`The ongoing fragmentation of
knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy
are not reflections of
the real world but artifacts of scholarship.'
- E.O. Wilson,
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
WELCOME TO ENCORE, THE ELECTRONIC APPENDIX TO
THE HITCH-HIKER'S
GUIDE TO EVOLUTIONARY
COMPUTATION
A MOSTLY USEFUL COMPENDIUM OF SEVERAL HUNDRED FILES ON THE ART
OF
EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES, PARTICULARLY, BEGINNERS
IN
THE FIELD, (ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO US THAT EVEN SOME
OLD-TIMERS
ENJOYED READING IT).
SO, DEAR FELLOW HIKERS, HERE'S YOUR GUIDE,
NO TOWEL, AND SOME FRIENDLY WORDS:
WHAT
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN TODAY?(TM)
[We're honored. We're
humbled. We're amused. -Ed.]
[Hmm-we're
not exactly certain what we have here, maybe we should have asked
someone
else to educate our youth? And by the way, who the hell did ask this
guy...? -Ed.]
PLEASE NOTICE:
THE
RECORDING, COPYING, LOAN, UNAUTHORIZED HIRE, PUBLIC SHOWING OR
BROADCAST
OF THIS WEBCAST IS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.
IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF ANY PHILOSOPHICAL INTERFERENCE
WITH THE
CONTENT, LANGUAGE OR STYLE OF PRESENTATION USED IN THIS SERVICE, PLEASE
ADJUST YOUR MIND TRACKING CONTROL NOW. THIS WILL, IN MOST CASES,
RECTIFY
BOTH YOUR VIEWS AND YOUR GUTS.
IF, FOR
WHATEVER REASON, YOUR MINDTRACKING DEVICE FAILS, WE RECOMMEND TO
PURCHASE
A PAIR OF NYET-NYET 2000 PERIL SENSITIVE SUNGLASSES, (NOW IN STORE AT
MOST MEGAMARKETS - MANUFACTURED BY SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION),
BEFORE READING THESE PAGES, AND SUGGEST TO CLICK ON THE PANIC! BUTTON
RIGHT NOW...
...IF YOU REALLY
WANT TO READ ON (OR JUST CAN'T FIND THE PANIC! BUTTON), WELL, READ ON,
RELAX & HAVE FUN.
`Indeed, the author firmly
believes that the best serious work is also good fun.
We needn't
apologize if we enjoy doing research.' -Donald E. Knuth
Frequently
Asked Questions...
Table
of Contents
Last-modified: 04 Aug 2004
`Definitions? I
hate definitions!' -Benjamin Disraeli
What's ENCORE anyway?
What's the use of definitions anyway? A query of Webster's online
dictionary about ENCORE gives us the following:
- en. core
\'a:n-.ko-(*)r, -.ko.(*)r\ n [F, still, again]
: a demand
for repetition
or reappearance
made
by an audience;
also
: a further
performance
in response
to such
a demand
- encore
vt : to request
an encore
of or by
while the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary
Computation is well-known to define ENCORE as:
- enc. ore
n : the alternate
way
to spell
: sa.-fier ; also : the living
proof for the possible
creation
of infinite
knowledge generators
- ENCORE n : The EvolutioNary
COmputation
REpository
network
; in part. : a mostly
harmless, but mindbogglingly
useful network
of EClairs
and Clife
sites for newbies
in the field
Ok, we won't get into the details here; they have been given in
The Jester's Gauntlet, anyway;
(although the monthly download statics tell me that another pamphlet
of mine On the Color of Red (A
trip through the theory of colors and the way of thinking) was the
most read single item from ENCORE for some time...) Just think
of ENCORE as a beginner's paradise for those who just
found themselves entangled in the mystery struggle to get involved in
The Art of Evolutionary Computation.
