Search results for "Heuristics"
showing 10 items of 191 documents
On Big Data: How should we make sense of them?
2020
The topic of Big Data is today extensively discussed, not only on the technical ground. This also depends on the fact that Big Data are frequently presented as allowing an epistemological paradigm shift in scientific research, which would be able to supersede the traditional hypothesis-driven method. In this piece, I critically scrutinize two key claims that are usually associated with this approach, namely, the fact that data speak for themselves, deflating the role of theories and models, and the primacy of correlation over causation. In so doing, I will also refer to a recent case history of data mining projects in the field of biomedicine, i.e. EXPOsOMICS. My intention is both to acknow…
Combining workload balance and patient priority maximisation in operating room planning through hierarchical multi-objective optimisation
2022
Abstract Previous analysis suggested the opportunity to consider the preferences of different stakeholders (hospital, patients, doctors and nurses) through the adoption of both patient priority maximisation and workload balance as performance criteria. The aim of this paper is to develop an effective and efficient solution approach for the operating room planning and scheduling capable to take into account the patient priority maximisation and workload balance criteria at the same time. This work is inspired by the need of a deeper understanding of the quality of the solutions obtained when a combination of the two criteria leads the OR planning decisions. Starting from a hierarchical multi…
Heuristic Solutions for a Class of Stochastic Uncapacitated p-Hub Median Problems
2019
In this work, we propose a heuristic procedure for a stochastic version of the uncapacitated r-allocation p-hub median problem with nonstop services. In particular, we assume that the number of hubs to which a terminal can be allocated is bounded from above by r. Additionally, we consider the possibility of shipping traffic directly between terminals (nonstop services). Uncertainty is associated with the traffic to be shipped between nodes and with the transportation costs. If we assume that such uncertainty can be captured by a finite set of scenarios, each of which with a probability known in advance, it is possible to develop a compact formulation for the deterministic equivalent proble…
Tabu search for min-max edge crossing in graphs
2020
Abstract Graph drawing is a key issue in the field of data analysis, given the ever-growing amount of information available today that require the use of automatic tools to represent it. Graph Drawing Problems (GDP) are hard combinatorial problems whose applications have been widely relevant in fields such as social network analysis and project management. While classically in GDPs the main aesthetic concern is related to the minimization of the total sum of crossing in the graph (min-sum), in this paper we focus on a particular variant of the problem, the Min-Max GDP, consisting in the minimization of the maximum crossing among all egdes. Recently proposed in scientific literature, the Min…
Orientation matters
2008
The optimal communication spanning tree (OCST) problem is a well known $\mathcal{NP}$-hard combinatorial optimization problem which seeks a spanning tree that satisfies all given communication requirements for minimal total costs. It has been shown that optimal solutions of OCST problems are biased towards the much simpler minimum spanning tree (MST) problem. Therefore, problem-specific representations for EAs like heuristic variants of edge-sets that are biased towards MSTs show high performance.In this paper, additional properties of optimal solutions for Euclidean variants of OCST problems are studied. Experimental results show that not only edges in optimal trees are biased towards low-…
A grid representation for distributed virtual environments
2004
Fast Internet connections and the widespread use of high performance graphic cards are making Distributed Virtual Environments (DVE) very common nowadays. The architecture and behavior of these systems are very similar to new grid computing applications where concepts such as sharing and high scalability are extremely exploited. However, there are several key issues in these systems that should still be improved in order to design a scalable and cost-effective DVE system. One of these key issues is the partitioning problem. This problem consists of efficiently assigning clients (3-D avatars) to the arbiters (servers) in the system. As an alternative to the ad-hoc heuristic proposed in the l…
Continuous reformulations and heuristics for the Euclidean travelling salesperson problem
2008
We consider continuous reformulations of the Euclidean travelling salesperson problem (TSP), based on certain clustering problem formulations. These reformulations allow us to apply a generalisation with perturbations of the Weiszfeld algorithm in an attempt to find local approximate solutions to the Euclidean TSP.
A Fast Algorithm Finding the Shortest Reset Words
2013
In this paper we present a new fast algorithm for finding minimal reset words for finite synchronizing automata, which is a problem appearing in many practical applications. The problem is known to be computationally hard, so our algorithm is exponential in the worst case, but it is faster than the algorithms used so far and it performs well on average. The main idea is to use a bidirectional BFS and radix (Patricia) tries to store and compare subsets. Also a number of heuristics are applied. We give both theoretical and practical arguments showing that the effective branching factor is considerably reduced. As a practical test we perform an experimental study of the length of the shortest …
Efficient Multi-scale Patch-Based Segmentation
2015
The objective of this paper is to devise an efficient and accurate patch-based method for image segmentation. The method presented in this paper builds on the work of Wu et al. [14] with the introduction of a compact multi-scale feature representation and heuristics to speed up the process. A smaller patch representation along with hierarchical pruning allowed the inclusion of more prior knowledge, resulting in a more accurate segmentation. We also propose an intuitive way of optimizing the search strategy to find similar voxel, making the method computationally efficient. An additional approach at improving the speed was explored with the integration of our method with Optimised PatchMatch…
Researching (Algebraic) Problem Solving from the Perspective of Local Theoretical Models
2010
Concepts such as Local Theoretical Model, Mathematical Sign System, logico-semiotic outline, analytical reading, and formal competence model, elaborated within long term research programs developed in Mexico and Spain, are presented. Empirical data from a study carried out in Spain with students of a teacher training school are analyzed using this theoretical framework. The cases analyzed show to which extent the logico-semiotic outline determines the arithmetic or algebraic nature of the entire problem solving process, even in the case of pupils which had been instructed in general problem solving heuristics, management and control, including the explicit training in changing the plan of s…