Evolutionary Algorithms

The focus of this chapter is on Evolutionary Algorithms, which have a wide variety of applications in sports and sports science. Their application is useful when a target variable depends on a large number of parameters (such as competition performance on many different training contents of the previous weeks). The procedure of an Evolutionary Algorithm can be described as follows: One starts with a set of possible solutions represented by corresponding parameter combinations. Each parameter combination is evaluated problem-specifically. The parameter combinations are then varied and recombined to generate new solutions. Better-rated solutions are preferred. This is repeated until a sufficiently good solution is found. However, it is not guaranteed that this solution is optimum.