LCS Acronym Registry

Introduction

The field of classifier systems is unusually rich in acronyms, as illustrated by the discussion in the relevant section of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation. To that discussion I'd like to add that LCS seems to the most popular acronym for classifier systems nowadays (as opposed to CS or CFS). Although the general class of Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (ERL) systems is mentioned in the Hitch Hiker's Guide, the even more general Genetics-Based Machine Learning (GBML) isn't. This last dates back at least to Goldberg's 1989 book.

Recently Moriarty et al. wrote about EARLs (Evolutionary Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning). I wonder if this is a novel acronym. Let me know if you know of an earlier useage!

Three letter LCS acronyms

Due of the popularity of 3 letter acronyms for LCS and the limited availability of letters I've decided to set up a register. Imagine the confusion that would ensue if multiple LCS were aliased to a common acronym! Hopefully such problems can be avoided by referring to this register before selecting an acronym for a new system. Unused acronyms are available for a nominal fee ;-)

3 Letter Acronym Register

   
Acronym What it stands for	Author(s) and paper where first used
------- ------------------	------------------------------------   
ACS	Anticipatory CS		Wolfgang Stolzmann (e.g. Stolzmann1996a)
CCS	Corporate CS		Andy Tomlinson and Larry Bull (e.g. Tomlinson1999a)
CSM     CS with Memory          Hayong Harry Zhou (Zhou1985a?)
FCS	Fuzzy CS		Takeshi Furuhashi, Ken Nakaoka and Yoshiki Uchikawa (Furuhashi1994a)
HCS	Hierarchical CS		Lingyan Shu and Jonathan Schaeffer (Shu1989a)
LCS	Learning CS		generic term
MCS     Multiple CS             --- The field of MCS has nothing to do with LCS --- 
OCS	Organizational CS	Jason Wilcox (Wilcox1995a), Takadama et al. (Takadama99a)
PCS	Predictive CS		Piet Spiessens (Spiessens1990a)
SCS	Simple CS		David Goldberg (Goldberg1989a)      
VCS	Variable CS		Lingyan Shu and Jonathan Schaeffer (Shu1989a)
XCS	Special CS		Stewart W. Wilson (Wilson1995a)
ZCS	Zeroth-level CS		Stewart W. Wilson (Wilson1994a)

Currently unused prefixes for 3 letter acronyms from the standard 26 character English alphabet: B,D,E,G,I,J,K,M,N,Q,R,T,U,W,Y

XCS Variations

There's an increasing number of XCS variations in the literature.

Acronym Full Name Creator Paper where first used
SB-XCSStrength-based XCSTim Kovacs
MXCSExtended XCSDevon Dawson
EXCSEffectiveness-based XCSDevon Dawson

Some Other LCS

This is a half-hearted attempt to list some of the other major LCS out there.

Name Creator Paper where first used
Animat Stewart W. Wilson ???
BOOLE Stewart W. Wilson Wilson1987a
CFS-C Rick L. Riolo ???
Delayed Action CS (DaCS) Brian Carse ???
EPiCS John H. Holmes Holmes1997a (?)
GOFER Lashon B. Booker Booker1988a (?)
GOFER-2 Lashon B. Booker ???
NEWBOOLE Pierre Bonelli et al. Bonelli1990a
SAMUEL John J. Grefenstette ???

References

David E. Goldberg. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1989.

David E. Moriarty, Alan C. Schultz, and John J. Grefenstette. Evolutionary algorithms for reinforcement learning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 11:199-229, 1999.

For other references see the LCS bibliography.

Tim Kovacs
Last modified: Fri Feb 21 18:03:35 GMT 2003