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- From: David.Beasley@cs.cf.ac.uk (David Beasley)
- Newsgroups: comp.ai.genetic,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: FAQ: comp.ai.genetic part 1/6 (A Guide to Frequently Asked Questions)
- Supersedes: <part1_969480833@cs.cf.ac.uk>
- Followup-To: comp.ai.genetic
- Date: 11 Apr 2001 20:23:07 GMT
- Organization: Posted through the Joint Cardiff Computing Service, Wales, UK
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- Summary: This is part 1 of a <trilogy> entitled "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide
- to Evolutionary Computation". A periodically published list of Frequently
- Asked Questions (and their answers) about Evolutionary Algorithms,
- Life and Everything. It should be read by anyone who whishes to post
- to the comp.ai.genetic newsgroup, preferably *before* posting.
- Originator: scmdb@thrall.cs.cf.ac.uk
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.ai.genetic:21403 comp.answers:44992 news.answers:205228
-
- Archive-name: ai-faq/genetic/part1
- Last-Modified: 4/12/01
- Issue: 9.1
-
- Important note: Do NOT send email to the cs.cf.ac.uk address above: it will
- be ignored. Corrections and other correspondence should be sent to
- david.beasley@iee.org
-
- The
-
- Hitch-Hiker's
-
- Guide to
-
- Evolutionary Computation
-
- (FAQ for comp.ai.genetic)
-
- edited by
-
- Joerg Heitkoetter
- UUnet Deutschland GmbH
- Sebrathweg 20
- D-44149 Dortmund, Germany
- <joke@de.uu.net>
- or <joke@santafe.edu>
-
- and
-
- David Beasley
- ingenta ltd
- BUCS Building,
- University of Bath,
- Bath, United Kingdom BA2 7AY
- <david.beasley@iee.org>
-
- PLEASE:
- Search this document first if you have a question
- and
- If someone posts a question to the newsgroup which is answered in here
- DON'T POST THE ANSWER TO THE NEWSGROUP:
- POINT THE ASKER TO THIS FAQ
- and finally
-
- DON'T PANIC!
-
- Copyright (c) 1993-2001 by Joerg Heitkoetter and David Beasley, all
- rights reserved.
-
- This FAQ may be posted to any USENET newsgroup, on-line service, or
- BBS as long as it is posted in its entirety and includes this
- copyright statement. This FAQ may not be distributed for financial
- gain. This FAQ may not be included in commercial collections or
- compilations without express permission from the author.
-
- FAQ /F-A-Q/ or /fak/ [USENET] n. 1. A Frequently Asked Question.
- 2. A compendium of accumulated lore, posted periodically to
- high-volume newsgroups in an attempt to forestall such
- questions. Some people prefer the term `FAQ list' or `FAQL'
- /fa'kl/, reserving `FAQ' for sense 1.
-
- RTFAQ
- /R-T-F-A-Q/ [USENET: primarily written, by analogy with RTFM]
- imp. Abbrev. for `Read the FAQ!', an exhortation that the person
- addressed ought to read the newsgroup's FAQ list before posting
- questions.
-
- RTFM /R-T-F-M/ [UNIX] imp. Acronym for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1.
- Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or
- annoying. Compare Don't do that, then! 2. Used when reporting
- a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of
- randomness. "No, I can't figure out how to interface UNIX to my
- toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use is
- considered polite. ...
-
- --- "The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 3.0, 29 July
- 1993"
-
- PREFACE
- This guide is intended to help, provide basic information, and serve
- as a first straw for individuals, i.e. uninitiated hitch-hikers, who
- are stranded in the mindboggling universe of Evolutionary Computation
- (EC); that in turn is only a small footpath to an even more
- mindboggling scientific universe, that, incorporating Fuzzy Systems,
- and Artificial Neural Networks, is sometimes referred to as
- Computational Intelligence (CI); that in turn is only part of an even
- more advanced scientific universe of mindparalysing complexity, that
- incorporating Artificial Life, Fractal Geometry, and other Complex
- Systems Sciences might someday be referred to as Natural Computation
- (NC).
