Discrete and continuous aspects of nature inspired methods

Abstract

In nature, industry, medicine, social environment, simply everywhere we find a lot of data that bear certain information. A dictionary defines data as facts or figures from which conclusions may be drawn. Data can be classified as either numeric or nonnumeric. The structure and nature of data greatly affects the choice of analysis method. Under the term structure we understand the facts that the data might be not a single number but n-tuples of measurements. Structure is also very closely linked to the reason of data collection and method of measurement. The paper describes the similarities and differences of nature inspired methods and their natural counterparts in light of continuous and discrete properties. Different examples of nature inspired methods are inspected in terms of data, problem domains and inner structure and principles. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.