This book is designed as a textbook, suitable for self-learning or for teaching an upper-year university course on derivative-free and blackbox optimization.
The book is split into 5 parts and is designed to be modular; any individual part depends only on the material in Part I. Part I of the book discusses what is meant by Derivative-Free and Blackbox Optimization, provides background material, and early basics while Part II focuses on heuristic methods (Genetic Algorithms and Nelder-Mead). Part III presents direct search methods (Generalized Pattern Search and Mesh Adaptive Direct Search) and Part IV focuses on model-based methods (Simplex Gradient and Trust Region). Part V discusses dealing with constraints, using surrogates, and bi-objective optimization.
End of chapter exercises are included throughout as well as 15 end of chapter projects and over 40 figures. Benchmarking techniques are also presented in the appendix.
Flexible usage suitable for undergraduate, graduate, mathematics, computer science, engineering, or mixed classes
15 end-of-chapter projects are provided, allowing advanced exploration of desired topics
Includes numerous exercises throughout to test knowledge and advance understanding
Charles Audet
Derivative-Free Optimization Blackbox Optimization Heuristic Methods Direct Search Methods Mesh Adaptive Direct Search Model-based Methods Model-based Trust-region Nonsmooth Constraints Surrogate Models Optimization Benchmarking
“It is a wonderful textbook that can be used entirely or partially to support optimization courses. … the authors have achieved gloriously their stated goal of ‘providing a clear grasp of the foundational concepts in derivative-free and blackbox optimization.’ … I wish that it will find its way somehow to the desks of engineering design optimization practitioners.” (Michael Kokkolaras, Optimization and Engineering, Vol. 20, 2019)