This course is a survey of the newer, most common adaptive search methods. This undergraduate course with emphasis on self exploration and research. There will be homework assignments, a quiz, an exam and a project. The homework assignments and the project should be done individually. The project can synthesize multiple techniques or be an in depth exploration of one technique using problems and applications are of the student’s choice

The areas of focus will be simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies, tabu search, ant colony methods and particle swarm optimization. Other methods will be briefly covered. Both combinatorial and continuous optimization problems will be considered, with emphasis on combinatorics. The main techniques will be introduced, discussed critically and variations presented.