Predicting the RCGA Performance for the University Course Timetabling Problem

The University Course Timetabling Problem (UCTP) is a well known optimization problem. Literature reports different methods and techniques to solve it, being Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) one of the most successful. In the EA field, the selection of the best algorithm and its parameters to solve a particular problem, is a difficult problem; would be helpful to know a priori the performance related to that algorithm. Fitness Landscape Analysis (FLA) is a set of tools to describe optimization problems and for the prediction of the performance related with EA. FLA uses a set of metrics to characterize the landscape depicted by a cost function, aiming to understand the behaviour of search algorithms. This work presents an empirical study to characterize some instances of UCTP, and for the prediction of difficulty exhibited by Real-Coded Genetic Algorithms (RCGA) to solve the instances. We used FLA as characterization schema; neutrality, ruggedness, and negative slope coefficient are the metrics used in the analysis. To test and validate the proposal, we use three UCTP instances based on Mexican universities. Incipient results suggest an correlation between the negative slope coefficient and the difficulty exhibited by RCGA in the solution of UCTP instances. Ruggedness and neutrality provide the global structure of the instances's landscape.