The SPEC benchmarks came out a year after the first release of gcc (in fact gcc was and still is one of the programs included in the benchmark). Compiling the SPEC programs using the gcc option -O2 (sometimes -O3) has always been the way to measure gcc performance, but after 25 ... [Read more...]

A herd of heuristic algorithms is compared using a portfolio optimization. Previously “A comparison of some heuristic optimization methods” used two simple and tiny portfolio optimization problems to compare a number of optimization functions in the R language. This post expands upon that by using a portfolio optimization problem that ... [Read more...]

Genetic algorithm is a search heuristic. GAs can generate a vast number of possible model solutions and use these to evolve towards an approximation of the best solution of the model. Hereby it mimics evolution in nature. GA generates a population, the individuals in this population (often called chromosomes) have  ... [Read more...]

A simple portfolio optimization problem is used to look at several R functions that use randomness in various ways to do optimization. Orientation Some optimization problems are really hard. In these cases sometimes the best approach is to use randomness to get an approximate answer. Once you decide to go ... [Read more...]

First of all, a shout out to R-bloggers for adding my feed to their website! Linear programming is a valuable instrument when it comes to decision making. This post shows how R in conjunction with the lpSolveAPI package, can be used to build a linear programming model and to analyse  ... [Read more...]

Discrete-event simulation is a very useful tool when it comes to simulating alternative scenario’s for current of future business operations. Let’s take the following case; Patients of an outpatient diabetes clinic are complaining about long waiting times, this seems to have an adverse effect on patient satisfaction and ... [Read more...]

This week, at the Rmetrics conference, there has been an interesting discussion about heuristic optimization. The starting point was simple: in complex optimization problems (here we mean with a lot of local maxima, for instance), we do not ne... [Read more...]

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

Optimization means to seek minima or maxima of a funtion within a given defined domain. If a function reach its maxima or minima, the derivative at that point is approaching to 0. If we apply Newton-Raphson method for root finding to f’, we can get the optimizing f. Read More: 223 Words ... [Read more...]

The following fully-automatic Bash script downloads, compiles, and initializes compcache version 0.6.2 on Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10). This script creates two swaps with a maximum of 4GB uncompressed size each. Two swaps are used to take advantage of 2 CPUs (or CPU cores in a multicore CPU). Compcache is a fascinating memory compression ... [Read more...]

Download "Getting Started with the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit" (pdf, 1.25 megabytes) Download the Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit My Social Media Analytics Research Toolkit is about to move into private beta. What's in the release?... [Read more...]

Do you need a way to find out which individual variables in R consume the most memory? # create dummy variables for demonstration x [Read more...]

[Read more...]