Analysis and Visualisation Techniques

One of the reasons that is often given for pursuing research with artificial evolutionary systems is that they allow us to study evolution in carefully controlled conditions, and to record as much data as we wish during the course of an evolutionary run. However, the very fact that we can record anything we wish to can sometimes lead to problems. Without care, it is very easy to drown in megabytes of data. In this section, we consider some of the questions we might want to ask concerning the behaviour of an evolutionary system, and describe the measures that were used in the Cosmos runs to provide answers to these questions.

There is a broad distinction that can be made between measures which relate to individual organisms within the population, and measures which relate to the population as a whole. We will use both types when analysing the Cosmos runs in this chapter.