Meta-Heuristics

Abstract

In this chapter we elaborate on meta-heuristics for optimization from a beginner’s perspective. Basically, we start from scratch to describe the different methodologies and provide the reader with the elements and strategies to build and implement them successfully. Although we describe the adaptation of these meth- ods to the linear ordering problem, we do not limit our descriptions to this problem. Instead, we present all methods in their generic form and then adapt them to the specific case of the LOP. This way, the reader can easily apply these methods to a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems.