This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Cartlidge, J. Articles by Bullock, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Unpicking Tartan CIAO Plots: Understanding Irregular Coevolutionary Cycling

School of Computing, University of Leeds, johnc{at}comp.leeds.ac.uk

Seth Bullock

School of Computing, University of Leeds, seth{at}comp.leeds.ac.uk

We report results from a series of studies coevolving players for simple Rock-Paper-Scissors games. These results demonstrate that Current Individual versus Ancestral Opponent (CIAO) plots, which have been proposed as a visualization technique for detecting both coevolutionary progress and coevolutionary cycling, suffer from ambiguity with regard to an important but rarely discussed class of cyclic behavior. While regular cycling manifests itself as a characteristic banded plot, irregular cycling produces an irregular tartan pattern that is also consistent with random drift through strategy space. Although this tartan pattern is often reported in the literature on coevolutionary algorithms, it has received little attention or analysis. Here we argue that irregular cycling will tend to be more prevalent than regular cycling, and that it corresponds to a class of coevolutionary scenario that is important both theoretically and in practice. As such, it is desirable that we improve our ability to distinguish its occurrence from that of random drift, and other forms of coevolutionary dynamic.

Key Words: CIAO plots • coevolutionary cycling • tartan pattern

Adaptive Behavior, Vol. 12, No. 2, 69-92 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/105971230401200201


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?