This chapter introduces and overviews an emerging methodology in search and optimisation. One of the key aims of these new approaches, which have been termed hyper-heuristics, is to raise the level of generality at which optimisation systems can operate. An objective is that hyper-heuristics will lead to more general systems that are able to handle a wide range of problem domains rather than cu...

This paper presents a new hyper-heuristic method using Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) for solving course timetabling problems. The term Hyperheuristics has recently been employed to refer to “heuristics that choose heuristics” rather than heuristics that operate directly on given problems. One of the overriding motivations of hyper-heuristic methods is the attempt to develop techniques that can ope...

Efficient constructive heuristics have been designed for most of the difficult combinatorial optimisation problems. Performance of these heuristics may vary from one instance to another and hence it is beneficial to be able to select an instance of the heuristic which is best suited to a given instance of the problem. Both of the heuristic search algorithm and hyper-heuristic approaches try to ...

This paper investigates a tabu search based hyper-heuristic for solving examination timetabling problems. The hyper-heuristic framework uses a tabu list to monitor the performance of a collection of low-level heuristics and then make tabu heuristics that have been applied too many times, thus allowing other heuristics to be applied. Experiments carried out on examination timetabling datasets fr...

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a kind of randomized search heuristic that has become very popular for solving problems from combinatorial optimization. Solutions for a given problem are constructed by a random walk on a so-called construction graph. This random walk can be influenced by heuristic information about the problem. In contrast to many successful applications, the theoretical found...

Title of Document: TRACKING THE COST HEURISTIC: A RULE OF THUMB IN CHOICE OF COUNTERFINAL MEANS. Kristen Marie Klein, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor Arie W. Kruglanski, Psychology Department Domain-specific empirical evidence shows that people sometimes infer a correlation between the cost of an item or behavior (e.g., price, effort) and its quality or efficacy (e.g., Labroo ...