{"id":8043,"date":"2019-05-22T16:03:24","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/genetic_algorithms\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:03:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:03:24","slug":"genetic_algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/genetic_algorithms\/","title":{"rendered":"Genetic algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Robust stochastic search techniques that do not require knowledge of the objective function to be optimized and which can search through large spaces quickly. &nbsp;They are derived from processes in evolutionary and molecular biology such as natural selection. &nbsp;Their operators (viz., crossover, mutation and reproduction) are isomorphic with the synonymous biological processes. &nbsp;Instead of DNA or RNA strands, genetic algorithms usually process strings of symbols of finite length, with these symbols encoding the parameters to be optimized. &nbsp;As with neural networks, they are based on an analogy with nature, in this case that the best algorithms &#8216;breed&#8217; with each other to provide new variants in a &#8216;survival of the fittest&#8217;. &nbsp;They have a wide range of application beyond biological processes such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=case-traveling-salesman-unsolvable-limits-computation\" target=\"_self\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=case-traveling-salesman-unsolvable-limits-computation?target=_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">traveling salesman problem<\/a>, gas pipeline control, the design of aircraft, neural net architecture, models of international security, and strategy formulation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"neural_net\">Neural net<\/a>, <a href=\"theory_of_neuronal_group_selection_-tngs-\">Theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robust stochastic search techniques that do not require knowledge of the objective function to be optimized and which can search through large spaces quickly. &nbsp;They are derived from processes in evolutionary and molecular biology such as natural selection. &nbsp;Their operators (viz., crossover, mutation and reproduction) are isomorphic with the synonymous biological processes. &nbsp;Instead of DNA &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/genetic_algorithms\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Genetic algorithms&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}