This essential metaheuristics tutorial provides descriptions and practical applications in the area of business analytics. It addresses key problems in predictive and prescriptive analysis, while also illustrating how problems that arise in business analytics can be modelled and how metaheuristics can be used to find high-quality solutions. Readers will be introduced to decision-making problems for which metaheuristics offer the most effective solution technique. The book not only shows business problem modelling on a spreadsheet but also how to design and create a Visual Basic for Applications code. Extra Material can be downloaded at http://extras.springer.com/978-3-319-68117-7.

The third edition of this handbook is designed to provide a broad coverage of the concepts, implementations, and applications in metaheuristics. The book’s chapters serve as stand-alone presentations giving both the necessary underpinnings as well as practical guides for implementation. The nature of metaheuristics invites an analyst to modify basic methods in response to problem characteristics, past experiences, and personal preferences, and the chapters in this handbook are designed to facilitate this process as well. This new edition has been fully revised and features new chapters on swarm intelligence and automated design of metaheuristics from flexible algorithm frameworks. The authors who have contributed to this volume represent leading figures from the metaheuristic community and are responsible for pioneering contributions to the fields they write about. Their collective work has significantly enriched the field of optimization in general and combinatorial optimization in particular.Metaheuristics are solution methods that orchestrate an interaction between local improvement procedures and higher level strategies to create a process capable of escaping from local optima and performing a robust search of a solution space. In addition, many new and exciting developments and extensions have been observed in the last few years. Hybrids of metaheuristics with other optimization techniques, like branch-and-bound, mathematical programming or constraint programming are also increasingly popular. On the front of applications, metaheuristics are now used to find high-quality solutions to an ever-growing number of complex, ill-defined real-world problems, in particular combinatorial ones. This handbook should continue to be a great reference for researchers, graduate students, as well as practitioners interested in metaheuristics.

Cognitive Big Data Intelligence with a Metaheuristic Approach presents an exact and compact organization of content relating to the latest metaheuristics methodologies based on new challenging big data application domains and cognitive computing. The combined model of cognitive big data intelligence with metaheuristics methods can be used to analyze emerging patterns, spot business opportunities, and take care of critical process-centric issues in real-time. Various real-time case studies and implemented works are discussed in this book for better understanding and additional clarity. This book presents an essential platform for the use of cognitive technology in the field of Data Science. It covers metaheuristic methodologies that can be successful in a wide variety of problem settings in big data frameworks. - Provides a unique opportunity to present the work on the state-of-the-art of metaheuristics approach in the area of big data processing developing automated and intelligent models - Explains different, feasible applications and case studies where cognitive computing can be successfully implemented in big data analytics using metaheuristics algorithms - Provides a snapshot of the latest advances in the contribution of metaheuristics frameworks in cognitive big data applications to solve optimization problems

Optimization techniques have developed into a significant area concerning industrial, economics, business, and financial systems. With the development of engineering and financial systems, modern optimization has played an important role in service-centered operations and as such has attracted more attention to this field. Meta-heuristic hybrid optimization is a newly development mathematical framework based optimization technique. Designed by logicians, engineers, analysts, and many more, this technique aims to study the complexity of algorithms and problems. Meta-Heuristics Optimization Algorithms in Engineering, Business, Economics, and Finance explores the emerging study of meta-heuristics optimization algorithms and methods and their role in innovated real world practical applications. This book is a collection of research on the areas of meta-heuristics optimization algorithms in engineering, business, economics, and finance and aims to be a comprehensive reference for decision makers, managers, engineers, researchers, scientists, financiers, and economists as well as industrialists.

Contains case studies from engineering and operations research Includes commented literature for each chapter

This book exemplifies how algorithms are developed by mimicking nature. Classical techniques for solving day-to-day problems is time-consuming and cannot address complex problems. Metaheuristic algorithms are nature-inspired optimization techniques for solving real-life complex problems. This book emphasizes the social behaviour of insects, animals and other natural entities, in terms of converging power and benefits. Major nature-inspired algorithms discussed in this book include the bee colony algorithm, ant colony algorithm, grey wolf optimization algorithm, whale optimization algorithm, firefly algorithm, bat algorithm, ant lion optimization algorithm, grasshopper optimization algorithm, butterfly optimization algorithm and others. The algorithms have been arranged in chapters to help readers gain better insight into nature-inspired systems and swarm intelligence. All the MATLAB codes have been provided in the appendices of the book to enable readers practice how to solve examples included in all sections. This book is for experts in Engineering and Applied Sciences, Natural and Formal Sciences, Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Business Analytics for Decision Making, the first complete text suitable for use in introductory Business Analytics courses, establishes a national syllabus for an emerging first course at an MBA or upper undergraduate level. This timely text is mainly about model analytics, particularly analytics for constrained optimization. It uses implementations that allow students to explore models and data for the sake of discovery, understanding, and decision making. Business analytics is about using data and models to solve various kinds of decision problems. There are three aspects for those who want to make the most of their analytics: encoding, solution design, and post-solution analysis. This textbook addresses all three. Emphasizing the use of constrained optimization models for decision making, the book concentrates on post-solution analysis of models. The text focuses on computationally challenging problems that commonly arise in business environments. Unique among business analytics texts, it emphasizes using heuristics for solving difficult optimization problems important in business practice by making best use of methods from Computer Science and Operations Research. Furthermore, case studies and examples illustrate the real-world applications of these methods. The authors supply examples in Excel®, GAMS, MATLAB®, and OPL. The metaheuristics code is also made available at the book's website in a documented library of Python modules, along with data and material for homework exercises. From the beginning, the authors emphasize analytics and de-emphasize representation and encoding so students will have plenty to sink their teeth into regardless of their computer programming experience.