Abstract In this study, we address the non-trivial problem of determining the optimal shape parameter in radial basis function interpolation. We propose the use of a genetic algorithm, an optimization technique inspired by evolutionary selection, to identify this parameter. Numerical experiments are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, with direct comparisons to the leave-one-out cross-validation method, thereby highlighting its computational efficiency.
Cavoretto et al. (2026) studied this question.