Interested in the Genetic Algorithm? Simulated Annealing? Ant Colony Optimization? Essentials of Metaheuristics covers these and other metaheuristics algorithms, and is intended for undergraduate students, programmers, and non-experts. The book covers a wide range of algorithms, representations, selection and modification operators, and related topics, and includes 71 figures and 135 algorithms great and small. Algorithms include: Gradient Ascent techniques, Hill-Climbing variants, Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search variants, Iterated Local Search, Evolution Strategies, the Genetic Algorithm, the Steady-State Genetic Algorithm, Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Programming variants, One- and Two-Population Competitive Coevolution, N-Population Cooperative Coevolution, Implicit Fitness Sharing, Deterministic Crowding, NSGA-II, SPEA2, GRASP, Ant Colony Optimization variants, Guided Local Search, LEM, PBIL, UMDA, cGA, BOA, SAMUEL, ZCS, XCS, and XCSF.

Kenneth Rexroth called Denise Levertov (1923–1997) "the most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, . . . and the most moving." Author of twenty-four volumes of poetry, four books of essays, and several translations, Levertov became a lauded and honored poet. Born in England, she published her first book of poems at age twenty-three, but it was not until she married and came to the United States in 1948 that she found her poetic voice, helped by the likes of William Carlos Williams, Robert Duncan, and Robert Creeley. Shortly before her death in 1997, the woman who claimed no country as home was nominated to be America's poet laureate. Levertov was the quintessential romantic. She wanted to live vividly, intensely, passionately, and on a grand scale. She wanted the persistence of Cézanne and the depth and generosity of Rilke. Once she acclimated herself to America, the dreamy lyric poetry of her early years gave way to the joy and wonder of ordinary life. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, her poems began to engage the issues of her times. Vehement and strident, her poetry of protest was both acclaimed and criticized. The end of both the Vietnam War and her marriage left her mentally fatigued and emotionally fragile, but gradually, over the span of a decade, she emerged with new energy. The crystalline and luminous poetry of her last years stands as final witness to a lifetime of searching for the mystery embedded in life itself. Through all the vagaries of life and art, her response was that of a "primary wonder." In this illuminating biography, Dana Greene examines Levertov's interviews, essays, and self-revelatory poetry to discern the conflict and torment she both endured and created in her attempts to deal with her own psyche, her relationships with family, friends, lovers, colleagues, and the times in which she lived. Denise Levertov: A Poet's Life is the first complete biography of Levertov, a woman who claimed she did not want a biography, insisting that it was her work that she hoped would endure. And yet she confessed that her poetry in its various forms--lyric, political, natural, and religious--derived from her life experience. Although a substantial body of criticism has established Levertov as a major poet of the later twentieth century, this volume represents the first attempt to set her poetry within the framework of her often tumultuous life.

The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.

"In Young's work, the big essential questions—mortality, identity, the meaning of life—aren't simply food for thought; they're grounds for entertainment."—Toronto Star "Surrealism seldom seems as much like real life as in Young's hilarious and cautionary poems."—Booklist Bender gathers a generous selection of new work along with treasure from Dean Young's twelve volumes. Strongly influenced by Surrealism, Dean Young's poems flash with extravagant imagery, humorous speech, sly views of the quotidian, and the exposed nerves of heartache. As the American Academy of Arts and Letters raved, "Young's poems are as entertaining as a three-ring circus and as imaginative as a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch. He is one of the most inventive and satisfying poets writing today." From "Even Funnnier Looking Now": If someone had asked me then, Do you suffer from the umbrage of dawn's dark race horses, is your heart a prisoner of raindrops? Hell yes! I would have said or No way! Never would I have said, What could you possibly be talking about? I had just gotten to the twentieth century like a leftover girder from the Eiffel Tower. My Indian name was Pressure-Per-Square-Inch. I knew I was made of glass but I didn't yet know what glass was made of: hot sand inside me like pee going all the wrong directions, probably into my heart which I knew was made of gold foil glued to dust . . .

The first complete overview of evolutionary computing, the collective name for a range of problem-solving techniques based on principles of biological evolution, such as natural selection and genetic inheritance. The text is aimed directly at lecturers and graduate and undergraduate students. It is also meant for those who wish to apply evolutionary computing to a particular problem or within a given application area. The book contains quick-reference information on the current state-of-the-art in a wide range of related topics, so it is of interest not just to evolutionary computing specialists but to researchers working in other fields.

Practice Pinyin pronunciation and tone of any Mandarin syllable. Over 2000 practice examples in addition to historical tone development. Introduction to Pinyin Consonants and Vowels with IPA transcriptions • 35 Lessons practicing 385 syllables in each of 5 tones: pinyin with IPA transcriptions • 16 Lessons practicing 1082 words with 2-syllable tone combinations • 64 Lessons practicing 2048 words with 3-syllable tone combinations What's Inside • Traditional and Simplified side by side • Pinyin spelling of each entry • Middle Chinese tone class to help you transfer to Cantonese, et al • Characters in 入 tone category have -p, -t, -k, -c superscript to assist transfer to Cantonese, et al Sign up and start a 7-day free trial: ✓ iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/app/glossika-language-learning/id1597902556 ✓ Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glossika.ai (* You can also download this ebook for free here: https://ai.glossika.com/free-download)

Winner of the Believer Book Award The triumphant follow-up collection to The Game of Boxes, winner of the James Laughlin Award Catherine Barnett’s tragicomic third collection, Human Hours, shuttles between a Whitmanian embrace of others and a kind of rapacious solitude. Barnett speaks from the middle of hope and confusion, carrying philosophy into the everyday. Watching a son become a young man, a father become a restless beloved shell, and a country betray its democratic ideals, the speakers try to make sense of such departures. Four lyric essays investigate the essential urge and appeal of questions that are “accursed,” that are limited—and unanswered—by answers. What are we to do with the endangered human hours that remain to us? Across the leaps and swerves of this collection, the fevered mind tries to slow—or at least measure—time with quiet bravura: by counting a lover’s breaths; by remembering a father’s space-age watch; by envisioning the apocalyptic future while bedding down on a hard, cold floor, head resting on a dictionary. Human Hours pulses with the absurd, with humor that accompanies the precariousness of the human condition.