To explain what all this
really means let's start slowly [good -Ed.] with
something
someone once called the total perspective vortex. This famous
vortex is experienced by most hikers, aka students, on their trip
across
the mind paralysing distance from uninitiatedness to post-PhD wisdom:
When they start playing with the accumulated wisdom in the field of
their interested, students are endangered to get into a state of mind
of total confusion. Douglas Adams has described something like this in
"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", he called the
total perspective vortex, on page 59:
"For when you
are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the
entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny
little marker, a microscopic little dot, which says `You are here.'"
To prevent you from falling into this vortex,
ENCORE will help you to do the following:
- Get to know
the frequently asked questions (FAQs) on EC; and their respective
answers, presented in a mostly entertaining way.
- Get familiar
with all EC paradigms in an unbiased way; possibly in your own native
language (at present: German, English, Greek, and Spanish).
- Get
"hands-on" experience by using any of the software packages provided.
- Get to know where to look for test data servers, that provide
you with problem instances needed for comparative studies.
- Get the latest call for papers (CFPs); job announcements; or
other
and projects currently en vogue.
- Learn more about the
folks who are "in" the field; especially their private side.
- Learn more about other related subjects and research fields.
- Move on to more specialized repositories maintained by research
groups
with at least a glimpse of what EC is all about...!
So,
you really wanna know what the
reviewers said about ENCORE?
`All that is worth knowing can be learnt but not necessarily
taught' -Oscar Wilde
What are those Sections within ENCORE?
ENCORE
is highly structured to provide easy access to its files. All main EC
paradigms have their own sections:
Classical Paradigms
Other Evolutionary or Genetic Paradigms
Other non-traditional, hybrid or related approaches that make use of
genetic paradigms but do not fit in the categories above, like, e.g.,
some Alife systems, are collected in the Evolutionary Algorithms
section:
- EA: Evolutionary Algorithms
- EA software packages Ipd, an Iterated
Prisoner's Dilemma
test suite taken from alt.sources courtesy by Glenn Hutchings.
- Iterated Prisoner's
Dilemma
web resources site: This site aims to be a comprehensive
repository of informations on the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma,
and furthermore on the representation, study and knowledge of
cooperation (and evolution of cooperation) between agents, by Bruno
BEAUFILS. If you have any questions, comments or remarks feel free
to send it to prison@lifl.fr
- EA software
documentation
- EA research papers
- Differential
Evolution strategy courtesy by Rainern Storn.
- OPEAL: a library
for doing
evolutionary computation in Perl. OPEAL stands for Obvious Pearl
Evolutionary Algorithm Library; its alias is AI::EA, which will
take its place when it becomes an official CPAN distribution. It should
be easy to program any kind of evolutionary algorithm; all chromosome
representations and operators are possible. An XML dialect called
EvoSpec
is used as a language for description of algorithms and for
representation
of the state of an algorithm. This makes OPEAL interoperable with other
EA libraries, such as EO
courtesy by JJ Merelo (hosted on Sourceforge).
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary
Computation
The aforementioned mostly entertaining FAQ
to the field, i.e., comp.ai.genetic
resides here:
The Navigator's Handbook to ENCORE
[Hmm-this is becoming increasingly obsolete, why do they
still have paperware
documentation for this service online? Ok,
we leave this for historical purposes, 7 years ago this made perfect
sense.-Ed.] Naturally, the documentation of ENCORE
is
included: The Navigator's Handbook to ENCORE
gives
a gentle introduction to the repository and it's access with
traditional,
i.e. simple FTP clients and more recent developments, i.e., World-Wide
Web clients. An alternate way to get to know the complete contents
of an EClair is to download the CONTENTS
file. A quick OVERVIEW on all files is also
available. Note that the CONTENTS is listed
in the appendix to the The Navigator's Handbook to
ENCORE (55pp, 183K). You only have to download either of these two.
Darwin's Classics
Miscellaneous
`The "silly
question" is the first intimation of some totally
new development'
-Alfred North Whitehead
All EClairs & Clife sites at a Glance?
