Is ABC-SMC just an evolutionary algorithm?

Suppose we have data D D and a model that expresses D D as a noisy function&#xA;of a parameter vector θ \theta . We want to determine a value of θ \theta &#xA;that fits the data. For the purposes of this post, we&rsquo;re concerned with models&#xA;that are &ldquo;difficult,&rdquo; meaning we cannot write down a simple expression for the&#xA;likelihood function and maximize it, whether analytically…