Talk:Metaheuristic

message: The timeline includes lots of developments that relate more to genetic algorithms than metaheuristics.  I don't think advances in genetic algorithms are necessarily relevant.  And the timeline doesn't even include Eurisko!
-24.17.243.81 (talk) 00:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Genetic algorithms vs. metaheuristics

message: There are lots of works on heuristic search in Artificial Intelligence
which are not mentioned in the article and definitely belong in it,
including A* and its extensions.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.143.165.77 (talk) 06:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Heuristic search in AI

message: Hi All, I've an undergrad degree in Computer Science. It is incorrect to redirect heuristic algoritm to this page. A heuristic algorithm is any algorithm that one believes typically comes up with a good solution. I'm not sure about this particular term but in context, this discusses a broad class of heuristic algorithms. Heuristic algorithm don't have to be iterative. For example, my undegraduate thesis was on standard bin packing algorithms and the class I was looking at produced a packing in the order that packets arrived. First Fit would be such an algorithm. Its not really the type of algorithm discussed here.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.54.93.18 (talk) 02:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Lachatdelarue (talk) 22:11, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dear Lachatdelarue, thanks! Oleg Alexandrov 23:03, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: Hi All. It is unclear whether some of the text in the article is the writers’ thoughts, or generally accepted fact. As an encyclopedia, citation is necessary to back up arguments. --Daleh 12:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citing sources 

message: This article contains a clear bias against metaheuristic based approaches.  I find the language used is especially emotive and far from an objective description or assessment of the concept.
I also find the final paragraph of the "General criticisms" section to be highly misleading.  Whilst the paragraph is factually correct in its statements regarding continuous non-linear optimisation, it implies these methods should be easily applicable in metaheuristics.  Given that metaheuristics are primarily used for combinatorial optimsation and constraint satisfaction problems where the solution space is discrete I find this to be a highly dubious and un-supported inference.
Axiomaticus 03:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clear bias and misleading discussion 

message: With regard to the comments about spaces deceptive to metaheuristic algorithms, and to the no-free-lunch theorem. The no free lunch theorem applies to all algorithms and all problems, the it is as easy to find a function to fool a second order method, or to cause slow convergence as it is to for any algorithm. 
--87.192.57.3 12:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All that need be said about this topic was said by Phil Wolfe in his famous parody (by "anonymous") of "A universal algorithm for optimization", in Math Prog. c. 1973!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 22:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

text: From the article: "However, when these restrictions are stated at all, they either exclude most applications of interest, or make the problem amenable to specific solution methods that are much more efficient than the meta-heuristic." This seems like a bit of a stretch, how do we know they exclude "most applications of interest"? Criticism is good, but this seems to be totally slating metaheuristics in a possibly unfair way. Maybe I just don't feel right about the "no free lunch" theorem in the first place. All algorithms are not equal - I can easily make an algorithm that's twice as slow as brute force search by purposefully retreading my footsteps in the state space search. Why can't one algorithm be twice as fast as another, for many interesting and realistic problem domains? Destynova (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Free lunch not specific to metaheuristics

message: I agree with Axiomaticus, this article is presented in a very biased manner that would seem to me to be founded in the authors limited perspective on metaheuristic methods. In addition it is not, in my opinion, even factually correct. For instance evaluating the hessian at a particular point in space to obtain a good search direction works very well on some problems, but for others where the search space is non-smooth or discontinuous or for some other reason cannot be approximated using for instance, a taylor series expansion about a point or using some other perturbation methods, the hessian will be difficult to evaluate and may be a very misleading. 
--87.192.57.3 12:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference to Hessian irrelevant? 

message: Something else I cannot understand is the fact, that the inventor of the term "meta-heuristic" with a french quote is linked to an professional NHL player and coach. Sorry, but I cannot believe this. Not because of a lack of intelligence but as a lack of time and interests. 
So please, fulfill the site of the linked "Fred Glover" with his scientific career or correct the link with the right person.
Thanks.  --User: Guest 22:12, 09 May 2009 (MEST)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.109.84.112 (talk)  
* The fake Fred Glover currently referenced is DEAD; the real Fred Glover Fred Glover, a professor at the University of Colorodo, is very much ALIVE and is still pumping out lots of papers.  69.109.41.33 (talk) 18:05, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Found the original article and replaced the translated-to-French and retranslated-from-English-to-French-to-English version with the original English text. No idea how that happened... :P Destynova (talk) 16:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inventor of the term "metaheuristic"

message: This tag was pasted onto the "Timeline" section:
In what sense it is "off-topic"? GA is a metheuristic too, right? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Timeline section

message: Dear All,
This page has had a major update to make it more informative and scientific.
Several items have been removed from the timeline, not because I want to pass judgment on what is a significant contribution and what is not, but because the newer and as of yet unestablished contributions to the research field should at least have proper Wikipedia pages before being added to this list. Please don't use this page as a promotional billboard.
I hope you all like the new page, which took me a long time to make.
Optimering (talk) 13:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major update. 

