

New Free Online Book (by me): Essentials of Metaheuristics - SeanLuke
http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/metaheuristics

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yannis
Well ants are hard and you made it a bit easier, thanks for letting us know
about your book and for making it available to the community.

I scanned over a few of the chapters and is an excellent treatise. Ever since
I read a long forgotten book on Programming and was hooked by the practical
examples provided (and started coding!) I would love to see some real examples
accompanying the algorithms.

For example this paper by S. T. Mugford, E. B. Mallon, and N. R. Franks of the
Centre for Mathematical Biology and Department of Biology and Biochemistry,
University of Bath, published a paper
<http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/12/6/655> [pdf] about how
colonies of the ant <it>Leptothorax albipennis</it> naturally inhabit flat
rock crevices. Scouts can determine, before initiating an emigration, if a
nest has sufficient area to house their colony. They postulated that this was
achieved using Buffon's needle's method! Would love to see how this would have
fitted with metaheuristic algorithms!

I also loved the discussion on random generators (needs a little bit of
expansion)!

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thesethings
Thank for posting this book on HN, and for your permissive (CC) license in
general. (Like many around here, I suspect it will only make your work more
popular :D)

I noticed you just created your HN account. I think you'll like it here.
Welcome, and I hope you stick around and take part in lots of threads in the
future, would love to have your insights.

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SeanLuke
Everything you wanted to know about genetic algorithms, ant colony
optimization, etc. Feel free to leave any comments or questions.

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wglb
Very good paper, with an occasional humorous informal tone. Pointers to very
seriously thorough bibliographies.

The paper doesn't say anything about the patents in the field, which used to
be noted on the wikipedia entry for genetic programming.

~~~
SeanLuke
Patents! I know of three in effect right now, and there are probably more.
Might be a good idea to include.

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jacquesm
I had a chuckle at the 'If you are without honour you can download it here
directly'. I think if the music industry would set up a site with that line in
it together with a registration form and a 15 cent download fee they'd be
doing just fine.

Thank you!

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grosales
Professor Luke, I had the privilege of taking your AI class, which was the
most interesting and fun CS class I took while in college. You are an
outstanding professor. Thanks for the book!

