Abstract In this paper, we propose a new Bi-Population QUasi-Affine TRansformation Evolution (BP-QUATRE) algorithm for global optimization. The proposed BP-QUATRE algorithm divides the population into two subpopulations with sort strategy, and each subpopulation adopts a different mutation strategy to keep the balance between the fast convergence and population diversity. What is more, the proposed BP-QUATRE algorithm dynamically adjusts scale factor with a linear decrease strategy to make a good balance between e…