message: The article contains original research, which is contrary to wikipedia guidelines:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
The relevance of the time-line history can be very easily debated (for me, it is "original research"). The criticism section also does not seem to cite too many references. While almost any wikipedia page could contain such a section, criticism sections do not seem to be very encouraged by the policy of wikipedia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.98.0.99 (talk) 18:04, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the TL is interesting, but some of its more recent stuff (e.g Monkey Search) may need citations to show they aren't vanity links. It also doesn't include the first stochastic work -such as the Monte Carlo method- which are almost a precursor algorithm wise, as they are first optimisation techniques to use randomness as part of the solution. SteveLoughran (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the Time-Line, which was OR. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  original research 

message: I am currently doing a dissertation on metaheuristics and have generally found the 'related pages' section on relevant wiki pages to be largely confusing and poorly organised. Now I have a greater understanding, I have been going around the various pages, this one in particular, and edited the sections to be more uniform, helping the reader to place the topic within its greater context. I hope my edits will be found to be beneficial. Talk or edit otherwise :)
Jr271 (talk) 17:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Updated related links section

message: You write "the work by Trelea,[57] amongst others, for analysis of particle swarm optimization". However Trelea is explicitely starting from
[59] Clerc, M. & Kennedy, J. The particle swarm - explosion, stability, and convergence in a multidimensional complex space IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2002, 6, 58 - 73
Another important work is the thesis
[60] Van den Bergh, F. An Analysis of Particle Swarm Optimizers Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, 2002
which also quotes [59], which indeed seems to be the very first one (and which has been awarded by IEEE TEC).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.229.106.132 (talk) 07:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  About Criticism section 

message: Heuristic (computer science) redirects here but I'm not convinced this is the only thing that can be meant by a heuristic.  Opinions on removing the redirect and placing an article at Heuristic (computer science)? RJFJR (talk) 22:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Heuristic (computer science)]] redirects here 

message: In the past there used to be a large list of metaheuristics, most of which were reputable (like the ant/bee based one).
Rather than add those back into this article, I am adding a link in the also see section for: List of metaheuristics. I merely copied and pasted an older draft from 2013 to preserve much of what was already there. Please help the article in progress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/List_of_Metaheuristics).
:You need to provide reliable sources stating that the contributions were important. The original sources are useful, but they don't establish reliability or notability. Also, lists are notorious for self-promotion problems. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  While some of the metaheuristics are self-promoted, I know for a fact that the ant-colony based meta-heuristic is in several books and you can find it discussed extensively on the Internet. I also know that MOGA is used in Sandia's Dakota Toolkit (http://dakota.sandia.gov/software.html). The article may not be ready to be published as of yet, but I believe that the list could be edited to keep only those that have full-fledged wikipedia pages. Simply removing the information altogether is too drastic and I believe worse than leaving published peer-reviewed research (even if it is "original," it has been peer-reviewed). I do not believe the list should be rejected, but should be refined as there are several good resources and links still available on it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mouse7mouse9 (talk • contribs) 23:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Also, self-promoted research, as long as it is peer-reviewed does not count as original research according to Wikipedia's own definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research). "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. The term 'original research' (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist."Mouse7mouse9 (talk) 23:20, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restoring the list of meta-heuristics on a different page 

message: This English version is largely obsolete, and even sometimes wrong. For example, in the Applications section, it is written: "Metaheuristics are used for combinatorial optimization ". The reader may easily believe that this is the only kind of applications, which is wrong. Many metaheuristics can cope with continuous problems.
Moreover, the most "recent" reference, if I dare say, is 1995, about the No Free Lunch theorem. And not even a pertinent one, as already pointed out here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.229.106.132 (talk) 16:10, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  French version is far more complete  

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018)