AI - Simple Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve a card problem-Introduction

This article describes how to solve a logic problem using a Genetic Algorithm. It assumes no prior knowledge of GAs. In fact, half of this article is dedicated to explaining the internal structure of a Genetic Algorithm.



So what is the problem domain we are trying to solve?



Well, GAs can be used to solve many problems. In fact, GAs have been used to grow new mathematical syntax trees, train multi-layer neural networks, to name but a few instances.



However, for this example, I have used a simple card splitting excercise, which is as detailed here:



You have 10 cards numbered 1 to 10

You have to divide them into two piles so that:

The sum of the first pile is as close as possible to 36.

And the product of all in the second pile is as close as possible to 360.

Now, I am not saying that this could not be done by hand, using old fashioned brain juice, it s just better suited to a GA, as it could take 100s or even 1000s of different combinations to get the correc