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

johnp
Running the examples in chapter 5 c under pytest 5.4.1 causes an AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘config’. In particula...
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
New
swlaschin
The book has the same “Problem space/Solution space” diagram on page 18 as is on page 17. The correct Problem/Solution space diagrams ar...
New
curtosis
Running mix deps.get in the sensor_hub directory fails with the following error: ** (Mix) No SSH public keys found in ~/.ssh. An ssh aut...
New
New
adamwoolhether
Is there any place where we can discuss the solutions to some of the exercises? I can figure most of them out, but am having trouble with...
New
hazardco
On page 78 the following code appears: <%= link_to ‘Destroy’, product, class: ‘hover:underline’, method: :delete, data: { confirm...
New
davetron5000
Hello faithful readers! If you have tried to follow along in the book, you are asked to start up the dev environment via dx/build and ar...
New
dachristenson
I’ve got to the end of Ch. 11, and the app runs, with all tabs displaying what they should – at first. After switching around between St...
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
Stop developing web apps with yesterday’s tools. Today, developers are increasingly adopting Clojure as a web-development platform. See f...
New
Exadra37
I am thinking in building or buy a desktop computer for programing, both professionally and on my free time, and my choice of OS is Linux...
New
brentjanderson
Bought the Moonlander mechanical keyboard. Cherry Brown MX switches. Arms and wrists have been hurting enough that it’s time I did someth...
New
DevotionGeo
I know that -t flag is used along with -i flag for getting an interactive shell. But I cannot digest what the man page for docker run com...
New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
AstonJ
Biggest jackpot ever apparently! :upside_down_face: I don’t (usually) gamble/play the lottery, but working on a program to predict the...
New
foxtrottwist
A few weeks ago I started using Warp a terminal written in rust. Though in it’s current state of development there are a few caveats (tab...
New
Help
I am trying to crate a game for the Nintendo switch, I wanted to use Java as I am comfortable with that programming language. Can you use...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Fight complexity and reclaim the original spirit of agility by learning to simplify how you develop software. The result: a more humane a...
New

Sub Categories: