Utilization of reductions and abstraction elimination in typed genetic programming

Abstract

Lambda calculus representation of programs offers a more expressive alternative to traditional S-expressions. In this paper we discuss advantages of this representation coming from the use of reductions (beta and eta) and a way to overcome disadvantages caused by variables occurring in the programs by use of the abstraction elimination algorithm. We discuss the role of those reductions in the process of generating initial population and propose two novel crossover operations based on abstraction elimination capable of handling general form of typed lambda term while being a straight generalization of the standard crossover operation. We compare their performances using the even parity benchmark problem.