Viewing the Problem from Different Angles: A New Diversity Measure Based on Angular Distances

It is commonly believed that diversity is crucial for an evolutionary system to succeed, especially when the problem to be solved contains local optima from which the population cannot easily escape. There exist numerous methods to measure population diversity, but none of these have been shown to be consistently useful. In this paper, a new diversity measure is introduced, and it is shown that high diversity according to this new measure generally leads to a more successful overall evolution in most of the cases considered.