Stochastic approximation algorithms: Overview and recent trends

Evolutionary Computation: An Overview and Recent Trends

Evolutionary computation is a steadily increasing research discipline covering computer algorithms that are inspired by principles of natural evolution. The three main mechanisms that drive evolution forward are reproduction, mutation, and natural selection (i.e., the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest). In the biological world these mechanisms enable life-forms to adapt to a partic...

Approximation algorithms for stochastic orienteering

In the Stochastic Orienteering problem, we are given a metric, where each node also has a job located there with some deterministic reward and a random size. (Think of the jobs as being chores one needs to run, and the sizes as the amount of time it takes to do the chore.) The goal is to adaptively decide which nodes to visit to maximize total expected reward, subject to the constraint that the...

Consensus - Type Stochastic Approximation Algorithms

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Multi-level stochastic approximation algorithms

On Some Recent MAX SAT Approximation Algorithms

Recently a number of randomized 3 4 -approximation algorithms for MAX SAT have been proposed that all work in the same way: given a fixed ordering of the variables, the algorithm makes a random assignment to each variable in sequence, in which the probability of assigning each variable true or false depends on the current set of satisfied (or unsatisfied) clauses. To our knowledge, the first su...