Optimality

Alvin is back this morning stuffing his cute face with sunflower seeds. He and his bird (and pesky squirrel) friends will provide distraction while I spend the next four days studying for Tuesday's Linear Programming (LP) quiz. I need a really good grade on the quiz to couple with my poor showing on the first one for a decent grade going in to the final exam. When the professor reviewed the material yesterday, I could feel adrenaline or my blood pressure or some other biological effect beginning...I used to be such a good test taker.

I finished the Ant Colony program and for the first time, I was able to reach the optimal solution. That is really exciting for me! I've turned a corner in both understanding and programming. Hurray! I like this paradigm for solving combinatorial problems. It has parameters that can be tweaked based on the particulars of the problem which regulate the amount of randomness and deliberateness of the algorithm. I still need to run the program with professor-specified parameter changes and small programming additions before I actually write up the assignment. That will take a few more hours and I'll do that as a break from LP.

Next week we study our final algorithm--Particle Swarm Optimization. It is based on the behavior of schools of fish or flocks of birds. Sounds like it is right up my alley!