THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

An overview of the self-organizing map algorithm, on which the papers in this issue are based, is presented in this article.

The Self-Organizing Map

I. the origin of species by means of natural selection

List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface. Contributing Authors. Series Foreword. Part I: Foundations. 1. An Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms J.A. Lozano. 2. An Introduction to Probabilistic Graphical Models P. Larranaga. 3. A Review on Estimation of Distribution Algorithms P. Larranaga. 4. Benefits of Data Clustering in Multimodal Function Optimization via EDAs J.M. Pena, et al. 5. Parallel Estimation of Distribution Algorithms J.A. Lozano, et al. 6. Mathematical Modeling of Discrete Estimation of Distribution Algorithms C. Gonzalez, et al. Part II: Optimization. 7. An Empiricial Comparison of Discrete Estimation of Distribution Algorithms R. Blanco., J.A. Lozano. 8. Results in Function Optimization with EDAs in Continuous Domain E. Bengoetxea, et al. 9. Solving the 0-1 Knapsack Problem with EDAs R. Sagarna, P. Larranaga. 10. Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem with EDAs V. Robles, et al. 11. EDAs Applied to the Job Shop Scheduling Problem J.A. Lozano, A. Mendiburu. 12. Solving Graph Matching with EDAs Using a Permutation-Based Representation E. Bengoetxea, et al. Part III: Machine Learning. 13. Feature Subset Selection by Estimation of Distribution Algorithms I. Inza, et al. 14. Feature Weighting for Nearest Neighbor by EDAs I. Inza, et al. 15. Rule Induction by Estimation of Distribution Algorithms B. Sierra, et al. 16. Partial Abductive Inference in Bayesian Networks: An Empirical Comparison Between GAs and EDAs L.M. de Campos, et al.17. Comparing K-Means, GAs and EDAs in Partitional Clustering J. Roure, et al. 18. Adjusting Weights in Artificial Neural Networks using Evolutionary Algorithms C. Cotta, et al. Index.

Estimation of Distribution Algorithms: A New Tool for Evolutionary Computation

In recent years, there has been a growing interest for the experimental analysis in the field of evolutionary algorithms. It is noticeable due to the existence of numerous papers which analyze and propose different types of problems, such as the basis for experimental comparisons of algorithms, proposals of different methodologies in comparison or proposals of use of different statistical techniques in algorithms' comparison.

In this paper, we focus our study on the use of statistical techniques in the analysis of evolutionary algorithms' behaviour over optimization problems. A study about the required conditions for statistical analysis of the results is presented by using some models of evolutionary algorithms for real-coding optimization. This study is conducted in two ways: single-problem analysis and multiple-problem analysis. The results obtained state that a parametric statistical analysis could not be appropriate specially when we deal with multiple-problem results. In multiple-problem analysis, we propose the use of non-parametric statistical tests given that they are less restrictive than parametric ones and they can be used over small size samples of results. As a case study, we analyze the published results for the algorithms presented in the CEC'2005 Special Session on Real Parameter Optimization by using non-parametric test procedures.

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A study on the use of non-parametric tests for analyzing the evolutionary algorithms' behaviour: a case study on the CEC'2005 Special Session on Real Parameter Optimization

This paper presents the evolving objects library (EOlib), an object-oriented framework for evolutionary computation (EC) that aims to provide a flexible set of classes to build EC applications. EOlib design objective is to be able to evolve any object in which fitness makes sense. In order to do so, EO concentrates on interfaces; any object can evolve if it is endowed with an interface to do so. In this paper, we describe what features an object must have in order to evolve, and some examples of how EO has been put to practice evolving neural networks, solutions to the Mastermind game, and other novel applications.

Evolving objects: A general purpose evolutionary computation library

G-Prop: Global optimization of multilayer perceptrons using GAs

http://geneura.ugr.es/~jmerelo/habilitacion2005/papers/53.pdf

Evolving Objects: A General Purpose Evolutionary Computation Library

Most genetic algorithm (GA) users adjust the main parameters of the design of a GA (crossover and mutation probability, population size, number of generations, crossover, mutation, and selection operators) manually. Nevertheless, when GA applications are being developed it is very important to know which parameters have the greatest influence on the behavior and performance of a GA. The purpose of this study was to analyze the dynamics of GAs when confronted with modifications to the principal parameters that define them, taking into account the two main characteristics of GAs; their capacity for exploration and exploitation. Therefore, the dynamics of GAs have been analyzed from two viewpoints. The first is to study the best solution found by the system, i.e., to observe its capacity to obtain a local or global optimum. The second viewpoint is the diversity within the population of GAs; to examine this, the average fitness was calculated. The relevancy and relative importance of the parameters involved in GA design are investigated by using a powerful statistical tool, the analysis of the variance (ANOVA).

Statistical analysis of the main parameters involved in the design of a genetic algorithm

Interest in hybrid methods that combine artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms has grown in the last few years, due to their robustness and ability to design networks by setting initial weight values, by searching the architecture and the learning rule and parameters. This paper presents an exhaustive analysis of the G-Prop method, and the different parameters the method requires (population size, selection rate, initial weight range, number of training epochs, etc.) are determined. The paper also the discusses the influence of the application of genetic operators on the precision (classification ability or error) and network size in classification problems. The significance and relative importance of the parameters with respect to the results obtained, as well as suitable values for each, were obtained using the ANOVA (analysis of the variance). Experiments show the significance of parameters concerning the neural network and learning in the hybrid methods. The parameters found using this method were used to compare the G-Prop method both to itself with other parameter settings, and to other published methods.

Gustavo Romero

Papers

Evolving objects: A general purpose evolutionary computation library

G-Prop: Global optimization of multilayer perceptrons using GAs

Evolving Objects: A General Purpose Evolutionary Computation Library

Statistical analysis of the main parameters involved in the design of a genetic algorithm

Statistical analysis of the parameters of a neuro-genetic algorithm