Solving the Ising Spin Glass Problem using a Bivariate EDA based on Markov Random Fields

Markov random field (MRF) modelling techniques have been recently proposed as a novel approach to probabilistic modelling for estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). An EDA using this technique was called distribution estimation using Markov random fields (DEUM). DEUM was later extended to DEUMd. DEUM and DEUMd use a univariate model of probability distribution, and have been shown to perform better than other univariate EDAs for a range of optimization problems. This paper extends DEUM to use a bivariate model and applies it to the Ising spin glass problems. We propose two variants of DEUM that use different sampling techniques. Our experimental result show a noticeable gain in performance.