Unit 3: Beyond Local Optima

March 10: Lecture 8 — Stochastic Methods

Contents:

  • Noisy Descent
  • Mesh Adaptive Direct Search
  • Simulated Annealing
  • Cross-Entropy Method
  • Natural Evolution Strategies
  • Covariance Matrix Adaptation

Resources:

  • Slides
  • Chapter 8 and Appendix of [KW]

March 10: Lecture 9 — Population Methods

Contents:

  • Initialization
  • Genetic Algorithms
  • Differential Evolution
  • Particle Swarm Optimization
  • Firefly Algorithm
  • Cuckoo Search
  • Hybrid Methods

Resources:

  • Slides
  • Chapter 9 and Appendix of [KW]

March 13: Exercise 4