Programming experience of an equivalent standard to a software development module at SCQF level-9

The module will address:

- Why some problems are hard to solve

- Modern heuristic search methods such as Evolutionary Algorithms, including evolution
strategies; meta-heuristic search techniques such as tabu-search, simulated annealing, iterated local search; ant-colony optimisation; hyper-heuristics and associated methods.

- Appropriate experimental methodologies for testing and analysing emergent computing algorithms.

- Simple statistical methods for evaluating the results.

Upon completion of this module you will be able to:

LO1: Critically evaluate the use of emergent computing algorithms in practical applications

LO2: Critically assess the use of different algorithms in different problem domains

LO3: Specify, customise and use appropriate algorithms for particular practical problems

LO4: Apply an appropriate scientific approach to testing and analysing emergent computing algorithms and be able to use simple statistics to evaluate the results

LO5: Present the results in an appropriate form and draw appropriate conclusions