Editing Mathematical optimization (section)

=== Multi-modal or global optimization ===
Optimization problems are often multi-modal; that is, they possess multiple good solutions. They could all be globally good (same cost function value) or there could be a mix of globally good and locally good solutions. Obtaining all (or at least some of) the multiple solutions is the goal of a multi-modal optimizer.

Classical optimization techniques due to their iterative approach do not perform satisfactorily when they are used to obtain multiple solutions, since it is not guaranteed that different solutions will be obtained even with different starting points in multiple runs of the algorithm.

Common approaches to [[global optimization]] problems, where multiple local extrema may be present include [[evolutionary algorithm]]s, [[Bayesian optimization]] and [[simulated annealing]].