It seems to me that part of the reason so many programmers, software engineers, etc. say that they don't use math in what they do professionally, is what their courses were called and who their professors were in college. They learned some math (e.g., calculus, linear algebra) from math profs in courses called "Math ". They also learned a lot of math (e.g., boolean algebra, elements of graph theory) from CS profs in courses called "CS ". They go on to use the math they learned in the CS courses every day but rarely apply the math they learned in math courses. They then say they don't use math.
Of course, some CS grads use an awful lot of the math from the math courses as well as the math from CS courses but they all use the math from CS courses.
Dean
Finding anomalies and taking advantage of them happens not only in GA research but in other areas of machine learning as well. How do I know? I wrote a paper about it that was peer reviewed and published, so it MUST be TRUE(tm)!
This ability to find solutions that no sane person would dream up is both a strength of machine learning methods and, as your simulation example points out, a serious potential problem.
Thanks. I thought of mentioning LAGR but my post was already long enough.
LAGR certainly had some good points to it, such as ensuring each team had standard hardware and could use the same test environment. However, it was a very closed and focused program, which meant that its overall effect on robotic research was very limited. (Full disclosure: I applied to the LAGR program but was not selected to participate.)
Dean
P.S. I like your beer analogy in a post about a program called LAGR.
I'd like to see the same kind of autopilot for cars that you see in small aircraft. In that case the pilot is still in controll when taxiing, for takeoffs, landings and emergencies.
Thanks for the input. I've had quite a number of my students use Player/Stage (and Gazebo), both for research and for coursework. It certainly has some good points to it and I thank the good people at USC and elsewhere for making it available and open. At the same time, I'm always looking for better tools.
I'm all in favor of robot contests and all but more important, from my point of view, is the ability to share resources (such as test environments, robot chassis, sensors, vision-processing code, etc.) outside of the competition itself.
The biggest unnecessary impediment to robotic research right now, as I see it, is the difficulty researchers have in making comparisons between systems. You demonstrate your racing code on your robot in your test environment. I demo my code on my bot on my test track. The results are different but what does that show? On the other hand, if we both have the opportunity to try out our code on the same robot in the same test environment and mine clobbers yours, then the whole world can clearly see that mine works better. (Or, I suppose it is logically possible that yours would outperform mine, but that seems pretty unlikely, now doesn't it?)
We can get some kind of head-to-head comparisons in competitions, to be sure, but even then it is often just the environment that is the same. Typically the contestants are still providing all of their own hardware and software (as in the DARPA Grand Challenge and TFA). Even if we provide contestants the same hardware (xor the same software), limiting our comparison time to a couple of days a year impedes progress. We should be able to test our systems year 'round.
What we should be doing is making our code and our hardware and our test environments available to one another on a daily basis. If I want to see if I can evolve a better neurocontroller for your race car than you did, you should allow me to download my code onto your race car to drive around your track next month. Want to see if your code does a good job of driving my FIDO-class planetary rover over a simulated Martian surface? Download it onto my bot and run it in our Mars room or our outdoor OK/Mars test site. If you want to see if your rover hardware design can outperform the classic rocker-bogey design, pack it in a crate and ship it to us and we'll run it around our test environments for you.
Of course, it isn't quite as easy as that since the labs with the coolest robots in the world (which cost a pretty penny) can't spend all of their time and resources running experiments for other people at no cost - they have to get something out of the deal too. But that issue is not insurmountable.
I do applaud the provision of the simulation version of the race, which gets us running the same (simulated) hardware in the same (simulated) environment. (Interested readers should see http://julian.togelius.com/cig2007competition/ for the Java code. It is very simple and fun to try out.) The one question I have there, what is the license like for the simulator? I didn't see a README file or a note on the webpage. I didn't dig into individual source files or anything. Open source of some stripe would be nice, so that we can all improve it and share the improvements with one another.
Also, if anyone can suggest a more realistic racing simulation environment that could provide a better bridge to the real world competition that the simple 2D sim mentioned above, I'd appreciate it. An open interface is, of course, a must.
That's a stumbling block of *all* unionized workplaces. Instead of paying people based on their performance they pay everyone based on their years in.
This type of reward system creates an environment that's filled with indifference. "Why should I work hard and come up with new and exciting lesson plans when I'm going to be paid exactly the same as Bob Smith who sits on his tenured ass and doesn't engage the students at all?"
