The work described in this book was first presented at the Second Workshop on Genetic Programming, Theory and Practice, organized by the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 13-15 May 2004. The goal of this workshop series is to promote the exchange of research results and ideas between those who focus on Genetic Programming (GP) theory and those who focus on the application of GP to various re- world problems. In order to facilitate these interactions, the number of talks and participants was small and the time for discussion was large. Further, participants were asked to review each other's chapters before the workshop. Those reviewer comments, as well as discussion at the workshop, are reflected in the chapters presented in this book. Additional information about the workshop, addendums to chapters, and a site for continuing discussions by participants and by others can be found at http://cscs.umich.edu:8000/GPTP-20041. We thank all the workshop participants for making the workshop an exciting and productive three days. In particular we thank all the authors, without whose hard work and creative talents, neither the workshop nor the book would be possible. We also thank our keynote speakers Lawrence ("Dave") Davis of NuTech Solutions, Inc., Jordan Pollack of Brandeis University, and Richard Lenski of Michigan State University, who delivered three thought-provoking speeches that inspired a great deal of discussion among the participants.

Genetic Programming Theory and Practice explores the emerging interaction between theory and practice in the cutting-edge, machine learning method of Genetic Programming (GP). The material contained in this contributed volume was developed from a workshop at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems where an international group of genetic programming theorists and practitioners met to examine how GP theory informs practice and how GP practice impacts GP theory. The contributions cover the full spectrum of this relationship and are written by leading GP theorists from major universities, as well as active practitioners from leading industries and businesses. Chapters include such topics as John Koza's development of human-competitive electronic circuit designs; David Goldberg's application of "competent GA" methodology to GP; Jason Daida's discovery of a new set of factors underlying the dynamics of GP starting from applied research; and Stephen Freeland's essay on the lessons of biology for GP and the potential impact of GP on evolutionary theory. The book also includes chapters on the dynamics of GP, the selection of operators and population sizing, specific applications such as stock selection in emerging markets, predicting oil field production, modeling chemical production processes, and developing new diagnostics from genomic data. Genetic Programming Theory and Practice is an excellent reference for researchers working in evolutionary algorithms and for practitioners seeking innovative methods to solve difficult computing problems.

These contributions, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of Genetic Programming (GP), explore the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. Topics include: modularity and scalability; evolvability; human-competitive results; the need for important high-impact GP-solvable problems;; the risks of search stagnation and of cutting off paths to solutions; the need for novelty; empowering GP search with expert knowledge; In addition, GP symbolic regression is thoroughly discussed, addressing such topics as guaranteed reproducibility of SR; validating SR results, measuring and controlling genotypic complexity; controlling phenotypic complexity; identifying, monitoring, and avoiding over-fitting; finding a comprehensive collection of SR benchmarks, comparing SR to machine learning. This text is for all GP explorers. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

These contributions, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of Genetic Programming (GP), explore the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. Topics in this volume include: evolutionary constraints, relaxation of selection mechanisms, diversity preservation strategies, flexing fitness evaluation, evolution in dynamic environments, multi-objective and multi-modal selection, foundations of evolvability, evolvable and adaptive evolutionary operators, foundation of injecting expert knowledge in evolutionary search, analysis of problem difficulty and required GP algorithm complexity, foundations in running GP on the cloud – communication, cooperation, flexible implementation, and ensemble methods. Additional focal points for GP symbolic regression are: (1) The need to guarantee convergence to solutions in the function discovery mode; (2) Issues on model validation; (3) The need for model analysis workflows for insight generation based on generated GP solutions – model exploration, visualization, variable selection, dimensionality analysis; (4) Issues in combining different types of data. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

Real-life decisions are usually made in the state of uncertainty such as randomness and fuzziness. How do we model optimization problems in uncertain environments? How do we solve these models? In order to answer these questions, this book provides a self-contained, comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of uncertain programming theory, including numerous modeling ideas, hybrid intelligent algorithms, and applications in system reliability design, project scheduling problem, vehicle routing problem, facility location problem, and machine scheduling problem. Researchers, practitioners and students in operations research, management science, information science, system science, and engineering will find this work a stimulating and useful reference.

These contributions, written by the foremost international researchers and practitioners of Genetic Programming (GP), explore the synergy between theoretical and empirical results on real-world problems, producing a comprehensive view of the state of the art in GP. Topics in this volume include: multi-objective genetic programming, learning heuristics, Kaizen programming, Evolution of Everything (EvE), lexicase selection, behavioral program synthesis, symbolic regression with noisy training data, graph databases, and multidimensional clustering. It also covers several chapters on best practices and lesson learned from hands-on experience. Additional application areas include financial operations, genetic analysis, and predicting product choice. Readers will discover large-scale, real-world applications of GP to a variety of problem domains via in-depth presentations of the latest and most significant results.

Genetic Programming Theory and Practice III provides both researchers and industry professionals with the most recent developments in GP theory and practice by exploring the emerging interaction between theory and practice in the cutting-edge, machine learning method of Genetic Programming (GP). The contributions developed from a third workshop at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems, where leading international genetic programming theorists from major universities and active practitioners from leading industries and businesses meet to examine and challenge how GP theory informs practice and how GP practice impacts GP theory. Applications are from a wide range of domains, including chemical process control, informatics, and circuit design, to name a few.