CCIA'2008: Can Evolution Strategies Improve Learning Guidance in XCS? Design and Comparison with GA-based XCS

This document proposes using evolution strategies (ES) instead of genetic algorithms (GA) in the genetic algorithm component of the XCS learning classifier system. It designs an ES-based XCS with a modified classifier representation and ES-based genetic operators. Experiments on real-world datasets show the ES-based XCS outperforms GA-based XCS with selection and mutation alone, though there is no significant difference when crossover is added. Further research is suggested to determine when different search operators should be used.