Applied Evolutionary Algorithms in Java [Hardcover]

Robert Ghanea-Hercock (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0387955682 | ISBN-13: 978-0387955681 | Publication Date: April 30, 2003 | Edition: 1

This book is intended for students, researchers, and professionals interested in evolutionary algorithms at graduate and postgraduate level. No mathematics beyond basic algebra and Cartesian graphs methods is required, as the aim is to encourage applying the JAVA toolkit to develop an appreciation of the power of these techniques.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews: "The book of Ghaenea Hercock gives a good overview of many artificial intelligence approaches, developed in the course of the years. … Students and computer scientists, who look for an overview of evolutionary algorithms, will receive a well readable composition of the most important procedures." (W. Brecht, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol.1041 (16), 2004) "This succinct volume from Springer aims to provide an introduction to evolutionary algorithms (both genetic algorithms and genetic programming) from an application point of view, with specific emphasis on the use of the Java programming language. The latter emphasis marks out the book from other more general introductions to the subject … . In all this is a useful introduction to a fascinating subject. … it serves as a useful adjunct for those interested in applications and/or Java implementations." (TechBookReport, October, 2003)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (April 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387955682
• ISBN-13: 978-0387955681
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,048,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Algorithms > Genetic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not what you would expect, June 8, 2003

By 

Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Applied Evolutionary Algorithms in Java (Hardcover)

Java being the choice language for enterprise no-bs concrete applications I was expecting a practical viewpoint and a hands-on approach in this book. It turns out this skimpy booklet is
more of a an extended paper, something like a thesis with no practical value ( and hence no value at all). It won't teach you neither GA algorithms nor how to use Java to code them. The Java
word was put in to fool buyers exploiting the Java marketing wave. The only java GA algorithm presented in this book is in appendix B.... can it get worse than this?

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't be fooled by the pompous title !, May 23, 2004

By 

Emre Celebi (TX, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Applied Evolutionary Algorithms in Java (Hardcover)

I completely agree with the previous reviewers. In fact, I found their criticism rather light. On the back cover, the book is presented as an introductory book with pratical emphasis. Although the book is very easy to follow (reading it cover to cover takes about 2-3 hours), it's definitely not at an introductory level. It covers basic material on GA & GP without sufficient detail. Furthermore, the design of the book is terrible. The author has allocated 105 pages to bibliography and appendices (the book has 225 pages). Therefore, the core material occupies only 120 pages. Moreover, the 2 chapters about GA and GP are totally 30 pages long ! The remaining 90 pages are about some not-so-interesting applications and future directions in EC. The bibliography is not at the end of the book. This makes following the references rather frustrating.

I've read/browsed at least 10 books on GA/EC. This is definitely the worst one. I recommend Eiben & Smith's "Introduction to Evolutionary Computing" and Michalewicz & Fogel's "How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics" to everyone interested in GA/EC.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mitigated, May 29, 2003

By 

Steve Uhlig (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Applied Evolutionary Algorithms in Java (Hardcover)

i'm not sure this book is a good idea to start with evolutionary algorithms. The treatment it provides is certainly of an acceptable level, but it is too short to provide a deep understanding of how genetic algorithms work. If you want to understand how GAs work, Goldberg is THE place where to start. The code there is in Pascal, but frankly i don't see the advantage of Java for coding evolutionary algorithms for the first time. Maybe only after one has mastered the internals of genetic algorithms one can go to Java for advanced evolutionary algorithms for more complex tasks. One has first to understand well how data structures and operators work with a rather low-level language (C or C++), and then use Java for higher-level algorithms.

So although the content of this book is not bad at all, i'm not sure it's well-suited for newcomers, and for advanced people the material is too simple for bringing something new. The only contribution of this book from my viewpoint is the large number of websites where evolutionary code is available.