mlr_optimizers_random_search: Optimization via Random Search

In bbotk: Black-Box Optimization Toolkit

Optimization via Random Search

Description

OptimizerBatchRandomSearch class that implements a simple Random Search.

In order to support general termination criteria and parallelization, we evaluate points in a batch-fashion of size batch_size. Larger batches mean we can parallelize more, smaller batches imply a more fine-grained checking of termination criteria.

Dictionary

This Optimizer can be instantiated via the dictionary mlr_optimizers or with the associated sugar function opt():

mlr_optimizers$get("random_search")
opt("random_search")

Parameters

batch_size

integer(1)
Maximum number of points to try in a batch.

Progress Bars

⁠$optimize()⁠ supports progress bars via the package progressr combined with a Terminator. Simply wrap the function in progressr::with_progress() to enable them. We recommend to use package progress as backend; enable with progressr::handlers("progress").

Super classes

bbotk::Optimizer -> bbotk::OptimizerBatch -> OptimizerBatchRandomSearch

Methods

Public methods

• OptimizerBatchRandomSearch$new()

• OptimizerBatchRandomSearch$clone()

Inherited methods

• bbotk::Optimizer$format()
• bbotk::Optimizer$help()
• bbotk::Optimizer$print()
• bbotk::OptimizerBatch$optimize()

---

Method new()

Creates a new instance of this R6 class.

Usage

OptimizerBatchRandomSearch$new()

---

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

OptimizerBatchRandomSearch$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

deep

Whether to make a deep clone.

Source

Bergstra J, Bengio Y (2012). “Random Search for Hyper-Parameter Optimization.” Journal of Machine Learning Research, 13(10), 281–305. https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/v13/bergstra12a.html.

Examples

# define the objective function
fun = function(xs) {
  list(y = - (xs[[1]] - 2)^2 - (xs[[2]] + 3)^2 + 10)
}

# set domain
domain = ps(
  x1 = p_dbl(-10, 10),
  x2 = p_dbl(-5, 5)
)

# set codomain
codomain = ps(
  y = p_dbl(tags = "maximize")
)

# create objective
objective = ObjectiveRFun$new(
  fun = fun,
  domain = domain,
  codomain = codomain,
  properties = "deterministic"
)

# initialize instance
instance = oi(
  objective = objective,
  terminator = trm("evals", n_evals = 20)
)

# load optimizer
optimizer = opt("random_search", batch_size = 10)

# trigger optimization
optimizer$optimize(instance)

# all evaluated configurations
instance$archive

# best performing configuration
instance$result

bbotk documentation built on Nov. 5, 2025, 6:23 p.m.