Efficiency describes the rate at which improvement occurs relative to the termination point.
Effectiveness measures the level of optimization of the best design found.
Efficiency and effectiveness are compared graphically in Figure 2.5, Curve A is more efficient than Curve B although they are equally effective after X iterations. Therefore the optimization system developed in this research will be compared with other techniques by comparing the scope of this system with other systems. Then the primary performance metric will be the efficiency of this research's optimization system in determining the optimum of benchmark problems, which will be compared directly against the best performances found in the literature. The effectiveness metric will also be compared to the results found in the literature. Table 2.2 compares the scope and efficiency of the optimization method categories described in Section 2.4.4 .