arXiv subjects

Francesca Da Ros

Publications and source records attributed to Francesca Da Ros.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Assessing Reproducibility in Evolutionary Computation: A Case Study using Human- and LLM-based Assessment

Reproducibility is an important requirement in evolutionary computation, where results largely depend on computational experiments. In practice, reproducibility relies on how algorithms, experimental protocols, and artifacts are documented and shared. Despite growing awareness, there is still limited empirical evidence on the actual reproducibility levels of published work in the field. In this paper, we study the reproducibility practices in papers published in the Evolutionary Combinatorial Optimization and Metaheuristics track of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference over a ten-year period. We introduce a structured reproducibility checklist and apply it through a systematic manual assessment of the selected corpus. In addition, we propose RECAP (REproducibility Checklist Automation Pipeline), an LLM-based system that automatically evaluates reproducibility signals from paper text and associated code repositories. Our analysis shows that papers achieve an average completeness score of 0.62, and that 36.90% of them provide additional material beyond the manuscript itself. We demonstrate that automated assessment is feasible: RECAP achieves substantial agreement with human evaluators (Cohen's k of 0.67). Together, these results highlight persistent gaps in reproducibility reporting and suggest that automated tools can effectively support large-scale, systematic monitoring of reproducibility practices.

cs.NE↗

arXiv2025

Behavior and Representation in Open-Weight Large Language Models for Combinatorial Optimization: From Feature Extraction to Algorithm Selection

Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) open new perspectives for automation in optimization, yet little is known about whether their internal representations capture problem structure or algorithmic behavior. We investigate whether representations learned by frozen, open-weight LLMs for combinatorial optimization instances can support downstream decision tasks. The goal is not to replace exact feature extractors or to propose a new algorithm, but to assess whether such representations are reusable for feature recovery and algorithm selection. Our methodology combines direct querying, which tests explicit feature extraction, with probing analyses of whether this information is implicitly encoded in the hidden layers. The probing framework is further extended to a per-instance algorithm selection task. Experiments span four benchmark problems, three instance representations, and five open-weight models from 3B to 120B parameters across the Llama instruct and GPT reasoning families, including a chain-of-thought study on Llama models. Results show a limited ability to recover features explicitly, particularly those requiring structured computation, while part of this information remains implicitly encoded in the hidden states. A consistent gap separates implicit encoding from explicit retrieval. Model scale attenuates this gap, whereas the effect of chain-of-thought prompting depends strongly on model size, and in all cases the gap remains open. Reasoning-oriented models also tend to abstain more when reliable computation is not possible. Notably, the predictive power of LLM hidden-layer representations is comparable to traditional feature extraction across all five models, indicating they can act as effective surrogate descriptors for downstream optimization tasks.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Large Language Models for Combinatorial Optimization: A Systematic Review

This systematic review explores the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Combinatorial Optimization (CO). We report our findings using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. We conduct a literature search via Scopus and Google Scholar, examining over 2,000 publications. We assess publications against four inclusion and four exclusion criteria related to their language, research focus, publication year, and type. Eventually, we select 103 studies. We classify these studies into semantic categories and topics to provide a comprehensive overview of the field, including the tasks performed by LLMs, the architectures of LLMs, the existing datasets specifically designed for evaluating LLMs in CO, and the field of application. Finally, we identify future directions for leveraging LLMs in this field.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Theoretical Lower Bounds for the Oven Scheduling Problem

The Oven Scheduling Problem (OSP) is an NP-hard real-world parallel batch scheduling problem arising in the semiconductor industry. The objective of the problem is to schedule a set of jobs on ovens while minimizing several factors, namely total oven runtime, job tardiness, and setup costs. At the same time, it must adhere to various constraints such as oven eligibility and availability, job release dates, setup times between batches, and oven capacity limitations. The key to obtaining efficient schedules is to process compatible jobs simultaneously in batches. In this paper, we develop theoretical, problem-specific lower bounds for the OSP that can be computed very quickly. We thoroughly examine these lower bounds, evaluating their quality and exploring their integration into existing solution methods. Specifically, we investigate their contribution to exact methods and a metaheuristic local search approach using simulated annealing. Moreover, these problem-specific lower bounds enable us to assess the solution quality for large instances for which exact methods often fail to provide tight lower bounds.

cs.AI↗