Ant colony optimization for parallel test assembly.

Abstract: The aging of the Portuguese population is a multifaceted challenge that requires a coordinated and comprehensive response from society. In this context, social service institutions play a fundamental role in providing aid and support to the elderly, ensuring that they can enjoy a dignified and fulfilling life even in the face of the challenges of aging. This research proposes a Balanced Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem based on the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (ACO-BmTSP) to solve a distribution of meals problem in the municipality of Mogadouro, Portugal. The Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem (mTSP) is an NP-complete problem where m salesmen perform a shortest tour between different cities, visiting each only once. The primary purpose is to minimize the sum of all distance traveled by all salesmen keeping the tours balanced. This paper shows the results of computing obtained for three, four, and five agents with this new approach and their comparison with other approaches like the standard Particle Swarm Optimization and Ant Colony Optimization algorithms. As can be seen, the ACO-BmTSP, in addition to obtaining much more equitable paths, also achieves better results in lower total costs. In conclusion, some benchmark problems were used to evaluate the efficiency of ACO-BmTSP, and the results clearly indicate that this algorithm represents a strong alternative to be considered when the problem size involves fewer than one hundred locations.

TL;DR: This study develops a load management system to ensure power supply security, leveraging an improved Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to analyze and manage provincial load data, promoting grid interaction and alleviating supply-demand imbalances.

TL;DR: This tutorial reevaluates IRT's underutilization, highlighting its advantages over classical test theory and factor analysis, and provides a practical introduction to simulation-based sample size estimation in IRT for accurate parameter estimation and model fit.

TL;DR: In this article, the adequacy of the conventional cutoff criteria and several new alternatives for various fit indexes used to evaluate model fit in practice were examined, and the results suggest that, for the ML method, a cutoff value close to.95 for TLI, BL89, CFI, RNI, and G...

TL;DR: The aims behind the development of the lavaan package are explained, an overview of its most important features are given, and some examples to illustrate how lavaan works in practice are provided.

TL;DR: This is a list of winners and nominees for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

TL;DR: The application of item response theory to practical testing problems is discussed in this article, where the authors present an example of the application of the theory to real-world testing problems in a practical setting.