MORE RIGOROUS RESULTS ON THE NK MODEL

Robin Pemantle and Vlada Limic

The purpose of this note is to provide proofs for some facts about the NK model. In the case of normally distributed fitness summands, some of these facts have been previously conjectured and heuristics given. In particular, we provide rigorous asymptotic estimates for the number of local fitness maxima in the case when K is unbounded. We also examine the role of the individual fitness distribution and find the model to be quite robust with respect to this.