From: "Frank Q" 
To: 
Reply-To: "Frank Q" 


Hi All

> First Frank, I add my words to those praising you for the thorough
> explanation.  Thankyou.

Thanks for your support.

One of my pet hates is when someone introduces a bunch of new words that
mean absolutely nothing to me. It leaves me dumbfounded and frustrated
especially when they describe relatively simple concepts. I figured there
would be lots of ATMs in the same boat wondering what breeding bugs has to
do with optical design so I thought I'd clarify it.

> Second, of all the people I know, Mark VandeWettering is far and away one
> of the most well equipped to "set up something"

I'm a bit swamped with other committments at present but when I get something
going, I'll let ye know.

> Criteria are often called metrics in the optical literature.  There are
all

This is what happens when you work in one field and your hobby is in another

> Complex optical designs (three or more elements) suffer from this and the
> opposite.  Vast fields of flat response from the metrics.  If there are
> good designs they protrude from these flat fields like needles.  Thin
> needles.

Genetic Algorithms are NOT "the solution" but just another
technique (among many) we can use to solve problems. They probably have
their own class of problem they can solve efficiently - (I don't know so I
can't say).

Their advantage is that extremely minimal thought about the problem is
required to implement one and get a solution - the lazy man's optimser!

>
> I've occasionally wondered if massively parellel processing, akin to what
> SETI is doing, couldn't be used to search huge volumes of solution space
> for ALL the designs which might interest ATMs.

An interesting concept - a lot of thought would have to go into this one.

Anyhow, I'd better tidy up the garage and start moving glass again

Cheers
Frank Q

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