In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to generate high-quality solutions to optimization and search problems via biologically inspired operators such as selection, crossover, and mutation. Some examples of GA applications include optimizing decision trees for better performance, solving sudoku puzzles, hyperparameter optimization, and causal inference.
Mathematical optimization or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfields: discrete optimization and continuous optimization. Optimization problems arise in all quantitative disciplines from computer science and engineering to operations research and economics, and the development of solution methods has been of interest in mathematics for centuries.
A* is a graph traversal and pathfinding algorithm that is used in many fields of computer science due to its completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency. Given a weighted graph, a source node and a goal node, the algorithm finds the shortest path from source to goal.
Simulated annealing (SA) is a probabilistic technique for approximating the global optimum of a given function. Specifically, it is a metaheuristic to approximate global optimization in a large search space for an optimization problem. For large numbers of local optima, SA can find the global optimum. It is often used when the search space is discrete. For problems where finding an approximate global optimum is more important than finding a precise local optimum in a fixed amount of time, simulated annealing may be preferable to exact algorithms such as gradient descent or branch and bound.
In computer science, local search is a heuristic method for solving computationally hard optimization problems. Local search can be used on problems that can be formulated as finding a solution that maximizes a criterion among a number of candidate solutions. Local search algorithms move from solution to solution in the space of candidate solutions by applying local changes, until a solution deemed optimal is found or a time bound is elapsed.
In numerical analysis, hill climbing is a mathematical optimization technique which belongs to the family of local search.
Tabu search (TS) is a metaheuristic search method employing local search methods used for mathematical optimization. It was created by Fred W. Glover in 1986 and formalized in 1989.
Global optimization is a branch of applied mathematics and numerical analysis that attempts to find the global minima or maxima of a function or a set of functions on a given set. It is usually described as a minimization problem because the maximization of the real-valued function is equivalent to the minimization of the function .
Force-directed graph drawing algorithms are a class of algorithms for drawing graphs in an aesthetically-pleasing way. Their purpose is to position the nodes of a graph in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space so that all the edges are of more or less equal length and there are as few crossing edges as possible, by assigning forces among the set of edges and the set of nodes, based on their relative positions, and then using these forces either to simulate the motion of the edges and nodes or to minimize their energy.
In computer science and mathematical optimization, a metaheuristic is a higher-level procedure or heuristic designed to find, generate, tune, or select a heuristic that may provide a sufficiently good solution to an optimization problem or a machine learning problem, especially with incomplete or imperfect information or limited computation capacity. Metaheuristics sample a subset of solutions which is otherwise too large to be completely enumerated or otherwise explored. Metaheuristics may make relatively few assumptions about the optimization problem being solved and so may be usable for a variety of problems. Their use is always of interest when exact or other (approximate) methods are not available or are not expedient, either because the calculation time is too long or because, for example, the solution provided is too imprecise.
In computer science, a min-conflicts algorithm is a search algorithm or heuristic method to solve constraint satisfaction problems.
Pathfinding or pathing is the search, by a computer application, for the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the shortest path on a weighted graph.
In mathematical optimization and computer science, heuristic is a technique designed for problem solving more quickly when classic methods are too slow for finding an exact or approximate solution, or when classic methods fail to find any exact solution in a search space. This is achieved by trading optimality, completeness, accuracy, or precision for speed. In a way, it can be considered a shortcut.
Parallel metaheuristic is a class of techniques that are capable of reducing both the numerical effort and the run time of a metaheuristic. To this end, concepts and technologies from the field of parallelism in computer science are used to enhance and even completely modify the behavior of existing metaheuristics. Just as it exists a long list of metaheuristics like evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm, ant colony optimization, simulated annealing, etc. it also exists a large set of different techniques strongly or loosely based in these ones, whose behavior encompasses the multiple parallel execution of algorithm components that cooperate in some way to solve a problem on a given parallel hardware platform.
Guided local search is a metaheuristic search method. A meta-heuristic method is a method that sits on top of a local search algorithm to change its behavior.
A hyper-heuristic is a heuristic search method that seeks to automate, often by the incorporation of machine learning techniques, the process of selecting, combining, generating or adapting several simpler heuristics to efficiently solve computational search problems. One of the motivations for studying hyper-heuristics is to build systems which can handle classes of problems rather than solving just one problem.
In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when:
- It is a decision problem, meaning that for any input to the problem, the output is either "yes" or "no".
- When the answer is "yes", this can be demonstrated through the existence of a short solution.
- The correctness of each solution can be verified quickly and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by trying all possible solutions.
- The problem can be used to simulate every other problem for which we can verify quickly that a solution is correct. In this sense, NP-complete problems are the hardest of the problems to which solutions can be verified quickly. If we could find solutions of some NP-complete problem quickly, we could quickly find the solutions of every other problem to which a given solution can be easily verified.
Iterated Local Search (ILS) is a term in applied mathematics and computer science defining a modification of local search or hill climbing methods for solving discrete optimization problems.
Variable neighborhood search (VNS), proposed by Mladenović & Hansen in 1997, is a metaheuristic method for solving a set of combinatorial optimization and global optimization problems. It explores distant neighborhoods of the current incumbent solution, and moves from there to a new one if and only if an improvement was made. The local search method is applied repeatedly to get from solutions in the neighborhood to local optima. VNS was designed for approximating solutions of discrete and continuous optimization problems and according to these, it is aimed for solving linear program problems, integer program problems, mixed integer program problems, nonlinear program problems, etc.
In evolutionary computation, Minimum Population Search (MPS) is a computational method that optimizes a problem by iteratively trying to improve a set of candidate solutions with regard to a given measure of quality. It solves a problem by evolving a small population of candidate solutions by means of relatively simple arithmetical operations.
