the author’s dissertation

eingereicht und durch die Fakultät für Informatik am 28.06.2011 angenommen. ii O ptimization is the research field that studies that studies the design of algorithms for finding the best solutions to problems we humans throw at them. While the whole domain is of important practical utility, the present thesis will focus on the subfield of continuous black-box optimization, presenting a collection of novel, state-of-the-art algorithms for solving problems in that class. First, we introduce a general-purpose algorithm called Natural Evolution Strategies (NES). In contrast to typical evolutionary algorithms which search in the vicinity of the fittest individuals in a population, evolution strategies aim at repeating the type of mutations that led to those individuals. We can characterize those mutations by a search distribution. The key idea of NES i