Tenure and unionization have nothing to do with one another. Please do not confuse the two.
How much external funding a faculty member has brought in and likely will bring in is certainly related to pay. However, it also certainly isn't the only factor. Note that even at four-year colleges, where the faculty bring in very little external funding, the science and engineering profs are typically paid quite a bit more than the English profs. Pay in academia is linked to pay outside academia, just as the GP says.
At four year colleges teaching is the main job function of profs. In research universities, it is one of the main job functions, alongside research. This isn't a secret, it is in the faculty handbook. It is also one of the best reasons to get your degree from a research university, rather than a four-year college: If you might want a research career, you can get experience during your undergrad years.
There are enormous price differences between peer-reviewed journals. Some first-class journals in computer science, such as the Journal of the ACM, cost about 200 a year, while some other journals cost as much as 5000. The difference is that the former are published by nonprofits (scientific or technical societies) while the latter are published by for-profit entities, who charge universities through their nose.
What is more, some first-class journals and conference proceedings in CS are completely free and persistently available on-line. Some of these have been this way for more than a decade now!
A solution, yet unimplemented, would be to have editorial boards read and validate articles that are published on sites such as arXiv.org
Which is exactly why these free and open but reviewed and edited online sources are much better than arXiv.
And these editorial boards likewise aren't going to receive any kind of money from any source? Is there any particular reason slashdot believes that the world doesn't require money?
Yep, that is right, nobody pays the editorial boards, just as nobody pays the reviewers. We do it because we are saints. Also, you are right, slashdot is one big groupthink, which is why nobody ever disagrees with anybody here.
Of course, back in realityland, reviewers do get paid. They don't get paid by publishers, they get paid by their universities. No, not per review or anything. However, at a typical research university, each prof is expected to spend something like 50% of his or her time doing research, 50% of his or her time teaching, and 10% of his or her time doing service. (Does this add up to more than 100%? Well, there is a reason we work more than 40 hours per week.) Guess what? Reviewing papers can be counted as service. So can editing (or helping to edit) a journal.
So, the people doing the work are covered. The websites? These are pretty small and low traffic and the costs can be easily covered by Universities for the prestige of it. The only cost that isn't covered at this point is for the printed copies to go into University archives and these can be farmed out to publishing companies that will sell them to libraries for a couple hundred dollars per year. If people become convinced they don't need these, that cost will vanish.
The only reason more journals and conferences haven't gone this route is momentum. To start up a new journal or conference, or to switch an existing one to open, online access takes time and effort. Did I mention we already work long hours? You don't need massive government warehouses of information. You just need to pay a few faculty a couple of semesters per journal you want created/switched over and we'll take it from there. We want our research to be available to everyone.
Thanks for the "help" but I know that the words microcosmic and macrocosmic exist. I also know their etymologies.
Here is something else that I know, which you apparently don't: Their meanings. If you had bothered to actually read the dictionary entry you found, you might have learned that your use of the terms was (how can I put this nicely?) rather nonstandard.
Your lack of comprehension of particular words goes back to where your misguided commentary on this article started. You don't really know what the word evolution means but you felt compelled to comment on why scientists don't use it. As it turns out, your explanation was completely at odds with reality because your comprehension of the word was wrong. Rather than try to learn from the feedback, you have been trying to justify your mistake and each time you do so, you just dig yourself in deeper. This time it was by introducing into the discussion two more words you don't understand.
When you are wrong, you have the option to admit it (which might earn you the respect of people who value honesty) or you can keep arguing and running away from what you wrote (which won't).
Go (re-)read my first comment. Then, realize it wasn't contra TFA, but rather a totally different and novel point.
I guess I was crazy to even hope that you would select option one. I mean, no one reading your original comment and/or your follow-ups is going to buy this dodge, people not really following the discussion don't care, and surely you aren't fooling yourself either. So, what can you hope to gain by continuing to deny the obvious? Maybe you think you are saving face. I don't know.
... I was obviously referring to an improvement for the species itself. I was not making an overall value judgement of any kind in this case.
Why is the level of the species preferred? This bigger lion that takes over the pride prevents that smaller male from mating successfully. That may be fine for the big lion and isn't so great for the small one but does it lead to an "improvement for the species itself?" More to the point, why should we care?
