A first and second order progress rate analysis was conducted for the intermediate multi-recombinative Evolution Strategy (μ/μI, λ)-ES with isotropic scale-invariant mutations on the highly multimodal Rastrigin test function. Closed-form analytic solutions for the progress rates are obtained in the limit of large dimensionality and large populations. The first order results are able to model the one-generation progress including local attraction phenomena. Furthermore, a second order progress rate is derived yielding additional correction terms and further improving the progress model. The obtained results are compared to simulations and show good agreement, even for moderately large populations and dimensionality. The progress rates are applied within a dynamical systems approach, which models the evolution using difference equations. The obtained dynamics are compared to real averaged optimization runs and yield good agreement. The results improve further when dimensionality and population size are increased. Local and global convergence is investigated within given model showing that large mutations are needed to maximize the probability of global convergence, which comes at the expense of efficiency. An outlook regarding future research goals is provided.
Keywords: Evolution strategy; Global optimization; Progress rate; Rastrigin function.