Gradient-based Adaptive Stochastic Search (GASS)

This app provides an interactive environment to solve deterministic optimization problems with multiple local optima, problems with little structural properties, and black-box optimization problems, using the Gradient-based adaptive stochastic search (GASS) method (you can find more details in publication or an overview in slides). This method iteratively finds high quality solutions by sampling from a parameterized probabilistic model and updating the parameter of the probabilistic model by direct gradient search. A list of algorithms provided for different types of problems is shown below.

Installation Instruction

This software can be installed as an application in Matlab or as a standalone application on computer. The instruction below is based on Matlab 2012b.

Application in Matlab
1. Download the installation file here: GASS.mlappinstall
2(a). Double click on the installation file, and it will open Matlab and guide you through to install the app.
2(b). Or, instead of step 2(a), you can open Matlab –> click on the tab “APPS” –> click on “Install App”, which will guide you through to install the app.
3. The app “GASS” should be installed immediately and appear under “MY APPS” category in Matlab.

Standalone Application
1. Download the installation file here: GASS_pkg.exe.
2. Double click on the installation file to extract files. It will also lead to an installation wizard.
3. To run standalone applications written by MATLAB, users have to install MCR (MATLAB Compiler Runtime) first. Following the instructions in the installation wizard or in readme.txt to install the correct version of MCR. The installation of MCR may take some time.
4. After that users can use GASS as a standalone application by double clicking on .