What is the meaning of NP variable?
I have come across a paper on differential evolution and it states - DE is a population based search technique which utilizes NP variables as population of D dimensional parameter vectors for each generation. The initial population is chosen randomly if no information is available about the problem. In the case of the available preliminary solution, the initial population is often generated by adding normally distributed random deviations to the preliminary solution. The basic idea behind DE is a new scheme for generating trial parameter vectors.
