Toward a Characterization of Landscapes of Combinatorial Optimization Problems, with Special Attention to the Phylogeny Problem

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Abstract
This article introduces a coherent language base for describing and working with characteristics of combinatorial optimization problems, which is at once general enough to be used in all such problems and precise enough to allow subtle concepts in this field to be discussed unambiguously. An example is provided of how this nomenclature is applied to an instance of the phylogeny problem. Also noted is the beneficial effect, on the landscape of the solution space, of transforming the observed data to account for multiple changes of character state. Key words: landscape, combinatorial optimization, phylogeny