### Evolutionary and Lifetime Learning in Varying NK Fitness Landscape Changing Environments: An Analysis of both Fitness and Diversity

This paper examines the effects of lifetime learning on populations evolving genetically in a series of changing environments. The analysis of both fitness and diversity of the populations provides an insight into the improved performance provided by lifetime learning. The NK fitness landscape model is employed as the problem task, which has the advantage of being able to generate a variety of fitness landscapes of varying difficulty. Experiments observe the response of populations in an environment where problem difficulty increases and decreases with varying frequency. Results show that lifetime learning is capable of overall higher fitness levels and, in addition, that lifetime learning stimulates the diversity of the population. This increased diversity allows lifetime learning a greater level of recovery and stability than evolutionary learning alone.

### Better Runtime Guarantees Via Stochastic Domination

Apart from few exceptions, the mathematical runtime analysis of evolutionary algorithms is mostly concerned with expected runtimes. In this work, we argue that stochastic domination is a notion that should be used more frequently in this area. Stochastic domination allows to formulate much more informative performance guarantees, it allows to decouple the algorithm analysis into the true algorithmic part of detecting a domination statement and the probability-theoretical part of deriving the desired probabilistic guarantees from this statement, and it helps finding simpler and more natural proofs. As particular results, we prove a fitness level theorem which shows that the runtime is dominated by a sum of independent geometric random variables, we prove the first tail bounds for several classic runtime problems, and we give a short and natural proof for Witt's result that the runtime of any $(\mu,p)$ mutation-based algorithm on any function with unique optimum is subdominated by the runtime of a variant of the \oea on the \onemax function. As side-products, we determine the fastest unbiased (1+1) algorithm for the \leadingones benchmark problem, both in the general case and when restricted to static mutation operators, and we prove a Chernoff-type tail bound for sums of independent coupon collector distributions.

### Generating Interpretable Fuzzy Controllers using Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Programming

Autonomously training interpretable control strategies, called policies, using pre-existing plant trajectory data is of great interest in industrial applications. Fuzzy controllers have been used in industry for decades as interpretable and efficient system controllers. In this study, we introduce a fuzzy genetic programming (GP) approach called fuzzy GP reinforcement learning (FGPRL) that can select the relevant state features, determine the size of the required fuzzy rule set, and automatically adjust all the controller parameters simultaneously. Each GP individual's fitness is computed using model-based batch reinforcement learning (RL), which first trains a model using available system samples and subsequently performs Monte Carlo rollouts to predict each policy candidate's performance. We compare FGPRL to an extended version of a related method called fuzzy particle swarm reinforcement learning (FPSRL), which uses swarm intelligence to tune the fuzzy policy parameters. Experiments using an industrial benchmark show that FGPRL is able to autonomously learn interpretable fuzzy policies with high control performance.

### Evidence of coevolution in multi-objective evolutionary algorithms

This paper demonstrates that simple yet important characteristics of coevolution can occur in evolutionary algorithms when only a few conditions are met. We find that interaction-based fitness measurements such as fitness (linear) ranking allow for a form of coevolutionary dynamics that is observed when 1) changes are made in what solutions are able to interact during the ranking process and 2) evolution takes place in a multi-objective environment. This research contributes to the study of simulated evolution in a at least two ways. First, it establishes a broader relationship between coevolution and multi-objective optimization than has been previously considered in the literature. Second, it demonstrates that the preconditions for coevolutionary behavior are weaker than previously thought. In particular, our model indicates that direct cooperation or competition between species is not required for coevolution to take place. Moreover, our experiments provide evidence that environmental perturbations can drive coevolutionary processes; a conclusion that mirrors arguments put forth in dual phase evolution theory. In the discussion, we briefly consider how our results may shed light onto this and other recent theories of evolution.