Talk:Ant colony optimization algorithms

Systems Unassessed Low‑importance

	Systems science portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Systems, which collaborates on articles related to systems and systems science.SystemsWikipedia:WikiProject SystemsTemplate:WikiProject SystemsSystems
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is not associated with a particular field. Fields are listed on the template page.

related methods

I suggest to move the related methods section to the "combinatorial optimization" article, also including a short description for ACO.

algorithm

This article would benefit from a description of the algorithm in Dorigo's paper, in addition to the high-level overview. I can't find information on the implentation of this algorithm anywhere. Twelvethirteen 08:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neural networks

Is there any non-trivial difference between ACO and neural networks?

They're fundamentally different creatures altogether.

ACO is population-based, ANNs are not.

ACO is specifically for graph-based problems (or problems which can be converted into graph/decision problems); ANN is more akin to a mathematical function.

ANN typically trains via BackProp and gradient descent; via computing errors and filtering those errors back. ACO essentially balances numerous greedy aspects with eachother, premised upon a series of continuous values that have no direct connection to 'errors' at all.

ACO could easily be used (and has been used) to train a neural network, but I can't conceive of any way that an ANN could ever 'train' an ACO or ACS. 139.57.100.104 (talk) 02:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update References

Should the references on this article be updated to follow general Wikipedia style guidelines? --Jeffrey Sharkey 18:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

external links

add http://whoyouknow.co.uk/ants/ - currently in progress computer science bsc project investigating ant behaviour and its uses in computing, implemented using java.

Knapsack Picture

There is no foundation for the knapsack problem caption and image in this article. While it might be relevant, there is insufficient context to support it at present. If this is meant to be an extension of TSP-like problems, that extension should be stated explicitly somewhere in the article. 70.247.162.64 (talk) 03:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]