ANN: pygene - genetic algorithms package

[Peter Hansen]

Erik Max Francis wrote:
> You're not replying to me, but I'm the one that elicited that comment. 
> (I was originally asking the question because I misinterpreted the first 
> sentence of his announcement about pygene to mean that pygene was a 
> genetic programming system, but that was never his claim.)
> 
> A genetic algorithm involves manipulating "programs" which consist of a 
> fixed amount of homogeneous data, for instance, an array of neural 
> network weights, or the coefficients to an equation.  Genetic 
> programming involves manipulating general programs, usually as some form 
> of tree.  The classic model for genetic programming, from Koza, is where 
> the programs to be manipulated are Lisp s-expressions.

Okay, good, I already knew all that then, except perhaps that key word 
"fixed".

Perhaps I've long been using the wrong label, but I've been doing what 
I've considered to be "genetic algorithms" and yet working with 
sometimes variable amounts of sometimes heterogeneous data.  I've just 
considered it to be more sophisticated than the "coefficients in an 
equation" class of genetic algorithms, but perhaps I've been operating 
in a gray area between mainstream genetic algorithms and genetic 
programming.

The genomes are certainly not source, nor translatable to source or AST 
or anything resembling such, in any computer language.   Neither, 
however, could they be described as heterogenous, and for some problems 
I've been varying the quantity of genetic material in my genomes.  Thus 
my preoccupation with that "fixed".

-Peter