I regret to inform you that a committee charged with selecting
school text books for Oklahoma has moved to attach a disclaimer
to any text dealing with evolution to the effect that this is
only an unproven theory.
On a brighter note, I am pleased to report that genetic algorithms
are seeing dramatically increased use in Engineering Design
(outside of Kansas and Oklahoma) with strikingly enhanced and
novel design results.
The GA uses the familiar Darwinian mechanism of culling out design
parametric sets that meet an objective criterion less well, and varying
successive generations by splicing together subsets of the parameters from
surviving design candidate pairs, with a selectable fraction of random
mutations. Dozens to hundreds of generations are normally sufficient
to provide excellent optimizations. This is all the same, a time consuming
process. One to two days of run time have sometimes been noted.
The coding associated with computer implementations is exceptionally
straight-forward. Less than 60 lines of code in any language can provide
a useful Darwinian design functionality which handles real valued
parameters.
Search for web references for DE (Differential Evolution) for
discussions and examples.
Sincerely
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK