| Variational principles minimize functions, and generally Mother Nature minimizes energy. |
| Thus statistical physics is (nearly) always solving optimization problems. We can turn around and use physical analogies and use "physical optimization" methods to solve general optimization methods. |
| Here Simulated Annealing, Simulating Tempering, Genetic Algorithms, and neural networks are some of algorithms in this class. |
| Note the so called NP Complete problems in optimization; physics is NP complete (one cannot solve Nature's equations in polynomial time) and so physical optimization is very suitable for NP complete optimization problems. |