Joseph Kirk

Alex, my code is a slight deviation from the "standard" genetic algorithm, but it has all the essential components of a GA (abstract representation of possible solutions, individual fitness evaluation, a population of potential solutions, and a method of propagating good solutions and forming new, potentially better, solutions).

There IS selection AND elitism, actually, but you are right about crossover. I don't think it is necessarily an essential component of a GA. I have implemented a handful of different versions of the GA (with various mutation/crossover operator combinations) to solve the TSP, and what I have found is that the crossover operator tends to be quite destructive (it makes large changes to a given route) and therefore rarely improves a decent solution. So my code uses 3 different mutation operators with the intent to make modifications that are more likely to improve the best solutions. (I randomly group 4 citizens at a time, take the best one of those four, and pass it on to the next generation. I then perform the 3 mutations on that best-of-four citizen and pass the mutated versions on to the next generation).

Great implementation, fast and furious, but...where is a genetic algorithm? There's no crossover, no selection, no elitism. It's more of a population-based hill climbing/simulated annealing, I guess.

just what I was looking for