Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes

Welcome to Clever Algorithms! This is a handbook of recipes for computational problem solving techniques from the fields of Computational Intelligence, Biologically Inspired Computation, and Metaheuristics. Clever Algorithms are interesting, practical, and fun to learn about and implement. Research scientists may be interested in browsing algorithm inspirations in search of an interesting system or process analogs to investigate. Developers and software engineers may compare various problem solving algorithms and technique-specific guidelines. Practitioners, students, and interested amateurs may implement state-of-the-art algorithms to address business or scientific needs, or simply play with the fascinating systems they represent.

The core of the book provides a large corpus of algorithms presented in a complete and consistent manner. The final chapter covers some advanced topics to consider once a number of algorithms have been mastered. This book has been designed as a reference text, where specific techniques are looked up, or where the algorithms across whole fields of study can be browsed, rather than being read cover-to-cover. This book is an algorithm handbook and a technique guidebook, and I hope you find something useful.

The algorithms described in this work are practical, interesting, and fun, and the goal of this project was to promote these features by making algorithms from the field more accessible, usable, and understandable. This project was developed over a number years through a lot of writing, discussion, and revision. This book has been released under a permissive license that encourages the reader to explore new and creative ways of further communicating its message and content.