Survey

Answers to Survey on Evolutionary Computation

Questions by Una-May to CSSS 2007 Students

What is your knowledge/experience level with respect to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary strategies, evolutionary programming, particle swarm optimization, BOA, hBOA, grammatical evolution or any other Evolutionary Algorithm? Responses might be one of expert, knowledgeble, ignorant and one of develop, use, don't use for each of these.

• For all of the above the answers are either ignorant or don’t use. As a

sociologist I have little knowledge of evloutionary theory or algorithms.

• Ignorant
• ignorant
• Ignorant, and as a result don't use
• I am familiar with the general concepts of evolutionary algorithms but

ignorant of the specifics: software, programming, and particular applications.

• No experience with any of the techniques described.
• I am familiar with general concepts - basic definitions and background from population genetics and statistical mechanics. I would be glad to see analytic approaches and insights why does a particular system of rules perform and what are the most viable systems of rules. So, in one word, I am between ignorant and knowledgeable.
• ignorant
• I am incredibly ignorant of evolutionary algorithms but very eager to learn.

How you have used or anticipate using evolutionary computation in your field of research?

• I am very interested in the conceptualization of social communities as

systems that evolve over time. I am especially interested in thinking of ways to utilize evolutionary computation concepts and methods over social networks as a means to understand the processes that underscore the social evolution of groups, cultures and technologies.

• Don't use

• Social Scientist / Philosopher. Hard to say, maybe search for strategies in large games

• I have not, but I anticipate that it would be a useful tool.
• I am interested in economics, particularly in developing countries. My hope is to come out of this program with some

rudimentary skills for developing models of specific economic problems.

• I think this could be a powerful tool for looking at ecological questions that are of interest to me, especially in making sense of data on multi-scale habitat selection in animals.

• Have not used. I deal with stochastic self-assembly in Biology. I certainly anticipate using the models as toy models of cellular processes. Moreover, evolutionary comp. is an important concept that I would want to master.
• don't use

Are there any topics or concepts in evolutionary algorithms that are burning a hole in your head that you'd like me to cover?

• I am a novice to the field and would like to cover as much ground as

possible with a view to concepts that can be applicable to fields outside evolutionary computation per se.

• no, but I'm hoping for an interesting introduction and to get an idea how it is used.

• Just a general introduction would be great.
• I don't know enough to have specific questions. I'd be especially interested in hearing about any special issues associated with modeling hierarchical processes or understanding processes occurring at multiple scales.
• My background is in ecological and molecular biology with little programming experience (mostly just using numerical solvers in MATLAB). I have a strong background in genetics and evolutionary biology, and I will be doing some genome comparisons and looking for conserved promoter elements. I would like to know how I can implement the most efficient and statistically rigorous algorithms to make cases for homology and divergence between genomic sequence data.

Other Comments

• I think you will find two groups of responses: one from students with

programming experience, and another from those without.