-
- Over the course of the past years, GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION algorithms
- imitating certain principles of nature have proved their usefulness
- in various domains of applications. Especially worth copying are
- those principles where nature has found "stable islands" in a
- "turbulent ocean" of solution possibilities. Such phenomena can be
- found in annealing processes, central nervous systems and biological
- EVOLUTION, which in turn have lead to the following OPTIMIZATION
- methods: Simulated Annealing (SA), Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs)
- and the field of Evolutionary Computation (EC).
-
- EC may currently be characterized by the following pathways: Genetic
- Algorithms (GA), Evolutionary Programming (EP), Evolution Strategies
- (ES), Classifier Systems (CFS), Genetic Programming (GP), and several
- other problem solving strategies, that are based upon biological
- observations, that date back to Charles Darwin's discoveries in the
- 19th century: the means of natural selection and the survival of the
- fittest, and theories of evolution. The inspired algorithms are thus
- termed Evolutionary Algorithms (EA).
-
- Moreover, this guide is intended to help those who are just beginning
- to read the comp.ai.genetic newsgroup, and those who are new "on"
- USENET. It shall help to avoid lengthy discussions of questions that
- usually arise for beginners of one or the other kind, and which are
- boring to read again and again by comp.ai.genetic "old-timers."
-
- You will see this guide popping up periodically in the Usenet
- newsgroup comp.ai.genetic (and also comp.answers , and news.answers ,
- where it should be locatable at any time).
-
- ORIGIN
- This guide was produced by Joerg Heitkoetter (known as Joke) in early
- 1993, using material from many sources (see Acknowledgements ), mixed
- with his own brand of humour. Towards the end of 1993, Joerg handed
- over editorial responsibility to David Beasley . He reorganised the
- guide in various ways, and generally attempted to inject his own
- brand of orderliness. Thus, any jokes are the work of Joke. The
- mundane bits are David's responsibility.
-
- The guide is kept up to date, as far as possible, and new versions
- are issued several times a year. However, we do rely on useful
- information being sent to us for inclusion in the guide (we dont
- always have time to read comp.ai.genetic , for example).
- Contributions, additions, corrections, cash, etc. are therefore
- always welcome. Send e-mail to the address at the beginning of the
- guide.
-
- DISCLAIMER
- This periodic posting is not meant to discuss any topic exhaustively,
- but should be thought of as a list of reference pointers, instead.
- This posting is provided on an "as is" basis, NO WARRANTY whatsoever
- is expressed or implied, especially, NO WARRANTY that the information
- contained herein is up-to-date, correct or useful in any way,
- although all this is intended.
-
- Moreover, please note that the opinions expressed herein do not
- necessarily reflect those of the editors' institutions or employers,
- neither as a whole, nor in part. They are just the amalgamation of
- the editors' collections of ideas, and contributions gleaned from
- other sources.
-
- NOTE: some portions of this otherwise rather dry guide are intended
- to be satirical. If you do not recognize it as such, consult your
- local doctor or a professional comedian.
-
- HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
- HITCH-HIKING THE FAQNIVERSE
- This guide is big. Really big. You just won't believe how hugely,
- vastly, mindbogglingly big it is. That's why it has been split into a
- "trilogy" -- which, like all successful trilogies, eventually ends up
- consisting of more than three parts.
-
- Searching for answers
- To find the answer of question number x, just search for the string
- "Qx:". (So the answer to question 42 is at "Q42:"!)
-
- What does [xxxx99] mean?
- Some books are referenced again and again, that's why they have this
- kind of "tag", that an experienced hitch-hiker will search for in the
- list of books (see Q10 and Q12 and other places) to dissolve the
- riddle. Here, they have a ":" appended, thus you can search for the
- string "[ICGA85]:" for example.
-
- Why all this UPPERCASING in running text?
- Words written in all uppercase letters are cross-references to
- entries in the Glossary (see Q99). Again, they have a ":" appended,
- thus if you find, say EVOLUTION, you can search for the string
- "EVOLUTION:" in the Glossary.
