This book introduces the new experimentalism in evolutionary computation, providing tools to understand algorithms and programs and their interaction with optimization problems. It develops and applies statistical techniques to analyze and compare modern search heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization. The book bridges the gap between theory and experiment by providing a self-contained experimental methodology and many examples.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, HM 2007, held in Dortmund, Germany. The 14 revised full papers discuss specific aspects of hybridization of metaheuristics, hybrid metaheuristics design, development and testing. With increasing attention to methodological aspects, from both the empirical and theoretical sides, the papers show a representative sample of research in the field of hybrid metaheuristics.

In operations research and computer science it is common practice to evaluate the performance of optimization algorithms on the basis of computational results, and the experimental approach should follow accepted principles that guarantee the reliability and reproducibility of results. However, computational experiments differ from those in other sciences, and the last decade has seen considerable methodological research devoted to understanding the particular features of such experiments and assessing the related statistical methods.

This book consists of methodological...

Experimentation is necessary - a purely theoretical approach is not reasonable. The new experimentalism, a development in the modern philosophy of science, considers that an experiment can have a life of its own. It provides a statistical methodology to learn from experiments, where the experimenter should distinguish between statistical significance and scientific meaning.

This book introduces the new experimentalism in evolutionary computation, providing tools to understand algorithms and programs and their interaction with optimization problems. The book develops and applies...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN 2013, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in September 2014.
The total of 90 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 217 submissions. The meeting began with 7 workshops which offered an ideal opportunity to explore specific topics in evolutionary computation, bio-inspired computing and metaheuristics. PPSN XIII also included 9 tutorials. The papers are organized in topical sections on adaption, self-adaption and parameter tuning; classifier...

In operations research and computer science it is common practice to evaluate the performance of optimization algorithms on the basis of computational results, and the experimental approach should follow accepted principles that guarantee the reliability and reproducibility of results. However, computational experiments differ from those in other sciences, and the last decade has seen considerable methodological research devoted to understanding the particular features of such experiments and assessing the related statistical methods.

This book consists of methodological...