Genetic algorithms, why aren't there more songs written about them? Modern music hasn't caught up with the excitement, yet. And neither has the movie industry. Oh well.
Congratulations, though I'm not exactly sure what you did, precisely...... :embarass:
Michael Crichton did write a book about them called
Prey, but I can see why they're not exactly something you hear about every day. If
Prey gets made into a movie, maybe public interest will increase. If course, some senator will get them banned to keep computers from taking over the world *gasp*!
Essentially, genetic algorithms stimulate 'artificial evolution,' where each potential answer (called a Chromosome) is assigned a 'fitness' value based on how well it solves the problem. Each 'generation' of chromosomes is 'evolved' via random mutation and 'genetic crossover' from the fittest of the 'parent chromosomes.'
It's basically a bunch of programmers trying to be clever and evolve a solution rather than calculate one. The theory is that, since it's inherently unpredictable, the solution can be better or more ingenious than even the creators of the algorithm could predict.
Anyway, it's something that computer science majors like myself think is really cool and everyone else pretends to be interested so they don't hurt out feelings
