Genetic algorithm resource

I found Melanie Mitchell's book, An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, to be very good. For a wider coverage of evolutionary computation topics, Introduction to Evolutionary Computing by Eiben and Smith is also worthwhile.

If you're just starting out, I recently wrote an introductory article that may be of use.

There are further links both in that article and also on the home page for my evolutionary computation framework.

This is a nice free book on the subject

http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_63/2167000/2167025/2/print/book.pdf

Here is Roger Alsing's recent article about building "Mona Lisa's picture" with a genetic algorithm :http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/

Edited to remove hot link to the picture See: http://rogeralsing.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/evolutionofmonalisa1.gif

I've implemented my own version of this algorithm:

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See http://plindenbaum.blogspot.com/2008/12/random-notes-2008-12.html

There is a great introduction to genetic algorithms at AI-Junkie.com as well as tutorials on many other AI and machine learning techniques. The genetic algorithms tutorial is aimed to 'explain genetic algorithms sufficiently for you to be able to use them in your own projects' while keeping the mathematics down as much as possible.

A short introduction I wrote a long time ago is available here, but a better short introduction is here.

For a larger and comprehensive, although somewhat out-dated, list of resources visit the comp.ai.genetic FAQ.

If I may plug one of my favorite books, The Algorithm Design Manual by Steve Skiena has a great section on genetic algorithms (plus a lot of other interesting heuristics for solving various types of problems).

The book Programming Collective Intelligence by OReilly had chapter covering genetic algorithms. It might be a little bit to basic but it was a very illustrating example.