-
- FTP and HTTP naming conventions
- A file available on an FTP server will be specified as: <ftp-site-
- name>/<the-complete-filename> So for example, the file bar.tar.gz in
- the directory /pub/foo on the ftp server ftp.certain.site would be
- specified as: ftp.certain.site/pub/foo/bar.tar.gz
-
- A specification ending with a "/" is a reference to a whole
- directory, e.g. ftp.certain.site/pub/foo/
- HTTP files are specified in a similar way, but with the prefix:
- http://
-
- WHERE TO FIND THIS GUIDE
- Between postings to comp.ai.genetic , this FAQ is available on the
- World Wide Web. Get it from any ENCORE site (See Q15.3). The
- following Encore sites can be accessed by HTTP. If you use the one
- closest to you, you should get the best speed of service. (Note,
- however, that some sites are not always up to date. The guide is
- normally issued every 3 months.)
-
- o UUnet Deutschland GmbH (Germany) (definitive location):
- http://surf.de.uu.net/encore/www/
-
- o The Chinese University of Hong Kong (China):
- http://www.cs.cuhk.hk/pub/EC/FAQ/www/top.htm
-
- o Ecole Polytechnique (France):
- http://www.eark.polytechnique.fr/EC/FAQ/www/top.htm
-
- o The University of Oviedo (Spain):
- http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/ftp/pub/EC/FAQ/www/
-
- o The University of Birmingham (UK)
- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/Mirrors/ftp.de.uu.net/EC/clife/www/
-
- o The Santa Fe Institute (USA):
- http://alife.santafe.edu/~joke/encore/www/
-
- Other Encore sites can be accessed by FTP, and the FAQ can be found
- in the file FAQ/www/top.htm or something similar. The FAQ is also
- available in plain text format on Encore, and from
- rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/genetic/ as the files:
- part1 to part6. The FAQ may also be retrieved by e-mail from <mail-
- server@rtfm.mit.edu>. Send a message to the mail-server with "help"
- and "index" in the body on separate lines for more information.
-
- A PostScript version is also available. This looks really crisp
- (using boldface, italics, etc.), and is available for those who
- prefer offline reading. Get it from Encore in file FAQ/hhgtec.ps.gz
- (the plain text versions are in the same directory too).
-
- "As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this
- world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the
- mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It
- is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected
- meshes, and each mesh has its place and
- responsibility in relation to other meshes."
-
- --- Buddha
-
- Referencing this Guide
- If you want to reference this guide it should look like:
-
- Heitkoetter, Joerg and Beasley, David, eds. (2001) "The Hitch-
- Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation: A list of Frequently Asked
- Questions (FAQ)", USENET: comp.ai.genetic. Available via anonymous
- FTP from rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/genetic/ About
- 110 pages.
-
- Or simply call it "the Guide", or "HHGTEC" for acronymaniacs.
-
- The ZEN Puzzle
- For some weird reason this guide contains some puzzles which can only
- be solved by cautious readers who have (1) a certain amount of a
- certain kind of humor, (2) a certain amount of patience and time, (3)
- a certain amount of experience in ZEN NAVIGATION, and (4) a certain
- amount of books of a certain author.
-
- Usually, puzzles search either for certain answers (more often, ONE
- answer) to a question; or, for the real smartasses, sometimes an
- answer is presented, and a certain question is searched for. ZEN
- puzzles are even more challenging: you have to come up with an answer
- to a question, both of which are not explicitly, rather implicitly
- stated somewhere in this FAQ. Thus, you are expected to give an
- answer AND a question!
-
- To give an impression what this is all about, consider the following,
- submitted by Craig W. Reynolds. The correct question is: "Why is
- Fisher's `improbability quote' (cf EPILOGUE ) included in this FAQ?",
- Craig's correct answer is: `This is a GREAT quotation, it sounds like
- something directly out of a turn of the century Douglas Adams:
- Natural Selection:
- the original "Infinite Improbability Drive"' Got the message? Well,
- this was easy and very obvious. The other puzzles are more
- challenging...
-
- However, all this is just for fun (mine and hopefully yours), there
- is nothing like the $100 price, some big shots in computer science,
- e.g. Don Knuth usually offer; all there is but a honorable
- mentioning of the ZEN navigator, including the puzzle s/he solved.
- It's thus like in real life: don't expect to make money from your
- time being a scientist, it's all just for the fun of it...
