Recent trends indicate rapid growth of nature-inspired optimization in academia and industry

Although researchers often comment on the popularity of nature-inspired meta-heuristics (NIM), there has been very little empirical data to support the claim that NIM are growing in prominence compared to other optimization techniques. This paper presents strong evidence that the use of NIM is not o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inComputing Vol. 93; no. 2-4; pp. 121 - 133
Main Author Whitacre, James M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Vienna Springer Vienna 01.12.2011
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Algorithms
Appeals
Artificial Intelligence
Bias
Case studies
Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing
Computer Communication Networks
Computer Science
Decision theory
Dynamic programming
Evolution & development
Genetic algorithms
Heuristic
Heuristic methods
Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet)
Integer programming
Keywords
Linear programming
Mathematical models
Mathematical programming
Operations research
Optimization
Optimization techniques
Origins
Popularity
R&D
Research & development
Software Engineering
Studies
Trends
Utilities
Operations research
Decision theory
90
Evolutionary algorithms
Nature-inspired meta-heuristics
Optimization
Mathematical programming
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Summary:Although researchers often comment on the popularity of nature-inspired meta-heuristics (NIM), there has been very little empirical data to support the claim that NIM are growing in prominence compared to other optimization techniques. This paper presents strong evidence that the use of NIM is not only growing, but indeed appears to have surpassed mathematical optimization techniques and other meta-heuristics in several metrics related to academic research activity (publication frequency) and commercial activity (patenting frequency). Motivated by these findings, this article discusses some of the possible origins of this growing popularity including historical bias, conceptual appeal, simplicity of implementation, and algorithm utility.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0010-485X
1436-5057
DOI:10.1007/s00607-011-0154-z