Evaluations of mutations in evolutionary programming

Different mutation operators have been developed in evolutionary programming, such as Gaussian mutations, Cauchy mutations, Lévy mutations, and some mixed mutations. Experimental results have often been focused on comparisons of performance among different mutations. Besides measuring the performance, this paper discusses how to evaluate Gaussian mutations, Cauchy mutations, and Lévy mutations using nine measurements including five measurements from fitness distributions, one measurement on survival rate, and the other three measurements on mutation step sizes. The relationships among these nine measurements are further explored on these mutations.