Second Print Edition (Online Version 2.2)Now out in paperback!
Sean Luke
Department of Computer Science
George Mason University
About the Book
This is an open set of lecture notes on metaheuristics algorithms, intended for undergraduate students, practitioners, programmers, and other non-experts. It was developed as a series of lecture notes for an undergraduate course I taught at GMU. The chapters are designed to be printable separately if necessary. As it's lecture notes, the topics are short and light on examples and theory. It's best when complementing other texts. With time, I might remedy this.
What is a Metaheuristic?
A common but unfortunate name for any stochastic optimization algorithm intended to be the last resort before giving up and using random or brute-force search.
Such algorithms are used for problems where you don't know how to find a good solution, but if shown a candidate solution, you can give it a grade.
The algorithmic family includes genetic algorithms, hill-climbing, simulated annealing, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, and so on.
How to Buy the Book
Essentials of Metaheuristics, Second Edition is available at these fine internet retailers:
Lulu.com for a mere $20.00 plus $4 in shipping. This is my recommended method.
Amazon.com for $25.00 plus free shipping. (Yes, that's my affiliate link)
How to Download the Book
To download the PDF file (about 5 megabytes), please fill out the form below. To justify giving this sucker away for free, I need aggregate (and only aggregate) statistics on how many people are using it and in what way. I'm a professor, and am not in the business of abusing personal data. Help me out: fill out the form.