Evolutionary algorithms for optimization: do we get effective solutions?

Over the last two decades, evolutionary computation (EC) has shown tremendous success for solving complex real-world problems. Although the great success for EC was first recognized in the 1980s, the researchers in other domain are still confused about the acceptability of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) as optimization tool. The focal point for this confusion is the lack of convincing mathematical foundation, which is the strong basis of all conventional optimisation techniques. In this paper, besides our discussion on the advantages of EC over the conventional mathematical programming techniques, we attempt to answer several fundamental questions, which would help to convince the researchers in other disciplines. We provide facts and figures from the literature and from our own work to answer those questions.