-
- Enjoy the trip!
-
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Part1
-
- Q0: How about an introduction to comp.ai.genetic?
-
- Part2
-
- Q1: What are Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs)?
- Q1.1: What's a Genetic Algorithm (GA)?
- Q1.2: What's Evolutionary Programming (EP)?
- Q1.3: What's an Evolution Strategy (ES)?
- Q1.4: What's a Classifier System (CFS)?
- Q1.5: What's Genetic Programming (GP)?
-
- Part3
-
- Q2: What applications of EAs are there?
-
- Q3: Who is concerned with EAs?
-
- Q4: How many EAs exist? Which?
- Q4.1: What about Alife systems, like Tierra and VENUS?
-
- Q5: What about all this Optimization stuff?
-
- Part4
-
- Q10: What introductory material on EAs is there?
- Q10.1: Suitable background reading for beginners?
- Q10.2: Textbooks on EC?
- Q10.3: The Classics?
- Q10.4: Introductory Journal Articles?
- Q10.5: Introductory Technical Reports?
- Q10.6: Not-quite-so-introductory Literature?
- Q10.7: Biological Background Readings?
- Q10.8: On-line bibliography collections?
- Q10.9: Videos?
- Q10.10: CD-ROMs?
- Q10.11: How do I get a copy of a dissertation?
-
- Q11: What EC related journals and magazines are there?
-
- Q12: What are the important conferences/proceedings on EC?
-
- Q13: What Evolutionary Computation Associations exist?
-
- Q14: What Technical Reports are available?
-
- Q15: What information is available over the net?
- Q15.1: What digests are there?
- Q15.2: What mailing lists are there?
- Q15.3: What online information repositories are there?
- Q15.4: What relevant newsgroups and FAQs are there?
- Q15.5: What about all these Internet Services?
-
- Part5
-
- Q20: What EA software packages are available?
- Q20.1: Free software packages?
- Q20.2: Commercial software packages?
- Q20.3: Current research projects?
-
- Part6
-
- Q21: What are Gray codes, and why are they used?
-
- Q22: What test data is available?
-
- Q42: What is Life all about?
- Q42b: Is there a FAQ to this group?
-
- Q98: Are there any patents on EAs?
-
- Q99: A Glossary on EAs?
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Subject: Q0: How about an introduction to comp.ai.genetic?
-
- Certainly. See below.
-
- What is comp.ai.genetic all about?
- The newsgroup comp.ai.genetic is intended as a forum for people who
- want to use or explore the capabilities of Genetic Algorithms (GA),
- Evolutionary Programming (EP), Evolution Strategies (ES), Classifier
- Systems (CFS), Genetic Programming (GP), and some other, less well-
- known problem solving algorithms that are more or less loosely
- coupled to the field of Evolutionary Computation (EC).
-
- How do I get started? What about USENET documentation?
- The following guidelines present the essentials of the USENET online
- documentation, that is posted each month to news.announce.newusers
-
- If you are already familiar with "netiquette" you can skip to the end
- of this answer; if you don't know what the hell this is all about,
- proceed as follows: (1) carefully read the following paragraphs, (2)
- read all the documents in news.announce.newusers before posting any
- article to USENET. At least you should give the introductory stuff a
- try, i.e. files "news-answers/introduction" and "news-answers/news-
- newusers-intro". Both are survey articles, that provide a short and
- easy way to get an overview of the interesting parts of the online
- docs, and thus can help to prevent you from drowning in the megabytes
- to read. Both can be received either by subscribing to news.answers ,
- or sending the following message to <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>:
-
- send usenet/news.answers/introduction
- send usenet/news.answers/news-newusers-intro
- quit
-
- Netiquette
- "Usenet is a convention, in every sense of the word."
-
- Although USENET is usually characterized as "an anarchy, with no laws
- and no one in charge" there have "emerged" several rules over the
- past years that shall facilitate life within newsgroups. Thus, you
- will probably find the following types of articles:
-
- 1. Requests
- Requests are articles of the form "I am looking for X" where X is
- something public like a book, an article, a piece of software.
