The purpose of the mutation operator is to periodically and randomly refresh the population, introduce new patterns into the chromosomes, and encourage search in uncharted areas of the solution space.
A mutation may manifest itself as a random change in a gene. Mutations are implemented as random changes to one or more of the chromosome values; for example, flipping a bit in a binary string:
Mutation operator applied to a binary-coded chromosome
The preceding image shows an example of the mutation operation.
Now, let's look at the theory behind genetic algorithms.
