1. (Jan. 13) - Details on course organization, introduction to EC.
2. (Jan. 20) - Complex adaptive systems (cas) as the motivation for genetic-algorithm (GA) research; classifier systems; overview of GA mechanisms and theory; quick run-through of EVOKE, the Evolutionary Computation Engine.(Background: Holland's paper, Mitchell chapter #1, De Jong & Spears paper (ICGA '89))
3. (Jan 27) - Technical details of GA mechanisms; fitness landscapes; example GA applications such as prisoner's dilemma, sorting networks, task scheduling. (Background: Mitchell chapter #1, Kidwell paper (ICGA '93))
4. (Feb 3) - Introduction to genetic grogramming (GP): lecture plus videotape entitled "Genetic Programming: The Movie" (Background: Mitchell chapter #2)
5. (Feb 10) - Comparison of GA and GP. GA and GP applications to cellular automata (Background: Mitchell chapter #2, Koza chapter).
6. (Feb 17) - Advanced implementation details in EC (Background: Mitchell chapter #5)
7. (Feb 24) - GP applications to control and classification problems (Koza chapters)
8. (March 3) - Theoretical aspects of GAs: building blocks, schema theory, royal-roads functions. (Background: Mitchell chapter #4)
9. (March 10) - EC applications to neural nets. (Background: Mitchell chapter #2, handout from alife literature)
10. (March 17) - Introduction to Artificial Life (Background: Mitchell chapter #3, Langton paper)
11. (March 24) - Modelling Learning and Evolution (Background: Mitchell chapter #3, handout from alife conference proceedings)
12. (March 31) - A further sampling of interesting artificial life systems (handouts from alife conference proceedings)
13. (April 14) - More artificial life systems
14. (April 28) - Student project presentations