Well, we used to have
many sites and this is a Map of ENCORE
at circa 1997; but today with the increase in Internet bandwidth there
are only two default sites available, i.e., the EClair's in the
project's parlance:
How to become an EClair?
If you are interested to
set-up another EClair at your place read
about the RESOURCES and actions
needed.
How to get on the Clife side of
Life?
If you cannot afford the megabytes needed to become a full EClair, it might be a good idea to make your
World-Wide
Web server a Clife site; just take
a look at README.clife.
`Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves,
or we know
where we can find information upon it.' -Samuel
Johnson
More EC-related
World-Wide Web Resources?
Research
Groups
- The Adaptive
Systems Research Group (AS) at The German
National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD), Germany.
- Artificial
Intelligence and Robotics Project (PM-AI&R
Project) at The University of Milano, Italy.
- The Bionik Research
Group at Technical University of Berlin, Germany.
- The
Complex
Systems Program (PSCS) at The University of Michigan, MI,
USA.
- The
Evolutionary Algorithms Group at The University of Edinburgh,
UK.
- The
Digital Genetics Research Group at The University of Idaho, ID,
USA.
- The
Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems Group in COGS at School
of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, UK.
- The
Evolutionary Computation in Control Systems Engineering
web in the Automatic Control & Systems Engineering
Department at Sheffield University, UK.
- Evolutionary
Optimization Research Group at University of Southampton,
UK.
- The
Genetic Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks
(GAiN) group at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
- Group Algorithmics
and Foundations of Programming at Leiden University,
The Netherlands.
- The
Geneura Team at The University of Granada, Spain.
- The GA-List
Directory at The Navy Center for Applied Research in
Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI), Wash. D.C., USA.
- Genetic Algorithms Research
and
Applications Group (GARAGe) at Michigan State University, MI,
USA.
- LEARN:
Lothian Evolutionary Algorithms Research
Network at The University of Edinburgh, UK.
- The
Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (IlliGAL) Directory at The
University of Illinois Genetic Algorithms
Lab, Room 308A, Transportation Building, IL, USA.
- The nexus
for UCL
Evolutionary Algorithm Research (nUCLEAR) at University College
London, UK.
- SYMPA: Research
into Parallel Genetic Algorithms at LGI laboratory, Grenoble,
France.
- The Systems
Analysis Group alias LS11 alias CASA (Center for
Applied Systems Analysis at the ICD) at The University of Dortmund,
Germany.
- TCGA:
The Clearinghouse for Genetic Algorithms archive
at The University of Alabama, AL, USA.
- IlliGAl:
Illinois Genetic Algortihms Lab at The University of Illinois,
IL, USA.
Student's Projects
- The GA
Playground: by Ariel Dolan is a general purpose GA toolkit
implemented in Java, designed for experimenting with genetic algorithms
and handling optimization problems. New problem definition requires
only
coding of a fitness function and supplying parameters by an Ascii file
(similar to Windows ini file). However, the structure of the progarm is
very modular and supports overwriting of any GA operator or function,
if required. The GA Playground is primarily designed to be used as
an application and not as an applet, since it requires re-compiling
of at least one function (the fitness function) and the use of local
file I/O. In addition, it is a little heavy as an applet. However,
although its use as an applet does not enable defining new problems
(new
fitness functions), it enables extensive playing with many variations
of
already defined problems. Currently the applet includes TSP problems,
Knapsack problems (Both single and multiple), Bin packing problems,
Facility allocation problems, Real function optimization, Multi-Modal
function optimization.
- Nova Genetica: A
Compendium of useful GA links by Darin
R. Molnar, at Portland State University, OR, USA.
- RARS: The
Robot Auto Racing Simulation's
FTP archive at University of Birmingham, UK.
Test Data Servers
- NetLib
run by NetLib.Org at
AT&T Research.
- ORlib run by
John E. Beasley at Imperial College, London,
UK.
