The lectures of G5BAIM in Semester 2 of 2006/2007 are Friday afternoons, 13:00-15:00, Jubilee Campus, New Business School, Room A26, unless there are further changes. (There was a timetable clash so go to the module page to verify actual time and place.)
The textbook recommended is "Search methodologies : introductory tutorials in optimization and decision support techniques", edited by Edmund K. Burke, Graham Kendall. It can be found in the university library.
Please also refer to Dr. Graham Kendall's page here and Dr. Rong Qu's page here for more information of the module in previous years. (Generally speaking, the module contents do not change substantially from year to year, and so previous years pages are still very relevant).
If you have any problems/suggestions/feedback etc, please feel free to email (ajp), telephone (0115 95 14210), or visit my office (CSiT C75).
The course also has an email list http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/local-cgi/lists.cgi?gs=g5baim. I will use this mailing list for sending out information. I'll advertise when I start sending out emails and you should make sure that you are receiving them.
Hence, you need to make sure that the department (and technical services) has a working email address for you, and that it is included on the list..
Please note that the timetable below is tentative, and is likely to change as we proceed, so please keep an eye on this page. When the mailing list is active, then I will also send out announcements to that list. I will also add links to the lecture notes as we proceed.
Date |
Topic |
Comments |
| Fri 2nd Feb | Introduction: Scope and
Motivations of the course "Grid Games" (in-class 'small group work') |
Reading material (a) |
| Fri 9th Feb | Standard Problem
Domains (exercise) Local Search & hillclimbing |
|
| Fri 16th Feb | Examples of
Neighbourhoods Simulated Annealing |
Please bring a scientific calculator BSF vs WYA paper |
| Fri 23rd Feb | Finish off Simulated
Annealing Tabu Search |
|
| Fri 2nd March | Finish Tabu Search Evolutionary and genetic algorithms |
Erben's Lectures on Genetic Algorithms Parts I & II |
| Fri 9th March | No Lecture. (Self-Study of literature of GAs) | Mon. March 5th: Coursework ONE due |
| Fri 16th March | Guest lecture by Dr John Woodward | The No Free Lunch Theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-free-lunch_theorem |
| Fri 23rd March | Ant algorithms |
|
| BREAK | (Available to discuss CW-2 if needed) | |
| Fri 27th April | Domain Dependent
Crossovers Intensification vs. Diversification |
Erben's Lectures on
Genetic Algorithms Parts III & IV Thurs. April 26th: Coursework TWO due |
| Fri 4th May | self-study (revision lecture if requested) | |
| Fri 11th May | self-study (revision lecture if requested |
The assessment of this module is 25% on coursework. The coursework will be split into two parts, the first worth 5% and the second 20%. The closing dates for handing in the coursework will be
This course is examined by a two hour examination, which accounts for 75% of the marks. In your revision, you may use "notes" in the table above as the reference for the corresponding lectures. I also recommend you to study the previous exam papers available from here and here in your revision.
Exam questions cover ALL the topics in the lecture slides, and might well require you to have have studied other sources provided. The rubric of the exam will read something like this:
Marks will be awarded for the first FOUR questions in the answering book. Clearly state on the front of the answer book the FOUR questions you have attempted.
Scientific calculators are allowed in the exam.
As in previous exams, you need to clearly state the FOUR from the six questions that you want to be marked. In case of more than 4 questions are answered, I will only mark the first 4 questions answered.
The model answers for the 2005/06 exam are here.
(a) Simulated Annealing. K. Dowsland (1995). In: C. Reeves. Modern Heuristic techniques for combinatorial problems. Halsted Press.
(b) An Introduction to Tabu Search (Hertz A., Taillard E., de Werra D. A Tutorial on Tabu Search. Proc. of Giornate di Lavoro AIRO'95 (Enterprise Systems: Management of Technological and Organizational Changes),1995, pp13-24).
(c) An Introduction to Ant Algorithms (Dorigo M. and Colorni A. The Ant System: Optimization by a colony of cooperating agents, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part B, 26(1), 1996, pp 1-13).
(d) An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms (Reeves C. Genetic Algorithms for the Operations Researcher, INFORMS Journal on Computing, 1997, 9(3), pp 231-250).
Last updated: 21-Feb-2007