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Search Methodologies pp 451–476Cite as

Sharpened and Focused No Free Lunch and Complexity Theory

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Abstract

This tutorial reviews basic concepts in complexity theory, as well as various No Free Lunch results and how these results relate to computational complexity. The tutorial explains basic concepts in an informal fashion that illuminates key concepts. “No Free Lunch” theorems for search can be summarized by the following result:

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Darrell Whitley

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  1. Darrell Whitley
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom

    Edmund K. Burke

  2. Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Nottingham, Malaysia & UK, Semenyih, Malaysia

    Graham Kendall

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Whitley, D. (2014). Sharpened and Focused No Free Lunch and Complexity Theory. In: Burke, E., Kendall, G. (eds) Search Methodologies. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6940-7_16

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