An Overview of Meta-Analytics: The Promise of Unifying Metaheuristics and Analytics

Abstract

Meta-analytics represents the unification of metaheuristics and analytics, two fields of the foremost interest and practical importance. While metaheuristics provide a modern framework and an arsenal of cutting-edge techniques to handle complex, real-world problems, Analytics embodies the use of prediction and optimization techniques in practical contexts. Thus, their marriage can be regarded as a natural step towards both the creation of effective tools for problems in the Analytics domain and the expansion of the scope of metaheuristic techniques. This introductory chapter describes the advantages obtained by the synergies of the techniques and the avenues for achieving such a unification of methodologies, and discusses some important themes in the field. We also introduce contributions contained in this section, in which these themes are explored in more detail.