  In terms of the concepts of state and state transition, a new algorithm-State
Transition Algorithm (STA) is proposed in order to probe into classical and
intelligent optimization algorithms. On the basis of state and state
transition, it becomes much simpler and easier to understand. As for continuous
function optimization problems, three special operators named rotation,
translation and expansion are presented. While for discrete function
optimization problems, an operator called general elementary transformation is
introduced. Finally, with 4 common benchmark continuous functions and a
discrete problem used to test the performance of STA, the experiment shows that
STA is a promising algorithm due to its good search capability.
