
converges rapidly, even for high-dimensional, multimodal problems. In
the real world, however, we usually must deal with continuous numbers.
In the next section we show how particle swarm optimization works in
continuous numbers, maintaining its simplicity, power, and ease of use.
The Particle Swarm in Continuous Numbers
The progression of ideas has been from a purely qualitative social optimi-
zation algorithm—the Adaptive Culture Model—to a model that can be
interpreted as qualitative or quantitative—the binary particle swarm.
In this chapter we arrive at the “real” particle swarm, which is a truly
numeric optimization algorithm (Kennedy and Eberhart, ...