Using Knowledge Graphs for Performance Prediction of Modular Optimization Algorithms

Abstract: Empirical data plays an important role in evolutionary computation research. To make better use of the available data, ontologies have been proposed in the literature to organize their storage in a structured way. However, the full potential of these formal methods to capture our domain knowledge has yet to be demonstrated. In this work, we evaluate a performance prediction model built on top of the extension of the recently proposed OPTION ontology. More specifically, we first extend the OPTION ontology with the vocabulary needed to represent modular black-box optimization algorithms. Then, we use the extended OPTION ontology, to create knowledge graphs with fixed-budget performance data for two modular algorithm frameworks, modCMA, and modDE, for the 24 noiseless BBOB benchmark functions. We build the performance prediction model using a knowledge graph embedding-based methodology. Using a number of different evaluation scenarios, we show that a triple classification approach, a fairly standard predictive modeling task in the context of knowledge graphs, can correctly predict whether a given algorithm instance will be able to achieve a certain target precision for a given problem instance. This approach requires feature representation of algorithms and problems. While the latter is already well developed, we hope that our work will motivate the community to collaborate on appropriate algorithm representations.