-
- If multiple different answers can be expected, the person making the
- request should prepare to make a summary of the answers he/she got
- and announce to do so with a phrase like "Please e-mail, I'll
- summarize" at the end of the posting.
-
- The Subject line of the posting should then be something like
- "Request: X"
-
- 2. Questions
- As opposed to requests, questions are concerned with something so
- specific that general interest cannot readily be assumed. If the
- poster thinks that the topic is of some general interest, he/she
- should announce a summary (see above).
-
- The Subject line of the posting should be something like "Question:
- this-and-that" (Q: this-and-that) or have the form of a question
- (i.e., end with a question mark)
-
- 3. Answers
- These are reactions to questions or requests. As a rule of thumb
- articles of type "answer" should be rare. Ideally, in most cases
- either the answer is too specific to be of general interest (and
- should thus be e-mailed to the poster) or a summary was announced
- with the question or request (and answers should thus be e-mailed to
- the poster).
-
- The subject lines of answers are automatically adjusted by the news
- software.
-
- 4. Summaries
- In all cases of requests or questions the answers for which can be
- assumed to be of some general interest, the poster of the request or
- question shall summarize the answers he/she received. Such a summary
- should be announced in the original posting of the question or
- request with a phrase like "Please answer by e-mail, I'll summarize"
-
- In such a case answers should NOT be posted to the newsgroup but
- instead be mailed to the poster who collects and reviews them. After
- about 10 to 20 days from the original posting, its poster should make
- the summary of answers and post it to the net.
- Some care should be invested into a summary:
-
- a) simple concatenation of all the answers might not be enough;
- instead redundancies, irrelevances, verbosities and errors should
- be filtered out (as good as possible),
-
- b) the answers shall be separated clearly
-
- c) the contributors of the individual answers shall be identifiable
- unless they requested to remain anonymous [eds note: yes, that
- happens])
-
- d) the summary shall start with the "quintessence" of the answers, as
- seen by the original poster
-
- e) A summary should, when posted, clearly be indicated to be one by
- giving it a Subject line starting with "Summary:"
-
- Note that a good summary is pure gold for the rest of the newsgroup
- community, so summary work will be most appreciated by all of us.
- (Good summaries are more valuable than any moderator!)
-
- 5. Announcements
- Some articles never need any public reaction. These are called
- announcements (for instance for a workshop, conference or the
- availability of some technical report or software system).
-
- Announcements should be clearly indicated to be such by giving them a
- subject line of the form "Announcement: this-and-that", or "ust "A:
- this-and-that".
-
- Due to common practice, conference announcements usually carry a
- "CFP:" in their subject line, i.e. "call for papers" (or: "call for
- participation").
-
- 6. Reports
- Sometimes people spontaneously want to report something to the
- newsgroup. This might be special experiences with some software,
- results of own experiments or conceptual work, or especially
- interesting information from somewhere else.
-
- Reports should be clearly indicated to be such by giving them a
- subject line of the form "Report: this-and-that"
-
- 7. Discussions
- An especially valuable possibility of USENET is of course that of
- discussing a certain topic with hundreds of potential participants.
- All traffic in the newsgroup that can not be subsumed under one of
- the above categories should belong to a discussion.
-
- If somebody explicitly wants to start a discussion, he/she can do so
- by giving the posting a subject line of the form "Start discussion:
- this-and-that" (People who react on this, please remove the "Start
- discussion: " label from the subject line of your replies)
-
- It is quite difficult to keep a discussion from drifting into chaos,
- but, unfortunately, as many other newsgroups show there seems to be
- no secure way to avoid this. On the other hand, comp.ai.genetic has
- not had many problems with this effect, yet, so let's just go and
- hope...
-
- Thanks in advance for your patience!
-
- The Internet
- For information on internet services, see Q15.5.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Copyright (c) 1993-2000 by J. Heitkoetter and D. Beasley, all rights
- reserved.
-
- This FAQ may be posted to any USENET newsgroup, on-line service, or
- BBS as long as it is posted in its entirety and includes this
- copyright statement. This FAQ may not be distributed for financial
- gain. This FAQ may not be included in commercial collections or
- compilations without express permission from the author.
-
- End of ai-faq/genetic/part1
- ***************************
-
- --
-
-