation vector with ones
	for i := range dim {
		sigma[i] = 1.0
	}

	// Optionally customize configuration
	cfg := GoES.Config()
	cfg.Generations = 1000
	cfg.Verbose = false

	// Perform optimization
	res, _ := GoES.Opt(sphere, mu, sigma, cfg)

	fmt.Println("Optimum:", res.Mu) // should be close to vector [0, 1, 2, ..., dim-1]
}

Example 2: Default Optimization Config

This example demonstrates how to use GoES to optimize a custom function:

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	GoES "github.com/francescoalemanno/GoES"
)

func abs2(x float64) float64 {
	return x * x
}
func myCustomFunction(x []float64) float64 {
	A, B := 1.0, -4.0
	return abs2(x[0]-A) + 100*abs2(x[1]+x[0]-A-B)
}

func main() {
	mu := []float64{1.0, 2.0}    // Initial mean vector
	sigma := []float64{0.5, 0.5} // Initial standard deviation vector

	res, _ := GoES.Opt(myCustomFunction, mu, sigma, GoES.Config())

	fmt.Println("Optimized mean:", res.Mu)
	fmt.Println("Optimized standard deviation:", res.Sigma)
}

Example 3: Stochastic function optimization

This example demonstrates how to use GoES to optimize a stochastic function:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"math/rand"

	GoES "github.com/francescoalemanno/GoES"
)

func abs2(x float64) float64 {
	return x * x
}
func myCustomFunction(x []float64) float64 {
	p := GoES.Probability(x[0])
	tot_runs := 110
	h := 0.0
	for _ = range tot_runs {
		if rand.Float64() < p {
			h += 1
		}
	}
	return abs2(h/float64(tot_runs) - 50.0/110.0)
}

func main() {
	mu := []float64{0}    // Initial mean vector
	sigma := []float64{1} // Initial standard deviation vector
	cfg := GoES.Config()
	cfg.Verbose = true
	cfg.Momentum = 0
	cfg.LR_mu = 1.0
	cfg.LR_sigma = 1.0
	cfg.PopSize = 200
	cfg.Generations = 200
	res, _ := GoES.Opt(myCustomFunction, mu, sigma, cfg)
	fmt.Println("Optimized mean:", GoES.Probability(res.Mu[0]))
	fmt.Println("MLE:", 50.0/110.0)
}