Perhaps this leads to bigger lions which require more resources so the same area can support fewer lions. Is that good or bad for the species?
Perhaps the bigger lions are better able to fend off hyenas so the same area can support more lions (because they have to share less with hyenas). Is that good or bad for the species?
Does a species have an objective? Is that objective to have lots of members of the species? Is that objective to have the species survive for many years or many generations or both? Is that objective for the species to radiate many new species? Is that objective to have some combination of these events occur and/or some other events I haven't suggested? Where does this objective come from? How are the parts of the objective weighted? Why is it this objective and not some other?
The answer is a species does not have an objective. There is no "improvement for the species itself." Organisms live. Some breed. They die. Evolution happens. Genes come and go. Individuals come and go. Species come and go. Evolution is NOT by definition always an overall improvement. It can't be because there is no preferred perspective to say what constitutes an improvement. It just happens.
Buried in the paper is a rational explantation of the nomenclature used. The connotation (and denotation) of evolution is that of a gradual, generational change. It does not convey the horizontal nature of the adaptation being discussed in antibiotic resistance research.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. In digging around to find quotes that support your position, you left this one buried: "There is also the possibility that the failure to use the word "evolution" may reflect the mistaken sense that evolution implies processes that are long past, slow, and imperceptible."
The failure to use the word evolution by the antibiotic resistance researchers may be because they, like you, don't grasp what it means.
... When a biologists writes about evolutionary processes, he should be specific as to which process and where. He shouldn't be using "evolution" when there is a more appropriate word. OTOH, he should use "evolution" if it is the most appropriate word. Let's leave the oversimplification to the news media.
Nice idea but there was someone outside the news media making a comment that was not only oversimplified but just plain wrong. That comment was "Oh, and the scientific community's lack of usage of evolution is primarily because it's a general term." That someone was you.
As TFA points out, the scientists in question were not avoiding the term "evolution" in favor of less general or more appropriate terms. They were using more general, less appropriate terms instead!
When you are wrong, you have the option to admit it (which might earn you the respect of people who value honesty) or you can keep arguing and running away from what you wrote (which won't).
Ha! Cute and pop culture reference all in one! I bet you actually believe that too. Let me give you a hint:...
Um, the GP was talking about the only winning move from the perspective of the prospective players (the companies that could potentially file the lawsuits). Whether or not there is better move from your perspective is quite beside the point.
Here is a free clue for you: There are highly-respected journals that give away all their content for free on the web for anyone to read. They still use anonymous reviewers. The use of anonymous reviewers has nothing to do with greed or a desire to keep knowledge bottled up.
Yes, anywhere from 6 to 24 months after publication for most of them - which can be a lifetime in some fields. Let me try this again. There are highly-respected journals that give away all their content for free on the web for anyone to read before, during, and after the time that the hard copy is printed. They still use anonymous reviewers. The use of anonymous reviewers has nothing to do with greed or a desire to keep knowledge bottled up.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, even an Einstein divides by zero now and then.
Many of us are working to combine teams of UAVs and UGVs for just this reason. I'm not participating in the competition, though. Dean
MOD UP.
Please.
Dean
It seems to me that part of the reason so many programmers, software engineers, etc. say that they don't use math in what they do professionally, is what their courses were called and who their professors were in college. They learned some math (e.g., calculus, linear algebra) from math profs in courses called "Math ". They also learned a lot of math (e.g., boolean algebra, elements of graph theory) from CS profs in courses called "CS ". They go on to use the math they learned in the CS courses every day but rarely apply the math they learned in math courses. They then say they don't use math. Of course, some CS grads use an awful lot of the math from the math courses as well as the math from CS courses but they all use the math from CS courses. Dean
Mmmm, blueberries.
Finding anomalies and taking advantage of them happens not only in GA research but in other areas of machine learning as well. How do I know? I wrote a paper about it that was peer reviewed and published, so it MUST be TRUE(tm)!
This ability to find solutions that no sane person would dream up is both a strength of machine learning methods and, as your simulation example points out, a serious potential problem.
Dean
Please tell me that you actually did something about this at the time.
Dean
Thanks. I thought of mentioning LAGR but my post was already long enough.
