Robust optimization (RO) is a young and active research field that has been mainly developed in the last 15 years. RO techniques are very useful for practice and not difficult to understand for practitioners. It is therefore remarkable that real-life applications of RO are still lagging behind;...

This chapter discusses personal financial planning, which is an interdisciplinary practice that employs a six-step process to develop integrated strategies for individuals and families to efficiently mobilize their human and financial capital to achieve their life goals. Financial planning draws...

This chapter surveys two methods for the optimization of real-world systems that are modelled through simulation. These methods use either linear regression metamodels, or Kriging (Gaussian processes). The metamodel type guides the design of the experiment; this design fixes the input...

This article uses a sequentialized experimental design to select simulation input combinations for global optimization, based on Kriging (also called Gaussian process or spatial correlation modeling); this Kriging is used to analyze the input/output data of the simulation model (computer code)....

Kriging is a popular method for estimating the global optimum of a simulated system. Kriging approximates the input/output function of the simulation model. Kriging also estimates the variances of the predictions of outputs for input combinations not yet simulated. These predictions and their...

Distribution-free bootstrapping of the replicated responses of a given discreteevent simulation model gives bootstrapped Kriging (Gaussian process) metamodels; we require these metamodels to be either convex or monotonic. To illustrate monotonic Kriging, we use an M/M/1 queueing simulation with...

In this paper we investigate global optimization for black-box simulations using metamodels to guide this optimization. As a novel metamodel we introduce intrinsic Kriging, for either deterministic or random simulation. For deterministic simulation we study the famous 'e fficient global...

An analogue can be made between: (a) the slow pace at which species adapt to an environment, which often results in the emergence of a new distinct species out of a once homogeneous genetic pool, and (b) the slow changes that take place over time within a fund, mutating its investment style. A...