Commentary—What Are Genetic Algorithms Good at?

Colin Reeves has done an excellent job of surveying the basic concepts and applications of genetic algorithms (GAs) in the area of operations research. GAs do have a tremendous appeal, based as they are on the metaphor of Darwinian evolution and Herbert Spencer's famous phrase, “survival of the fittest”—surely one of the most widely expounded scientific notions ever. GAs have sometimes been portrayed as being solely a form of a knowledge-poor optimization technique. The are not general-purpose optimizers but they are very diverse and problem-specific. GAs should be rather viewed as metaheuristic with a distinctive feature to employ crossover. Cases when GAs might be appropriate and some key issues are discussed.