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

abtin
page 20: … protoc command… I had to additionally run the following go get commands in order to be able to compile protobuf code using go...
New
hgkjshegfskef
The test is as follows: Scenario: Intersecting a scaled sphere with a ray Given r ← ray(point(0, 0, -5), vector(0, 0, 1)) And s ← sphere...
New
Charles
In general, the book isn’t yet updated for Phoenix version 1.6. On page 18 of the book, the authors indicate that an auto generated of ro...
New
brunogirin
When trying to run tox in parallel as explained on page 151, I got the following error: tox: error: argument -p/–parallel: expected one...
New
brunogirin
When running tox for the first time, I got the following error: ERROR: InterpreterNotFound: python3.10 I realised that I was running ...
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
hazardco
On page 78 the following code appears: <%= link_to ‘Destroy’, product, class: ‘hover:underline’, method: :delete, data: { confirm...
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
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
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

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Machine learning can be intimidating, with its reliance on math and algorithms that most programmers don't encounter in their regular wor...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you’ll go beyond the syntax—and...
New
AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
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
dimitarvp
Small essay with thoughts on macOS vs. Linux: I know @Exadra37 is just waiting around the corner to scream at me “I TOLD YOU SO!!!” but I...
New
AstonJ
Continuing the discussion from Thinking about learning Crystal, let’s discuss - I was wondering which languages don’t GC - maybe we can c...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: Peter Ullrich @PJUllrich Data is at the core of every business, but it is useless if nobody can access and analyze ...
New
New
New

Sub Categories: