breeding parents for multiple children in genetic algorithm

Question

I'm building my first Genetic Algorithm in javascript, using a collection of tutorials.

I'm building a somewhat simpler structure to this scheduling tutorial http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/GaClassSchedule.aspx#Chromosome8, but I've run into a problem with breeding.

I get a population of 60 individuals, and now I'm picking the top two individuals to breed, and then selecting a few random other individuals to breed with the top two, am I not going to end up with a fairly small amount of parents rather quickly?

I figure I'm not going to be making much progress in the solution if I breed the top two results with each of the next 20.

Is that correct? Is there a generally accepted method for doing this?

Answer 1

One problem with your approach is that you are killing diversity in the population by mating always the top 2 individuals. That will never work very well because it's too greedy, and you'll actually be defeating the purpose of having a genetic algorithm in the first place.

For more information regarding Improving Genetic Algorithm with Fine-Tuned Crossover and Scaled Architecture, refer to the following link: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jmath/2016/4015845/

If you wish to learn about Genetic Algorithm or Genetic Programming then visit this Artificial Intelligence Course.