The small world of efficient solutions: empirical evidence from the bi-objective {0,1}-knapsack problem

The small world phenomenon, Milgram (1967) has inspired the study of real networks such as cellular networks, telephone call networks, citation networks, power and neural networks, etc. The present work is about the study of the graphs produced by efficient solutions of the bi-objective {0,1}-knapsack problem. The experiments show that these graphs exhibit properties of small world networks. The importance of the supported and non-supported solutions in the entire efficient graph is investigated. The present research could be useful for developing more effective search strategies in both exact and approximate solution methods of {0,1} multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems.