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Theoretical studies on evolutionary algorithms have developed vigorously in recent years. Many such algorithms have theoretical guarantees in both running time and approximation ratio. Some approximation mechanism seems to be inherently embedded in many evolutionary algorithms. In this paper, we identify such a relation by proposing a unified analysis framework for a global simple multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (GSEMO) and apply it on a minimum weight general cover problem, which is general enough to subsume many important problems including the minimum submodular cover problem in which the submodular function is real-valued, and the minimum connected dominating set problem for which the potential function is nonsubmodular. We show that GSEMO yields theoretically guaranteed approximation ratios matching those achievable by a greedy algorithm in expected polynomial time when the potential function g is polynomial in the input size and the minimum gap between different g-values is a constant. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [11771013, U20A2068]; Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China [LD19A010001]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rank aggregation combines the preference rankings of multiple alternatives from different voters into a single consensus ranking, providing a useful model for a variety of practical applications but posing a computationally challenging problem. In this paper, we provide an effective hybrid evolutionary ranking algorithm to solve the rank aggregation problem with both complete and partial rankings. The algorithm features a semantic crossover based on concordant pairs and an enhanced late acceptance local search method reinforced by a relaxed acceptance and replacement strategy and a fast incremental evaluation mechanism. Experiments are conducted to assess the algorithm, indicating a highly competitive performance on both synthetic and real-world benchmark instances compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. To demonstrate its practical usefulness, the algorithm is applied to label ranking, a well-established machine learning task. We additionally analyze several key algorithmic components to gain insight into their operation. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72371157] and Shanghai Pujiang Programme [Grant 23PJC069]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0019) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0019). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers a well-known critical node detection problem that aims to minimize a pairwise connectivity measure of an undirected graph via the removal of a subset of nodes (referred to as critical nodes) subject to a cardinality constraint. Potential applications include epidemic control, emergency response, vulnerability assessment, carbon emission monitoring, network security, and drug design. To solve the problem, we present a "reduce-solve-combine" memetic search approach that integrates a problem reduction mechanism into the popular population-based memetic algorithm framework. At each generation, a common pattern mined from two parent solutions is first used to reduce the given problem instance, then the reduced instance is solved by a component-based hybrid neighborhood search that effectively combines an articulation point impact strategy and a node weighting strategy, and finally an offspring solution is produced by combining the mined common pattern and the solution of the reduced instance. Extensive evaluations on 42 real-world and synthetic benchmark instances show the efficacy of the proposed method, which discovers nine new upper bounds and significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms. Investigation of key algorithmic modules additionally discloses the importance of the proposed ideas and strategies. Finally, we demonstrate the generality of the proposed method via its adaptation to solve the node-weighted critical node problem. History: Accepted by Erwin Pesch, Area Editor for Heuristic Search & Approximation Algorithms. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72371157, 61903144, 72031007]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2022.0130) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository (https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2022.0130). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]