Chapter 13 F-Race and Iterated F-Race: An Overview

Abstract Algorithms for solving hard optimization problems typically have several parameters that need to be set appropriately such that some aspect of performance is optimized. In this chapter, we review F-Race, a racing algorithm for the task of automatic algorithm configuration. F-Race is based on a statistical approach for selecting the best configuration out of a set of candidate configurations under stochastic evaluations. We review the ideas underlying this technique and discuss an extension of the initial F-Race algorithm, which leads to a family of algo-rithms that we call iterated F-Race. Experimental results comparing one specific implementation of iterated F-Race to the original F-Race algorithm confirm the potential of this family of algorithms. Many state-of-the-art algorithms for tackling computationally hard problems have a number of parameters that influence their search behavior. Such algorithms include exact algorithms such as branch-and-bound algorithms, algorithm packages for inte-ger programming, and approximate algorithms such as stochastic local search (SLS