Prof. Dr. Pascal Bouvry, Prof. Dr. Frank Hofmann, Dr. Martin Rosalie (University of Luxembourg)
The objective of this skills trainings was to make students familiar with ‘Algorithmic Critique’ as an important skill in Digital History and Humanities research. Specifically, the training provided an introduction to optimisation, search and decision problem modelling. Various problem solving techniques based on exact methods (A*, B&B, LP), approximated ones (heuristics, meta-heuristics, problem relaxation) and hybrids were demonstrated and experimented with. Students were also taught how to validate the proposed solution by having a scientific approach. The practical session involved meta-heuristics and evolutionary computation with the implementation of an Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. An application of Artificial Ants for Natural Language Processing was presented as well. The training was open to PhD candidates with an interest in algorithmic critique, data optimisation and search modelling.
