gmlewis

gmlewis

Genetic Algorithms in Elixir: Some feedback, a question and suggestion

@seanmor5 - This is a great book so far… I’m enjoying reading and coding along with it!

Quick question, though - since “evaluate” goes to the trouble of calling the “fitness_function” and generating an updated list of Chromosomes with the new calculated “fitness” values in the struct, instead of ending the function with this (where it has to call the “fitness_function” a bunch more times):

 |> Enum.sort_by(fitness_function, &>=/2)

why not end it with this (in order to use these pre-calculated values)?

|> Enum.sort_by(& &1.fitness, &>=/2)

Also, I’m kinda sad that you dismissed the tree-type genetic programming like John Koza did in the 60s and 70s (to generate electronic circuits and a whole bunch of other cool stuff), but that is a huge topic in itself. Also, I’m extremely interested in Gene Expression Programming invented by Dr. Candida Ferreira, but that is also tree-type.

Anyway, thanks for the great book, and I look forward to your updates!

– Glenn

Marked As Solved

seanmor5

seanmor5

Author of Genetic Algorithms in Elixir

Good catch! I think that’s the result of me forgetting to update the call to sort_by after I added in the fitness calculation for each chromosome. I’ll make sure that gets fixed.

I thought a lot about whether or not to include some examples of Genetic Programing and other tree-type methods. Ultimately I thought it might have been a lot of overhead just to get a simple example up and running and I was trying to cover a lot of ground without getting too carried away with any one topic. I was also trying to make sure the topics built on top of one another and felt like a dive into tree-based encodings and their applications would have been too much of a detour from the progression of the book.

Now that you mention it I think a dive into tree-based encoding schemes would make for an excellent supplement to the book. I’ll put something together and release it on my blog for anybody who’s interested.

Also Liked

seanmor5

seanmor5

Author of Genetic Algorithms in Elixir

Thanks for the suggestion. It’s in my profile. Not much content…yet.

gmlewis

gmlewis

Awesome! Can you please provide a link to your blog? I don’t remember seeing it in the book (yet).

Also, just for kicks, you might enjoy checking out my early attempts of Gene Express Programming (in Go) from a few years back: GitHub - gmlewis/gep: Gene Expression Programming in Go

– Glenn

AstonJ

AstonJ

You could add it to your profile as well Sean :+1:

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

yulkin
your book suggests to use Image.toByteData() to convert image to bytes, however I get the following error: "the getter ‘toByteData’ isn’t...
New
simonpeter
When I try the command to create a pair of migration files I get an error. user=> (create-migration "guestbook") Execution error (Ill...
New
lirux
Hi Jamis, I think there’s an issue with a test on chapter 6. I own the ebook, version P1.0 Feb. 2019. This test doesn’t pass for me: ...
New
jdufour
Hello! On page xix of the preface, it says there is a community forum "… for help if your’re stuck on one of the exercises in this book… ...
New
herminiotorres
Hi! I know not the intentions behind this narrative when called, on page XI: mount() |> handle_event() |> render() but the correc...
New
jskubick
I’m under the impression that when the reader gets to page 136 (“View Data with the Database Inspector”), the code SHOULD be able to buil...
New
dsmith42
Hey there, I’m enjoying this book and have learned a few things alredayd. However, in Chapter 4 I believe we are meant to see the “>...
New
akraut
The markup used to display the uploaded image results in a Phoenix.LiveView.HTMLTokenizer.ParseError error. lib/pento_web/live/product_l...
New
taguniversalmachine
It seems the second code snippet is missing the code to set the current_user: current_user: Accounts.get_user_by_session_token(session["...
New
tkhobbes
After some hassle, I was able to finally run bin/setup, now I have started the rails server but I get this error message right when I vis...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
If it’s a mechanical keyboard, which switches do you have? Would you recommend it? Why? What will your next keyboard be? Pics always w...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Write Elixir tests that you can be proud of. Dive into Elixir’s test philosophy and gain mastery over the terminology and concepts that u...
New
AstonJ
What chair do you have while working… and why? Is there a ‘best’ type of chair or working position for developers?
New
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rails 7 completely redefines what it means to produce fantastic user experiences and provides a way to achieve all the benefits of single...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Jamis Buck @jamis This month, we have the pleasure of spotlighting author Jamis Buck, who has written Mazes for Prog...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Programming Ruby is the most complete book on Ruby, covering both the language itself and the standard library as well as commonly used t...
New
CommunityNews
A Brief Review of the Minisforum V3 AMD Tablet. Update: I have created an awesome-minisforum-v3 GitHub repository to list information fo...
New
AstonJ
This is a very quick guide, you just need to: Download LM Studio: https://lmstudio.ai/ Click on search Type DeepSeek, then select the o...
New

Sub Categories: