And ... throwing away the least fit every time can lead you to climb the hill to a local maxima. In this case, the only way to leave a local maxima is to get l

And ... throwing away the least fit every time can lead you to climb the hill to a local maxima. In this case, the only way to leave a local maxima is to get lucky with a mutation, but if you cull the population randomly with a log probability that more fit parents will be kept, you could reach the goal in fewer generations. You could even eliminate mutations altogether if you have the proper character in each position in at least one member of the starting population.