Tuning Algorithms for Stochastic Black-Box Optimization : (State of the Art and Future Perspectives)

The focus of this paper lies on automatic and interactive tuning methods for stochastic optimization algorithms, e.g., evolutionary algorithms. Algorithm tuning is important because it helps to avoid wrong parameter settings, to improve the existing algorithms, to select the best algorithm for working with a real-world problem, to show the value of a novel algorithm, to evaluate the performance of an optimization algorithm when different option settings are used, and to obtain an algorithm instance that is robust to changes in problem specification. This chapter discusses strategical issues and defines eight key topics for tuning, namely, optimization algorithms, test problems, experimental setup, performance metrics, reporting, parallelization, tuning methods, and software. Features of established tuning software packages such as IRACE, SPOT, SMAC, and ParamILS are compared.