Objective function vs fitness function.

What is the difference between an Objective Function and a Fitness Function?

Are Objective Functions only used in Linear Programming?

Are Fitness Functions only used in Genetic Algorithm?

Do we need to apply any operation on a mathematical function to discover Objective/Fitness Functions?

Can you give any concise but versatile example to explain the ideas?

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

They are essentially the same. The names are different because they are defined in different contexts. The idea behind each is that they accept a vector of parameters, end either return a vector (or matrix) that can be compared to external data (objective function in a curve-fitting sense) or do the comparison themselves internally and return a value that indicates how well the parameters approximate the desired solution.

As the result, the syntax may differ slightly to be appropriate to the specific application, but the idea behind both objective functions and fitness functions is the same.

[John D'Errico]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Answer 2

[Shanuka Jayasinghe]

According to this post, objective function is the function you're trying to optimize and the fitness is the algorithm's guide to doing so.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2087715/objective-function-vs-fitness-function