Book Image

Hands-On Genetic Algorithms with Python

By : Eyal Wirsansky
Book Image

Hands-On Genetic Algorithms with Python

By: Eyal Wirsansky

Overview of this book

Genetic algorithms are a family of search, optimization, and learning algorithms inspired by the principles of natural evolution. By imitating the evolutionary process, genetic algorithms can overcome hurdles encountered in traditional search algorithms and provide high-quality solutions for a variety of problems. This book will help you get to grips with a powerful yet simple approach to applying genetic algorithms to a wide range of tasks using Python, covering the latest developments in artificial intelligence. After introducing you to genetic algorithms and their principles of operation, you'll understand how they differ from traditional algorithms and what types of problems they can solve. You'll then discover how they can be applied to search and optimization problems, such as planning, scheduling, gaming, and analytics. As you advance, you'll also learn how to use genetic algorithms to improve your machine learning and deep learning models, solve reinforcement learning tasks, and perform image reconstruction. Finally, you'll cover several related technologies that can open up new possibilities for future applications. By the end of this book, you'll have hands-on experience of applying genetic algorithms in artificial intelligence as well as in numerous other domains.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics of Genetic Algorithms
4
Section 2: Solving Problems with Genetic Algorithms
9
Section 3: Artificial Intelligence Applications of Genetic Algorithms
14
Section 4: Related Technologies

The OneMax problem

The OneMax (or One-Max) problem is a simple optimization task that is often used as the Hello World of genetic algorithm frameworks. We will use this problem for the rest of this chapter to demonstrate how DEAP can be used to implement a genetic algorithm.

The OneMax task is to find the binary string of a given length that maximizes the sum of its digits. For example, the OneMax problem of length 5 will consider candidates such as the following:

  • 10010 (sum of digits = 2)
  • 01110 (sum of digits = 3)
  • 11111 (sum of digits = 5)

Obviously (to us), the solution to this problem is always the string that comprises all 1s. But the genetic algorithm does not have this knowledge, and needs to blindly look for this solution using its genetic operators. If the algorithm does its job, it will find this solution, or at least one close to it, within a reasonable amount of time...