LAGR certainly had some good points to it, such as ensuring each team had standard hardware and could use the same test environment. However, it was a very closed and focused program, which meant that its overall effect on robotic research was very limited. (Full disclosure: I applied to the LAGR program but was not selected to participate.)
Dean
P.S. I like your beer analogy in a post about a program called LAGR.
Planes frequently land themselves these days.
Dean
Thanks for the input. I've had quite a number of my students use Player/Stage (and Gazebo), both for research and for coursework. It certainly has some good points to it and I thank the good people at USC and elsewhere for making it available and open. At the same time, I'm always looking for better tools.
Dean
I'm all in favor of robot contests and all but more important, from my point of view, is the ability to share resources (such as test environments, robot chassis, sensors, vision-processing code, etc.) outside of the competition itself.
The biggest unnecessary impediment to robotic research right now, as I see it, is the difficulty researchers have in making comparisons between systems. You demonstrate your racing code on your robot in your test environment. I demo my code on my bot on my test track. The results are different but what does that show? On the other hand, if we both have the opportunity to try out our code on the same robot in the same test environment and mine clobbers yours, then the whole world can clearly see that mine works better. (Or, I suppose it is logically possible that yours would outperform mine, but that seems pretty unlikely, now doesn't it?)
We can get some kind of head-to-head comparisons in competitions, to be sure, but even then it is often just the environment that is the same. Typically the contestants are still providing all of their own hardware and software (as in the DARPA Grand Challenge and TFA). Even if we provide contestants the same hardware (xor the same software), limiting our comparison time to a couple of days a year impedes progress. We should be able to test our systems year 'round.
What we should be doing is making our code and our hardware and our test environments available to one another on a daily basis. If I want to see if I can evolve a better neurocontroller for your race car than you did, you should allow me to download my code onto your race car to drive around your track next month. Want to see if your code does a good job of driving my FIDO-class planetary rover over a simulated Martian surface? Download it onto my bot and run it in our Mars room or our outdoor OK/Mars test site. If you want to see if your rover hardware design can outperform the classic rocker-bogey design, pack it in a crate and ship it to us and we'll run it around our test environments for you.
Of course, it isn't quite as easy as that since the labs with the coolest robots in the world (which cost a pretty penny) can't spend all of their time and resources running experiments for other people at no cost - they have to get something out of the deal too. But that issue is not insurmountable.
I do applaud the provision of the simulation version of the race, which gets us running the same (simulated) hardware in the same (simulated) environment. (Interested readers should see http://julian.togelius.com/cig2007competition/ for the Java code. It is very simple and fun to try out.) The one question I have there, what is the license like for the simulator? I didn't see a README file or a note on the webpage. I didn't dig into individual source files or anything. Open source of some stripe would be nice, so that we can all improve it and share the improvements with one another.
Also, if anyone can suggest a more realistic racing simulation environment that could provide a better bridge to the real world competition that the simple 2D sim mentioned above, I'd appreciate it. An open interface is, of course, a must.
Dean
This type of reward system creates an environment that's filled with indifference. "Why should I work hard and come up with new and exciting lesson plans when I'm going to be paid exactly the same as Bob Smith who sits on his tenured ass and doesn't engage the students at all?"
Tenure and unionization have nothing to do with one another. Please do not confuse the two.
Dean
How much external funding a faculty member has brought in and likely will bring in is certainly related to pay. However, it also certainly isn't the only factor. Note that even at four-year colleges, where the faculty bring in very little external funding, the science and engineering profs are typically paid quite a bit more than the English profs. Pay in academia is linked to pay outside academia, just as the GP says.
At four year colleges teaching is the main job function of profs. In research universities, it is one of the main job functions, alongside research. This isn't a secret, it is in the faculty handbook. It is also one of the best reasons to get your degree from a research university, rather than a four-year college: If you might want a research career, you can get experience during your undergrad years.
Dean
What is more, some first-class journals and conference proceedings in CS are completely free and persistently available on-line. Some of these have been this way for more than a decade now!
A solution, yet unimplemented, would be to have editorial boards read and validate articles that are published on sites such as arXiv.orgWhich is exactly why these free and open but reviewed and edited online sources are much better than arXiv.
