Flower Pollination Algorithm for Global Optimization

Flower Pollination Algorithm for Global Optimization - Xin-She Yang 2013 The last of the optimisation algorithms we'll look at for now, today's paper is the most recent (2013) and also by Xin-She Yang. Once more, we only get comparisons to genetic algorithms and PSO, and once more the comparison is favourable. In many design applications … Continue reading Flower Pollination Algorithm for Global Optimization

Firefly Algorithms for Multimodal Optimization

Firefly Algorithms for Multimodal Optimization - Xin-She Yang, 2010 This is the third post in a mini-series on nature-inspired optimisation algorithms. The flashing light of fireflies is an amazing sight in the summer sky in the tropical and temperate regions. There are about two thousand firefly species, and most fireflies produce short and rhythmic flashes. … Continue reading Firefly Algorithms for Multimodal Optimization

Ant Algorithms for Discrete Optimization

Ant Algorithms for Discrete Optimization - Dorigo et al. 1999 It's the emergent behaviour in nature-inspired algorithms that excites me. Ant colonies provide a great example: although each individual ant is in principle capable of finding a solution, it is only the ensemble of ants - that is, the ant colony - that exhibits optimisation … Continue reading Ant Algorithms for Discrete Optimization

Particle Swarm Optimization

Particle Swarm Optimization - Kennedy & Eberhart 1995 What do flocks of birds, schools of fish, ant colonies, bat echo-location, firefly flashlights, cuckoos, and flower-pollination all have in common? They've all inspired optimisation algorithms! I've been perusing Xin-She Yang's book on Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms and thought it might be fun to make a mini-series out … Continue reading Particle Swarm Optimization

Efficient Algorithms for Public-Private Social Networks

Efficient Algorithms for Public-Private Social Networks - Chierichetti et al. 2015 Today's choice won a best paper award at KDD'15. The authors examine a number of algorithms for computing graph (network) measures in the context of social networks that enable private groups and connections. These are characterised by a large public graph G=(V,E), and for … Continue reading Efficient Algorithms for Public-Private Social Networks

Asynchronous Distributed Snapshots for Distributed Dataflows

Asynchronous Distributed Snapshots for Distributed Dataflows - Carbone et al. 2015 The team behind Apache Flink and data Artisans are a smart group of folks. Their recent blog post on High-throughput, low-latency, and exactly-once stream processing with Apache Flink is well worth reading and has a good description of the evolution of streaming architectures, the … Continue reading Asynchronous Distributed Snapshots for Distributed Dataflows

Cloud Types for Eventual Consistency

Cloud Types for Eventual Consistency - Burckhardt et al. 2012 Providing good programming abstractions for cloud storage, synchronization, and disconnected operation appears crucial to accelerate the production of useful and novel applications on today’s and tomorrow’s mobile devices. This paper proposes a model based on cloud types (which may be integrated with a programming language). … Continue reading Cloud Types for Eventual Consistency