ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analysis of the local serial rate of
progress with respect to the number of offspring $\lambda$
for the (1,$\lambda$)-evolution strategy. It is shown that
local serial progress is maximized when the expected progress
of the second best offspring is zero. The theoretical results
lead to a simple but efficient adaptation rule for $\lambda$,
which needs no extra fitness function evaluations and only
small computational expense. Simulations of the
$\lambda$-adaptation on simple test functions are shown.