#mutation-rate

Question 1: Single choice

A genetic algorithm on bit strings uses bit-flip mutation: every bit of every offspring is flipped independently with probability $p_m$ . What happens if $p_m$ is set to 0.5?

Offspring become uniformly random strings, so the GA degrades to random search1
The population converges prematurely, because mutation removes diversity2
The search gets faster, because offspring explore more of the space3
Nothing changes on average, because flips from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 0 cancel out4

Timed test