Let’s say you have a function and you want to optimize it. In real life, this function can take many forms like choosing the right set of features for your car while keep the price low, picking the best possible apartment considering all the different factors like location, rent, closeness to stores etc, making a business plan, and many other things. In fact, we continuously use optimization in our everyday life without even realizing it. The interesting thing to note is that we don’t get the most optimal answer every time. We just look around for a while and stop when we get a good enough answer. More often than not, these answers are sub-optimal, mostly depending on the initial point we chose. So how do we get to the best answer? There might be billions of options, do we need check all of them to get to this global optimum? Continue reading “The Genesis Of Genetic Algorithms”
Tag: Stochastic
Probabilistic Randomness Of Stochasticity
Do you see what I did with the title there? Anyway, you must have heard the term ‘probability’ being used around you. People use it in different contexts and in different forms – “What is the probability that Spain will win the next world cup?” or “I will probably finish reading the book by midnight” or “It’s quite probable that she won’t return until tomorrow”. When people talk about probability as a mathematical concept, all they think of is the percentage chance of something happening. But is that all there is to it? If that is the case, then why did they have to dedicate an entire branch of study to this? Probability theory is much more than just calculating the likeliness of something happening. It’s used almost everywhere, by almost everyone, for almost everything. Surprised? Well let’s find out then. Continue reading “Probabilistic Randomness Of Stochasticity”