A selection of useful theoretical tools for the design and analysis of optimization heuristics

An intensive practical experimentation is certainly required for the purpose of heuristics design and evaluation, however a theoretical approach is also important in this area of research. This paper gives a brief description of a selection of theoretical tools that can be used for designing and analyzing various heuristics. For design and evaluation, we consider several examples of preprocessing procedures and probabilistic instance analysis methods. We also discuss some attempts at the theoretical explanation of successes and failures of certain heuristics.

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