Glossary
Genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithms

Adaptation score; fitness: the objective function optimised by an evolutionary algorithm and used within the selection operator. Also referred to as evaluation or performance function, it need not be continuous or differentiable.

Evolutionary Algorithm (EA): a generic term for heuristics or stochastic optimisation algorithms inspired by the principles of Darwinian evolution.

Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA): an optimisation heuristic operating in continuous (real-valued) search spaces, which evolves a probabilistic model representing the likelihood of locating the optimum within a given region. Successive populations are generated by sampling from this distribution. The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) belongs to this class of methods.

Ant colony algorithms; ant colony optimisation (ACO): a class of population-based...