Activity Analysis: ualitat ive Analysis of Stationary easonin
Brian C. Williams, Jonathan Cagan · 1994
We present a. theory of a modeler’s problem de-composition skills in the context of opthal Tea-sowing- the use of qualitative modeling to strategically guide numerical explorations of ob-jective space. Our technique, called activity annl-ysl:s, applies to the pervasive family of linear and non-linear, constrained optimization problems, and easily integrates with any existing numeri-cal approach. Activity analysis draws from the power of two seemingly divergent perspectives-the global conflict-based approaches of combina-torial satisficing search, and the local gradient-based approaches of continuous optimization-combined with the underlying insights of engi-