Use e-mail to
o.rlibrary@ic.ac.uk to request files.
- SoftLib
and
TSPlib at Rice University, TX, USA.
- SGB: The
Stanford Graph Base project by Donald A. Knuth at Stanford
University, CA, USA. [The SGB is a library written in CWEB, that
allows for creation of arbitray problem instances of arbitrary
types of graphs. SGB is used in the 4th volume of "The Art
of Computer Programming" that includes chapters on Genetic
Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, and other heuristics-based
search procedures. For an overview of this project see the 1993 Interview with Knuth;
the book was published by Addison-Wesley in 1994 as "The Stanford
Graph Base: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing." -Ed.]
- Genetic
Football web site a hybrid genetic techniques to beat all known
heuristics for attacking the NP-hard combinatorial optimization
problem of finding ``longest paths'' by Buel Chandler.
- Test
Functions
for Evolutionary Algortihms a collection by William M. Spears.
`...it doesn't matter how beautiful your
theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are
- if it doesn't
agree with experiment, it's wrong.' -Richard P. Feynman
Other Related Resources?
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Life
- Alife Online 2.0 at Alife.Org,
CA, USA.
- The
Artificial Life FAQ maintained by Anthony Liekens Eindhoven,
NL, Holland.
- Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation
by Stephen Levy.
- Biota.Org The mission of
Biota.org is to promote and assist in the engineering of complete,
biologically-inspired, synthetic ecosystems and organisms. This
involves
the creation and deployment of digital tools and environments for
simulation, research, and learning about living systems both natural
and artificial. These tools could range from simple genetic algorithms
all the way up to full multi-user virtual environments. Biota.org will
seek to nourish a community of interest and to bring the experience
of interacting with digital biota to a large audience through the
medium of the Internet. Cyberbiology is Artificial Life made visible
through Cyberspace.
- Zooland "The Artificial Life
Resource" maintained by Jörg
Heitkötter. (Zooland
Europe, & Zooland USA)
- Newsgroup(s): comp.ai.alife
Biology-related Resources
- The Bioinfo FTP
site maintained by Tom
Schneider at The National Cancer Institute, MA, USA.
- The BIOSCI International
Newsgroups for Molecular
Biology
- The Biologie:
The Great Biological Addable Link Collection
- A
Biologist's Guide to Internet resources written
by Una Smith at Yale University, CT, USA.
- L-System
Software maintained by Mark S. Hammel at The
University of Calgary, CAN.
- The Bioinformatics Server
maintained by David G. Greene at Australian National University,
Canberra, Australia.
- IBM Jena maintained by
Institut für
Molekulare Bioltechnologie at The University of Jena, Germany.
- Newsgroup(s): sci.bio.evolution,
bionet.info-theory, de.sci.biologie
Cellular Automata
Fuzzy Systems
Nanotechnology
Neural Networks
Operations Research, Applied Mathematics &
Game Theory
- The
Knot System: Growing availability of advanced genetics computer
programs and large lineage linked databases, increases the probability
of
geneticists having to deal with very complex relationships. This makes
a standardized way of communicating such types of blood relationships
more and more obligatory. The Knot System is probably the first
notation
which scientifically correct can document blood relationships of any
complexity and of unlimited generation depth, developed by Knud
Højrup.
- Operations Research Resources
World-wide at Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA.
- Bibliography
for Discrete Event Systems Simulation: Optimization
and Sensitivity Analysis at University of Baltimore,
MD, USA.
- The Society for
Industrial and Applied Mathematics' (SIAM) Webserver.
- CPLEX Optimization
Software
from ILOG Optimization.
- Tabu Search & friends
at The University of Trento, Italy.
- Global
(and
Local) Optimization at The University of Vienna, Austria.
- INFORMS Online
The ACI is a collection of bibliographic references going back to
1982. It includes references to all papers in ORSA/TIMS journals
from 1982-1987 and references from about 150 operations research
journals from 1988 through 1993. The papers are indexed to reviews in
the International Abstracts in Operations Research journal.
- The
Chaos Bibliography maintained by Peter E. Beckmann
at The University of Mainz, Germany.
- The
Vehicle Routing Problem maintained by Tim Duncan at AI
Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK.
- Linear
Programming FAQ, and Nonlinear
Programming FAQ, maintained by Robert Fourer at the
Optimization Technology Center of Argonne National Laboratory
and Northwestern University, USA.
- Newsgroup(s): sci.op-research,
sci.math.num-analysis, sci.nonlinear, sci.fractals, comp.constraints
Other Archives & Online Journals
Simulated
Annealing & other Physics-inspired methods
Art, Games & Videos
Commercial Sites
- NLI, New Light Industries,
Ltd.
9713 W. Sunset Hwy., Spokane, WA 99204, USA. Tel: +1 (509)456-8321
Fax: +1 (509)456-8351 E-Mail: Roger Wink (rogerw@comtch.iea.com)
- NSL, Natural
Selection Inc. 3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct., Suite 200, La Jolla,
CA 92037, USA. Tel: +1 (619) 455-6449 Fax: +1 (619) 455-1560 E-Mail: nsi@natural-selection.com
- NuTech
Solutions, Inc. 8401 University Executive Park
Drive Suite 102, Charlotte, NC 28262 Tel: +1 (704) 549-4480
Tel: +1 (800) 526-6784 Fax: +1 (704) 549-4161 E-Mail: contact@nutechsolutions.com
- divis, digital solutions
divis digital solutions GmbH, Martin-Schmeißer-Weg 15,
44227 Dortmund,
GERMANY. Tel: +49 (02 31) 2 86 34 10 Fax: +49 (02 31) 2 86 34 12
E-mail: office@divis-gmbh.de
- Hanke &
Hörner's ActiveX Genetic Programming Control
Hanke & Hörner Software, Flemmingg. 13, A-1190
Vienna, Austria Tel: +43-1-4406230 Fax: +43-1-4405602 E-Mail: info@hhsoft.com
`The stars get their brightness from the surrounding
dark.' -Dante
Who
is...?
Ok. This section is far from complete. But anyway, those
affiliated with Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life or other
Complex
Systems Sciences that have a so-called "personal homepage" installed
shall
be listed here:
- Chris Adami
at The California Institute of Technology, CA,
USA.
- Peter J.
Angeline at Natural Selection Inc. in Vestal NY.
- Thomas
Bäck at ICD, Dortmund, Germany.
- John
E. Beasley at Imperial College, London, UK.
- Peter
Bentley at University College London, UK.
- Hans-Georg
Beyer at The University of Dortmund,
Germany.
- Egbert J.W. Boers
at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
- C. Titus Brown
at The California Institute of Technology, CA, USA.
- Hugh Cartwright
at Oxford University, UK.
- Chan-Jin Chung at
Wayne State University, Detroit,
MI, USA.
- Nichael Cramer
at BBN, Boston, MA, USA.
- Kenneth A.
De
Jong at George Mason University, VA, USA.
- Marco
Dorigo at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
- J. Dana Eckart
at Radford
University, USA.
- Gusz Eiben
at Leiden University, The Netherlands.
- David
B. Fogel at Natural Selection, Inc, CA, USA.
- James
A. Foster at The University of Idaho, ID, USA.
- Chris
Gathercole at The University of Edinburgh, UK.
- Paul H. Ginsparg at Los
Alamos National Laboratory, NM, USA.
- David
E. Goldberg at The University of Illinois, IL, USA.
- Erik Goodman
at Michigan
State University, MI, USA.
- Howard Gutowitz at
The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
- David D. Greene
at The Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia.
- Stephen J.
Hartley at Drexel University, PA, USA.
- Jörg
Heitkötter at UUNET Deutschland GmbH, Germany.
- Lester
Ingber at Lester Ingber Research, VA, USA.
