Books about Scatter from Amazon.com

Just as gardeners create an artful garden by scattering seeds, you can stitch a quilted masterpiece with lush floral fabrics Fussy-cut motifs provide the "seeds" needed to create quilts that burst with nature’s charm.

· Discover how to use large-scale fabrics in ten flowering quilt patterns

· Spotlight roses, tulips, and wildflowers—these blocks will let your fabrics take center stage

· Learn how to get the most out of each fabric bloom with a special "Garden Map" for each project.
Price: $9.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A beaver slaps its tail on the water to warn other beavers of approaching danger. A mother bat returning to the cave can locate her baby among two or three million other bats by using a special cry. And the male hippopotamus marks his territory by spinning his tail and scattering his dung. These are just a few of the unusual ways animals communicate with one another. This beautifully illustrated work by noted author and illustrator Steve Jenkins describes many more fascinating and curious ways of animal communication..
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The evolutionary approach called scatter search originated from strategies for creating composite decision rules and surrogate constraints. Recent studies demonstrate the practical advantages of this approach for solving a diverse array of optimization problems from both classical and real world settings. Scatter search contrasts with other evolutionary procedures, such as genetic algorithms, by providing unifying principles for joining solutions based on generalized path constructions in Euclidean space and by utilizing strategic designs where other approaches resort to randomization. The book's goal is to provide the basic principles and fundamental ideas that will allow the readers to create successful applications of scatter search. The book includes the C source code of the methods introduced in each chapter.

From the Foreword:
`Scatter Search represents a "missing link" in the literature of evolutionary methods... From a historical perspective, the dedicated use of heuristic strategies both to guide the process of combining solutions and to enhance the quality of offspring has been heralded as a key innovation in evolutionary methods, giving rise to what are sometimes called "hybrid" or ("memetic") evolutionary procedures. The underlying processes have been introduced into the mainstream of evolutionary methods (such as genetic algorithms, for example) by a series of gradual steps beginning in the late 1980s. Yet this theme is an integral part of the scatter search methodology proposed a decade earlier, and the form and scope of such heuristic strategies embedded in scatter search continue to set it apart. Although there are points in common between scatter search and other evolutionary approaches, principally as a result of changes that have brought other approaches closer to scatter search in recent years, there remain differences that have an important impact on practical outcomes. Reflecting this impact, a hallmark of the present book is its focus on practical problem solving. Laguna and Martí give the reader the tools to create scatter search implementations for problems from a wide range of settings. Although theoretical problems (such as abstract problems in graph theory) are included, beyond a doubt the practical realm has a predominant role in this book....'
Fred Glover, University of Colorado

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This memoir by an eminent Cuban-American poet and professor recreates 40 years of personal and social history as it describes her flight from home and her search for identity in the United States. Olga Karman is a professor and administrator at D Youville College in Buffalo, New York, a city that has already begun to celebrate the publication of this intensely moving book..
Price: $14.54 [Notify me when price goes down.]

High heels and scatter diagrams? Run charts and foreplay? Quality Sex: The Sensuous Side of Process Improvement takes a unique look at quality and process improvement. The concepts of the Plan-Do-Check-Act process improvement model and some of its associated quality tools get a simple yet sultry, sensuous and humorous makeover. The quality fundamentals of corporate and organizational endeavors are applied to seduction planning and intimate relations. Problem identification, customer value, brainstorming, decision making, flowcharting, check sheets, scatter diagrams, run charts and more are presented in a completely different, fun and erotic format. If the thought of learning about quality by reading about yield, throughput, J-I-T, and process flow turns you off, then try reading about quality with high heels, bubble baths, stockings and handcuffs. Quality Sex takes quality out of the boardroom and into the bedroom; doing it on the shop floor takes on a whole new meaning. .
Price: $15.51 [Notify me when price goes down.]