Dakota Reference Manual: neighbor_order

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neighbor_order

Number of dimensions in which to perturb categorical variables.

## Specification

Alias: none

Argument(s): INTEGER

## Description

The `neighbor_order` keyword allows the user to specify the number of categorical dimensions to perturb when determining neighboring points that will be used by the mesh adaptive direct search method to augment its search. When greater than 1, the neighbors are defined from the tensor product of the admissible 1-dimensional perturbations.

Default Behavior

By default, the categorical neighbors will be defined by perturbing only one categorical variable at a time (according to the corresponding adjacency_matrix; see adjacency_matrix) while leaving the others fixed at their current values.

Usage Tips

The maximum meaningful value `neighbor_order` can take on is the number of categorical variables.

## Examples

In this example, suppose we have the following categorical variables and associated adjacency matrices.

    variables
      discrete_design_set
        real = 2
          categorical ‘yes’ ‘yes’
          num_set_values = 3 5
          set_values = 1.2 2.3 3.4
                       1.2 3.3 4.4 5.5 7.7
          adjacency_matrix = 1 1 0
                             1 1 1
                             0 1 1
                             1 0 1 0 1
                             0 1 0 1 0
                             1 0 1 0 1
                             0 1 0 1 0
                             1 0 1 0 1

Also suppose that we have the following method specification.

    method
      mesh_adaptive_search
        seed = 1234

If the mesh adaptive direct search is at the point (1.2, 1.2), then the neighbors will be defined by the default 1-dimensional perturbations and would be the following:

    (2.3, 1.2)
    (1.2, 4.4)
    (1.2, 7.7)

If, instead, the method specification is the following:

    method
      mesh_adaptive_search
        seed = 1234
        neighbor_order = 2

The neighbors will be defined by 2-dimensional perturbations defined from the tensor product of the 1-dimensional perturbation and would be the following:

    (2.3, 1.2)
    (2.3, 4.4)
    (2.3, 7.7)
    (1.2, 4.4)
    (1.2, 7.7)

## See Also

These keywords may also be of interest:

- adjacency_matrix