[cblconfederate]

Natural selection led to evolutionary optimization algorithms Statistical mechanics to boltzmann machines, ising model to perceptron

[saeranv]

I was thinking of two more in this vein, but I'm not actually sure about the history of their derivation, so I'll pose them as questions:

Was simulated annealing inspired by actual annealing (heating and slowly cooling metal/glass to toughen it)? Or did they just name it annealing after discovering it?

What is the relationship between thermodynamic/statistical entropy and Shannon's information theory entropy (E = -p lg(p))?

[cblconfederate]

there are a lot of applications of physical theories in other sciences. annealing is just a descriptive name though. Shannons information entropy is a generalization of thermodynamic entropy.

[saeranv]

Brilliant! I've always wondered the relationship between these two.