- Robert
Keller at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
- Frank
Kursawe at The University of Dortmund,
Germany.
- Willian
B. Langdon at The University of Birmingham, UK.
- Chris Langton at Biota.Org,
USA.
- Filippo
Menczer at University of Iowa, IO, USA.
- J.J. Merelo Guervos at Granada
University, Spain.
- Nelson Minar at
The Santa Fe Institute, NM, USA.
- Melanie Mitchell
at The Santa
Fe Institute, NM, USA.
- Una-May O'Reilly
at SFI & Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada.
- Prasanth
Nair at University of Southampton, UK.
- Jan
Roland Olsson at University of Oslo, Norway.
- Lutz
Prechelt at Karlsruhe University, Germany.
- Jeffrey Putnam
at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, NM,
USA.
- Justinian Rosca
at The University of Rochester, NY,
USA.
- Alan C. Schultz
at NCARAI, Wash. DC, USA.
- Hans-Paul
Schwefel at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
- Jane
Shaw at University of Sheffield,
UK.
- Karl Sims at Biota.Org,
USA.
- Joachim
Sprave at The University of Dortmund, Germany.
- Rainer Storn
at ICSI Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Marc
Schoenauer at Ecole Polytechnique, France.
- Tim
Taylor at The University of Edinburgh, Scotland,
UK.
- Mark C. Sinclair
at The University of Essex, UK.
- Anthony
Tang at Hong Kong Telecom, Hong Kong.
- Peter Thomson
at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK.
- Andrew Tuson
at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
- Matthew Wall at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA.
`Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.
Seek
what they sought.' -Basho
Acknowledgements, Credits & all the Fish
Thanks to all those who
contributed to this endeavour (a list of all these friendly folks is
available in the THANKS file from any EClair);
however, some special thanks must be acknowledged, particularly to
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC); without their introductory
technobabble on the "THE MAKING OF THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE
GALAXY"
video tape, (that instructs you to adjust the tracking control of your
VCR
in case "THE FOLLOWING VIDEOGRAM DISPLAYS LOW QUALITY"), I wouldn't
have
come up with the intro I used above.
And
of course to (Dr) David Beasley, my virtual friend and
companion
in my madness (over the past years), who likes to get lost during his
trips from A to B, (where A is a city in the United Kingdom and B a
city in the Ruhrgebiet, namely Dortmund), for taking over the FAQ work,
thus allowing me to create ENCORE and fool around with these
new
information gathering & presentation technologies. (He also
contributed
much of the saner parts of the Guide, leaving the insane parts for me,
something that I always wanted to thank him for...) And (Dr) JJ
Merelo Guervos, ``The Jester's patcher''. Thanx!
The concept
behind The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation
&
ENCORE is a cross, i.e., my own interpretation of the
educational
concepts developed by scholars like Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Edwin
Abbott Abbott, Jean Piaget, Alan Kay, Seymor Papert, Donald Knuth,
Gregory
Rawlins, and others that focus on individualized, hands-on
learning;
education by entertainment, or funderstanding and guided discovery
of information that's mixed with annotated plays for intellectual
refreshment during the journey - but if the things I created can really
live up to these concepts is on you to decide; your comments are
welcome.
"The
overall design of this page owes much to the music I've been listening
to, while hackin' the HTML code. Notably U2's Zooropa &
some
LOUD stuff from the Seattle area, that goes like this... "I'm worse
at what I do best and for this gift I feel blessed, I found it hard,
it's hard to find, well, whatever, nevermind."
Again, this is
for YOU, and to all those oppose!!" ;-)

... towel not included!
Copyright © 1995-2004 Jörg Heitkötter. All rights
reserved.
If you find bugs in this service, please inform
joke@de.uu.net
Please
refer to the ENCORE
disclaimers!
Available from the same author:
Bookland *
Gnuland * Heartland
* Webland * Zooland
`The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.' -Marcel
Proust