Introducing Penalty Functions

What are penalty functions?

We need a way to account for solutions that aren’t considered valid, meaning they don’t meet the constraints defined by the problem. For example, in the cargo problem, you need a way to penalize solutions that exceed the weight limit, so your algorithm doesn’t produce an invalid solution.

A penalty function is a function applied to constraint satisfaction problems for the purpose of reducing them into an unconstrained problem. Rather than putting constraints on possible solutions, penalty functions incur a cost on solutions that violate a constraint of the original problem. In layman’s terms, that means to take points away from ...