Tiny example
Best route
One route is shorter, another is quieter. Which is best?
You cannot decide until you know whether distance, time or comfort matters most.
Optimisation
Finding the best option under constraints.
Optimisation is about choosing well. The best answer depends on what you want and what limits you have.
Why it matters
Optimisation appears in routes, costs, design, machine learning, planning and strategy.
Things to watch for
- Optimising the wrong thing.
- Ignoring constraints.
- Stopping at the first answer that seems good enough.
Where it connects
graphscalculusmodelling
Try it in a tool
OptimisationChangeRepresentation
Gradient Descent Visualiser
Watch optimisation move across a loss landscape.
Tool and explorationConnectionOptimisationQEDReasoning
Dijkstra Visualiser
Explore weighted shortest paths, tentative distances and settled nodes.
ExplorationConnectionOptimisationQEDReasoning
A* Search Visualiser
Explore goal-directed pathfinding with heuristics, g-scores and f-scores.
Exploration