Page 33 - 49A Field Guide to Genetic Programming

Chapter 3

Getting Ready to Run

Genetic Programming

To apply a GP system to a problem, several decisions need to be made;
these are often termed the preparatory steps. The key choices are:

1. What it the terminal set?

2. What is the function set?

3. What is the fitness measure?

4. What parameters will be used for controlling the run?

5. What will be the termination criterion, and what will be designated
the result of the run?

3.1 Step 1: Terminal Set

While it is common to describe GP as evolving programs, GP is not typ-
ically used to evolve programs in the familiar Turing-complete languages
humans normally use for software development. It is instead more com-
mon to evolve programs (or expressions or formulae) in a more constrained
and often domain-specific language. The first two preparatory steps, the
definition of the terminal and function sets, specify such a language. That
is, together they define the ingredients that are available to GP to create
computer programs.

19