Harmony Search Algorithm: a Jazz Legacy
August 6, 2011
Will you Harry Me? describes an unusual algorithm in “Neat algorithms—Harmony Search.” It’s based on principles of jazz musicians. What could be better?
The write up explains:
“The central idea is that when trying to solve some given optimization problem, you have some set of input variables that can be evaluated for their quality, and you want to know what inputs produce the best quality. Metaheuristic algorithms try to find this global optimum using some strategy which is better than brute force. For problems where it is hard to decipher why changing an input changes the quality (and thus the optimal solution isn’t very obvious), these algorithms are extremely useful. Harmony search and its siblings in this category do not guarantee that the globally optimal solution will be found, but often they do find it, and they are often much more efficient than an exhaustive brute force search of all input combinations.”
The article includes a nifty demo that illustrates the concept. It also provides Coffeescript code examples.
Writer Harry Brundage provides an example of a problem with which harmony search help: he needs to know how much time he should spend studying and how much sleeping in order to get the best grade possible. The results are shown as a heat map. If you are a tech type, you may want to click and explore.
Cynthia Murrell, August 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
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