Numerical Optimization presents a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the most effective methods in continuous optimization. It responds to the growing interest in optimization in engineering, science, and business by focusing on the methods that are best suited to practical problems. For this new edition the book has been thoroughly updated throughout. There are new chapters on nonlinear interior methods and derivative-free methods for optimization, both of which are used widely in practice and the focus of much current research. Because of the emphasis on practical methods, as well as the extensive illustrations and exercises, the book is accessible to a wide audience. It can be used as a graduate text in engineering, operations research, mathematics, computer science, and business. It also serves as a handbook for researchers and practitioners in the field. The authors have strived to produce a text that is pleasant to read, informative, and rigorous - one that reveals both the beautiful nature of the discipline and its practical side.

Numerical Optimization

List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface. Foreword. 1. Basic Concepts. 2. Evolutionary Algorithm MOP Approaches. 3. MOEA Test Suites. 4. MOEA Testing and Analysis. 5. MOEA Theory and Issues. 3. MOEA Theoretical Issues. 6. Applications. 7. MOEA Parallelization. 8. Multi-Criteria Decision Making. 9. Special Topics. 10. Epilog. Appendix A: MOEA Classification and Technique Analysis. Appendix B: MOPs in the Literature. Appendix C: Ptrue & PFtrue for Selected Numeric MOPs. Appendix D: Ptrue & PFtrue for Side-Constrained MOPs. Appendix E: MOEA Software Availability. Appendix F: MOEA-Related Information. Index. References.

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Evolutionary algorithms for solving multi-objective problems

Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a h...

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Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises:

phenix.refine is a program within the PHENIX package that supports crystallographic structure refinement against experimental data with a wide range of upper resolution limits using a large repertoire of model parameterizations. It has several automation features and is also highly flexible. Several hundred parameters enable extensive customizations for complex use cases. Multiple user-defined refinement strategies can be applied to specific parts of the model in a single refinement run. An intuitive graphical user interface is available to guide novice users and to assist advanced users in managing refinement projects. X-ray or neutron diffraction data can be used separately or jointly in refinement. phenix.refine is tightly integrated into the PHENIX suite, where it serves as a critical component in automated model building, final structure refinement, structure validation and deposition to the wwPDB. This paper presents an overview of the major phenix.refine features, with extensive literature references for readers interested in more detailed discussions of the methods.

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Towards automated crystallographic structure refinement with phenix.refine

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

We are all aware of political imperatives towards e-government and public participation which, together with pressures from the information and communications industry to sell their wares, mean that e-participation and e-democracy are coming, and coming fast, whether or not the processes involved are meaningful and valid. Indeed, the bulk of research in the field concentrates mainly on technologies to facilitate or automate standard democratic instruments. Typical examples include technologies of e-voting, which essentially refer only to facilitating voting through electronic means, and techno

E-Democracy: A Group Decision and Negotiation Perspective

Decision workshops, sometimes called decision conferences, help a group of decision makers gain a shared understanding of a decision problem, analyse issues and commit to an action plan under the guidance of an experienced facilitator. This work seeks to identify best practice in the early stages of the facilitation of such workshops when the emphasis is placed on problem structuring and the main issues of a complex decision problem are identified and explored. Four decision workshops, based on the same hypothetical scenario but facilitated by a different person, were organized. Video material of the simulated workshops was analysed to compare and contrast the facilitated meetings including the problem structuring methods used. A framework for studying facilitation practices emerged. The effect of a facilitator on the structuring of the problem, the group decision process and the outcome of the workshop was studied. The results of the work indicate that a facilitator's style and approach to the workshop may have an impact on the action plan devised. Further research is required to generalize the findings of our work.

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Facilitation practices in decision workshops

In the thirteen years that have elapsed since the Chernobyl accident, many studies and developments have been made with the aim of improving our response to any future accident. One project has been the development of a decision support system to aid emergency management. rodos, a Real time online Decision support system for nuclear emergency management, has been built by a consortium of many institutes across Europe and the cis. As it approaches (standby!) operational use, we face the task of tailoring the output to meet the specific needs of users and simultaneously opening up their minds to full potential of a modern decision support system (dss). This paper reports a number of investigations into the decision support needs of the competent national safety authorities and reflects on the implications of rodos for the emergency management process.

Rodos: Decision Support for Nuclear Emergencies

Web-technologies bring the possibility of supporting geographically and temporally dispersed decision making. However, although technically feasible, it is not clear that there are valid methodologies for the use of web-based group decision support (wGDSS). Many approaches to decision support are driven by the perspective of a single decision maker. Yet there are many reasons to expect that the extension of individualistic theories to a group context will be fraught with difficulty. This paper explores these issues and considers the way forward for the design and use of wGDSS and for a more substantive approach to participative e-democracy.

Web-enabled strategic GDSS, e-democracy and Arrow's theorem: A Bayesian perspective

This paper reports on a workshop on Problem Formulation in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis held at SPUDM97. The focus of the workshop was the problem formulation phase which occurs between the analyst meeting a person with a ‘mess’ and the time he or she begins to analyse a structured problem with several alternatives scored against several attributes or criteria. The objectives were: to share experience on procedures which might be transferable between the methodologies; to demonstrate different skills used by the analyst in structuring decision problems; and to catalyse a discussion on the problem formulation phase of an analysis. Three analysts, who generally approach problems using multiattribute methods, addressed the same problem. The problem used was constructed to be realistic to three decision makers, who had been trained in the issues of concern. There were two sessions. Each analyst was assigned a decision maker and formulated the problem independently in the first session, held in parallel. They were each observed by two observers and many of the audience at the workshop. The three formulations were presented along with the comments of the observers and discussed at a second plenary session. This paper reports the three formulations and observations, remarking on the ‘tricks of the trade’ employed by the analysts in formulating the problem. The analysts also describe their thinking and their aims in adopting their approach and style of interaction. More general remarks on the process of decision analysis are also offered. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Simon French

Papers

E-Democracy: A Group Decision and Negotiation Perspective

Facilitation practices in decision workshops

Rodos: Decision Support for Nuclear Emergencies

Web-enabled strategic GDSS, e-democracy and Arrow's theorem: A Bayesian perspective

Problem formulation for multi-criteria decision analysis: Report of a workshop