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The Design of Innovation (Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation)


by David Goldberg

List Price: $89.95
5 Used starting at: $60.00
Sales Rank: 959369
Studio: Springer
Binding: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: June 30, 2002
Publisher: Springer


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EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
The Design of Innovation illustrates how to design and implement competent genetic algorithms-genetic algorithms that solve hard problems quickly, reliably, and accurately-and how the invention of competent genetic algorithms amounts to the creation of an effective computational theory of human innovation. For the specialist in genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation, this book combines over two decades of hard-won research results in a single volume to provide a comprehensive step-by-step guide to designing genetic algorithms that scale well with problem size and difficulty. For the innovation researcher - whether from the social and behavioral sciences, the natural sciences, the humanities, or the arts - this unique book gives a consistent and valuable mathematical and computational viewpoint for understanding certain aspects of human innovation. For all readers, The Design of Innovation provides an entrée into the world of competent genetic algorithms and innovation through a methodology of invention borrowed from the Wright brothers. Combining careful decomposition, cost-effective, little analytical models, and careful design, the road to competence is paved with easily understood examples, simulations, and results from the literature.


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 1 review)

Great for GA-centered research, doubtful otherwise  
Genetic Algorithms, GAs, have had a brief flowering of successful application to optimization searches and their limitations have become apparent. One consequence is that a variety of alternative evolutionary computational approaches are being investigated. Another road, much less travelled, is to examine the core mechanisms of the GA concept and try to develop a second generation of improved algorithms. This is difficult work because of the very nature of the core building block theory as first proposed by John Holland. For true inovation, building blocks must be synthesized, evaluated, and combined in sucessive hierarchies, all without external intervention. David Goldberg, a stalwart Holland desciple, has been valiantly trying to extend Holland's main theorem, which applied to infinite populations and hypthetical spaces, to finite populations on real problems.

This book is actually a research monograph reporting on the results of this research. The title "The Design of Innovation" sets up a high level of expectation but the subtitle "lessons learned from and for competent GAs" is probably right. The book offers some useful insights into the internal workings of GAs and their implication for understanding true innovation. However, despite the introductory claim of an engineering approach, the book never gets around to actually showing practitioners how to apply the lessons, nor does it give direct evidence that they work as claimed (although references to recent papers which presumably demonstrate success are given).

It is perhaps ironic that the goal for GAs has been downgraded from "universal" (as first claimed by Holland) to "competent".
Goldberg's concentrates on GAs to the exclusion of other approaches that may be equally competent or even better. A further irony is the stunning admission that "for years GA practitioners have understood that commercial applications often require" combinations of GAs and other local search methods to obtain high-quality solutions in reasonable time. But if this is so, then maybe GAs aren't the best place to start in the first place.

Goldberg's ideas about the upcoming golden age of computational innovation in the last chapter are provocative. But the implication that we must await GA improvements for this to happen are a little off-putting.

In sum, this book is a well-written research monograph intended to open up further research into the heart and soul of GAs. It should be read by researchers in AI, machine learning, and related fields. However, it will not provide the immediate answers to practitioners who are now running into the limitations of GAs (and other evolutionary or general search techniques).
December 13, 2002



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