Re: GAs and TSP-Type Problems

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 01:37:02 +0000 (UTC), "Kent Paul Dolan"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>"Steve McGrew" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>[flog, flog, flog]
>
>Let's get back to the crucial lesson you seem to keep
>missing in your greed to sell product by misleading and
>inconveniencing readers of comp.ai.genetic, shall we:
>
>>> flogging a commercial product repeatedly in a technical
>>> newsgroup rates horse whipping.
>
>Try to stick to _that_ subject, can you, rather than wandering
>on pretending that tailoring your product to kludgely overlay
>Excel for some particular problem is somehow not the equivalent
>in effort of coding against a working evolutionary programming
>library, such as the one Scott Robert Ladd just announce a new
>release of here, or lilgp, or a large list of other _free_ ones,
>which it is of course in your commercial interest to deprecate.
>
>xanthian, so far four companies, including one ISP, who could
>not manage civil behavior on Usenet, put out of business from
>"this" keyboard over many years, and I'm grumpier today than
>"way back then". Fair warning, second attempt to convey.

        If you can put your grumpiness aside, what would your
recommendation be for the individual who has a problem that calls for
solution by GA, who doesn't know how to write code, but who does know
how to build Excel spreadsheets?  

        Here's a concrete example: deciding where to invest road
maintenance and improvement dollars in a national park, based on the
lengths of road segments, the amount of traffic on each segment, the
rate at which the road degrades due to natural causes, and the ways
the potential improvements would affect the annual maintenance costs.
Assume there are about 100 culverts and about 200 road segments.  The
planner is not a programmer, but knows Excel.

        Another example:  A welding shop makes a few dozen different
kinds of racks out of a dozen different kinds of steel stock, which
come in several different standard lengths.  The cost of the steel per
foot depends on the amount ordered. Based on a monthly forecasts of
orders for racks,  how much of each kind and length of steel stock
should be purchased,  and how often?  Nobody in the welding shop knows
how to write code, but the manager is handy with Excel.

        What freeware GA tools would you recommend to these people?
The demo I've "flogged" is free, and can be used to solve those
problems.  I give free assistance to anyone who wants to try it out.
Some people choose to buy the full-featured version and others don't.
They get free help whether they buy or don't.

Steve