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This book provides a handbook of algorithmic recipes from the fields of Metaheuristics, Biologically Inspired Computation and Computational Intelligence that have been described in a complete, consistent, and centralized manner. These standardized descriptions were carefully designed to be accessible, usable, and understandable. Most of the algorithms described in this book were originally inspired by biological and natural systems, such as the adaptive capabilities of genetic evolution and the acquired immune system, and the foraging behaviors of birds, bees, ants and bacteria. An encyclopedic algorithm reference, this book is intended for research scientists, engineers, students, and interested amateurs. Each algorithm description provides a working code example in the Ruby Programming Language.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
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18 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
First off, if you want to look inside this book, there's a free full PDF and online version of the book available on the book's website. The book is about a special breed of AI techniques - stochastic algorithms inspired by real-world metaphors. This means you won't find some things you may expect from a typical AI book, such as state machines, A*, behavioral tree, etc. But, all the topics listed in the book are interesting. The content there is great. There's plenty of topics, the topics that are covered are diverse, and if you want to know more about any one topic, there's a thorough amount of papers and authors/researchers listed per topic.
The presentation of each algorithm states the name of the algorithm, a description of its metaphor, pseudocode, tips on how to parameterize the function for a problem domain, and actual working Ruby code. I didn't know Ruby when I first got the book, but some quick sessions at TryRuby.org and the occasional Google search for an unknown function made reading the code a breeze. There's only a very small handful of code examples that are reused/retrofitted to the chapter's algorithm. So once you fully read and understand an example the first time, all other chapters that reuse that basic code framework for its example can be read through a lot faster. While I'm used to languages like C# and C++ where you have to declare headers and class definitions before you use there member variables, Ruby was a good fit for how the examples are put together because of how nothing needed to be defined before it was used, making the code more compact, but still easy to read. When reading the actual source code though, I recommend reading each function in descending order (read the source bottom to top).
The way the information is organized it pretty convenient too. It felt like it could accommodate people who want to just linearly blast through all the information and chapters in a hurry, people who wanted to take the time to delve into more thorough information, readers who like to jump around from topic to topic as if it was a pick your own adventure book, and individuals who are having trouble understanding a specific algorithm. While most of these AI topics you may associate with advance computer science, such as people with masters or doctorates in AI, it's a moderately easy read. Not for the absolute beginner, but it doesn't require too much prerequisite.
My one beef that totally disappointed me though was the actual physical book itself. I like the content, and I bought the book to throw a little cash towards the author - plus having a physical copy has its advantages. But the glue in the spine of the book kept melting and shifting in warm conditions, to where the left of the pages on one side has slowly over time shifted an inch into the back back of the cover away from the spine. Now I can't open it up to read unless I'm willing the snap the pages apart just to open the book up all the way.
Anyways, if you're on the fence about the book, the full versions can be found hosted by the author at CleverAlgorithms.com.
The presentation of each algorithm states the name of the algorithm, a description of its metaphor, pseudocode, tips on how to parameterize the function for a problem domain, and actual working Ruby code. I didn't know Ruby when I first got the book, but some quick sessions at TryRuby.org and the occasional Google search for an unknown function made reading the code a breeze. There's only a very small handful of code examples that are reused/retrofitted to the chapter's algorithm. So once you fully read and understand an example the first time, all other chapters that reuse that basic code framework for its example can be read through a lot faster. While I'm used to languages like C# and C++ where you have to declare headers and class definitions before you use there member variables, Ruby was a good fit for how the examples are put together because of how nothing needed to be defined before it was used, making the code more compact, but still easy to read. When reading the actual source code though, I recommend reading each function in descending order (read the source bottom to top).
The way the information is organized it pretty convenient too. It felt like it could accommodate people who want to just linearly blast through all the information and chapters in a hurry, people who wanted to take the time to delve into more thorough information, readers who like to jump around from topic to topic as if it was a pick your own adventure book, and individuals who are having trouble understanding a specific algorithm. While most of these AI topics you may associate with advance computer science, such as people with masters or doctorates in AI, it's a moderately easy read. Not for the absolute beginner, but it doesn't require too much prerequisite.
My one beef that totally disappointed me though was the actual physical book itself. I like the content, and I bought the book to throw a little cash towards the author - plus having a physical copy has its advantages. But the glue in the spine of the book kept melting and shifting in warm conditions, to where the left of the pages on one side has slowly over time shifted an inch into the back back of the cover away from the spine. Now I can't open it up to read unless I'm willing the snap the pages apart just to open the book up all the way.
Anyways, if you're on the fence about the book, the full versions can be found hosted by the author at CleverAlgorithms.com.
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