Optimization methods known from the literature include gradient techniques and evolutionary algorithms. The main idea of gradient methods is to calculate the gradient of the objective function at the actual point and then to step towards better values according to this value. Evolutionary algorithms imitate a simplified abstract model of evolution observed in nature. Memetic algorithms traditionally combine evolutionary and gradient techniques to exploit the advantages of both methods. Our current research aims to discover the properties, especially the efficiency (i.e. the speed of convergence) of particular evolutionary and memetic algorithms. For this purpose the techniques are compared on several numerical optimization benchmark functions and on machine learning problems. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.