I believe it was, despite not calling the name out explicitly. Are you suggesting that simulated annealing does not belong in the categories of "repetition stra

I believe it was, despite not calling the name out explicitly. Are you suggesting that simulated annealing does not belong in the categories of "repetition strategy," "alteration strategy", nor "ensemble strategy"? Simulated annealing is essentially hill-climbing with random restarts with the tweak of a changing climb-distance. Depending on how you feel like categorizing that, it's either repetition, alteration, or both (and therefore ensemble).