Hands-On Genetic Algorithms with Python

Crossover for ordered lists

In the previous example, we saw the results of a crossover operation on two integer-based chromosomes. While each of the parents had every value between 0 and 9 appear exactly once, each of the resulting offspring had certain values appearing more than once (for example, 2 in the top offspring and 1 in the other), and other values were missing (such as 4 in the top offspring and 5 in the other).

In some tasks, however, integer-based chromosomes may represent indices of an ordered list. For example, suppose we have several cities, we know the distance between each, and we need to find the shortest possible route through all of them. This is known as the traveling salesman problem and will be covered in detail in ...