In Solvers description of the term "population size" It quotes:

· "In the Population Size box, type the number of different points (values for the decision variables) you want the Evolutionary method to maintain at any given time in its population of candidate solutions. The minimum population size is 10 members; if you supply a value less than 10 in this box, or leave it blank, the Evolutionary Solver uses a population size of 10 times the number of decision variables in the problem, but no more than 200."

This description doesn't tell us what effect the population size will have on the speed/efficiency of the Solver algorithm, i have a very large model (only 11parameters however) on a high spec PC, will putting the population to 200 be the best option? I am willing to run this for a few days in order to get me the best result. Any further information would be greatly appreciated.

So essentially I would like to know in data analytics and possibly similar fields in computational mathematics, what does the population size actually mean and how do changes in it affect the results/timeframe/system use of the Solver algorithm?

Any information would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Alan