BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

ALGORITHM (Iterative refinement) 5)

An algorithm which progressively produce better answers when iterated.

As "the backpropagation algorithm is just a steepest descent approach without any line search… it inherits the well known disadvantages of the gradient method: The convergence depends strongly on the starting values of the parameters. The direction of the local steepest descent is often far different from the overall direction where the minimum lies" and… "The algorithm… normally either overshoots the minimum (with the risk of oscillations) or – if the gradient is small – there is hardly any progress at all" (TRONCALE, 1985, p.449).

This difficulty is alleviated by the introduction of iterative refinement algorithms.

Such algorithms are constructed from a set of rules whose operation is interactive and not rigorously preprogramed.

It is however open to debate if such a kind of mental device really fits within the concept of algorithm.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]


We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible: