Complex systems should not require complex writing.

JDN 2456420 EDT 16:34.

 

A review of Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems by John H. Holland.

This book styles itself "an introductory analysis", and it is not very long (about 200 pages), and yet it took me enormous effort and time to get through it all. Holland appears to have no concept of mathematical elegance, for one thing; he churns through seven steps in an equation with successive approximations, but stubbornly refuses to drop coefficients that he ends up ignoring later...