Automatic Tuning of the (1+1)-ES

Consider the following situation: The user has created a working directory for running the experiments, say MyJavaExperiments. This directory contains the following files.

• SPOT configuration (CONF), e.g., java0.conf
• Region of interest (ROI), e.g., java0.roi
• Algorithm and problem parameters (APD) java0.apd
• The interface to the algorithm. spotInterfacingTemplate.R
• The algorithm, i.e., the jar file. simpleOnePlusOneES.jar

R is started in the working directory. The following command starts SPOT's automatic tuning procedure.

> library(SPOT)
> spot("java0.conf")

Sometimes is it required to start a clean R session, because data from previous runs are in the workspace. Execute

rm(list=ls());

to perform a cleanup before SPOT is loaded and run.

The output from Fig. 1 is shown by default during the tuning process.

Figure 1: Default output during the optimization run 

The tuning process terminates with the following output:

Best solution found with 507 evaluations:
Y          SIGMANULL VARA     VARG COUNT CONFIG
0.1029542  0.445661 1.050709   72     5    110

A short summary is also shown:

       y             SIGMANULL           VARA            VARG     
 Min.   :0.01184   Min.   :0.1035   Min.   :1.023   Min.   : 3.0  
 1st Qu.:0.11606   1st Qu.:0.2885   1st Qu.:1.064   1st Qu.:18.0  
 Median :0.19034   Median :0.4112   Median :1.096   Median :50.0  
 Mean   :0.25662   Mean   :0.6167   Mean   :1.118   Mean   :43.7  
 3rd Qu.:0.31951   3rd Qu.:0.7337   3rd Qu.:1.145   3rd Qu.:64.0  
 Max.   :1.68859   Max.   :4.5725   Max.   :1.984   Max.   :98.0

A result file (RES), which contains important information from the tuning process, has been written to the working directory. It can be downloaded as java0.res from the workshop's web page.