flâneur

Ask HN: Which algorithms based on biological ideas do you know? | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com · 3,531 words · saved by 1 readers

One of my favorites is a prime number generator based on a predator-prey models of cicadas: http://www.j-npcs.org/online/vol2000/v3no2/v3no2p208.pdf

I wrote my MSc on improving certain Genetic Algorithms by incorporating biologists' ideas of "exaptation," or having features that were evolved for use in one context providing a jump in another context. For example, it's quite difficult to imagine how wings evolved, since 1% of a wing seems to offer no fitness advantage, and yet you can't evolve 10% of a wing without evolving 1%. One idea from biology is that feathers probably evolved first as thermoregulators (basically good fur for dinosaurs), and small wing flaps may have evolved similarly to keep animals warm, and only once they had…

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