And these editorial boards likewise aren't going to receive any kind of money from any source? Is there any particular reason slashdot believes that the world doesn't require money?Yep, that is right, nobody pays the editorial boards, just as nobody pays the reviewers. We do it because we are saints. Also, you are right, slashdot is one big groupthink, which is why nobody ever disagrees with anybody here.
Of course, back in realityland, reviewers do get paid. They don't get paid by publishers, they get paid by their universities. No, not per review or anything. However, at a typical research university, each prof is expected to spend something like 50% of his or her time doing research, 50% of his or her time teaching, and 10% of his or her time doing service. (Does this add up to more than 100%? Well, there is a reason we work more than 40 hours per week.) Guess what? Reviewing papers can be counted as service. So can editing (or helping to edit) a journal.
So, the people doing the work are covered. The websites? These are pretty small and low traffic and the costs can be easily covered by Universities for the prestige of it. The only cost that isn't covered at this point is for the printed copies to go into University archives and these can be farmed out to publishing companies that will sell them to libraries for a couple hundred dollars per year. If people become convinced they don't need these, that cost will vanish.
The only reason more journals and conferences haven't gone this route is momentum. To start up a new journal or conference, or to switch an existing one to open, online access takes time and effort. Did I mention we already work long hours? You don't need massive government warehouses of information. You just need to pay a few faculty a couple of semesters per journal you want created/switched over and we'll take it from there. We want our research to be available to everyone.
Dean
Thanks for the "help" but I know that the words microcosmic and macrocosmic exist. I also know their etymologies.
Here is something else that I know, which you apparently don't: Their meanings. If you had bothered to actually read the dictionary entry you found, you might have learned that your use of the terms was (how can I put this nicely?) rather nonstandard.
Your lack of comprehension of particular words goes back to where your misguided commentary on this article started. You don't really know what the word evolution means but you felt compelled to comment on why scientists don't use it. As it turns out, your explanation was completely at odds with reality because your comprehension of the word was wrong. Rather than try to learn from the feedback, you have been trying to justify your mistake and each time you do so, you just dig yourself in deeper. This time it was by introducing into the discussion two more words you don't understand.
Dean
I guess I was crazy to even hope that you would select option one. I mean, no one reading your original comment and/or your follow-ups is going to buy this dodge, people not really following the discussion don't care, and surely you aren't fooling yourself either. So, what can you hope to gain by continuing to deny the obvious? Maybe you think you are saving face. I don't know.
Oh, well, maybe next time.
Dean
... I was obviously referring to an improvement for the species itself. I was not making an overall value judgement of any kind in this case.Why is the level of the species preferred? This bigger lion that takes over the pride prevents that smaller male from mating successfully. That may be fine for the big lion and isn't so great for the small one but does it lead to an "improvement for the species itself?" More to the point, why should we care?
Perhaps this leads to bigger lions which require more resources so the same area can support fewer lions. Is that good or bad for the species?
Perhaps the bigger lions are better able to fend off hyenas so the same area can support more lions (because they have to share less with hyenas). Is that good or bad for the species?
Does a species have an objective? Is that objective to have lots of members of the species? Is that objective to have the species survive for many years or many generations or both? Is that objective for the species to radiate many new species? Is that objective to have some combination of these events occur and/or some other events I haven't suggested? Where does this objective come from? How are the parts of the objective weighted? Why is it this objective and not some other?
The answer is a species does not have an objective. There is no "improvement for the species itself." Organisms live. Some breed. They die. Evolution happens. Genes come and go. Individuals come and go. Species come and go. Evolution is NOT by definition always an overall improvement. It can't be because there is no preferred perspective to say what constitutes an improvement. It just happens.
Dean
For some sufficiently vague definition of "now." You realize, of course, that Darwin conceived of evolution as having multiple parts, right?
Dean
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. In digging around to find quotes that support your position, you left this one buried: "There is also the possibility that the failure to use the word "evolution" may reflect the mistaken sense that evolution implies processes that are long past, slow, and imperceptible."
The failure to use the word evolution by the antibiotic resistance researchers may be because they, like you, don't grasp what it means.
Dean
... When a biologists writes about evolutionary processes, he should be specific as to which process and where. He shouldn't be using "evolution" when there is a more appropriate word. OTOH, he should use "evolution" if it is the most appropriate word. Let's leave the oversimplification to the news media.Nice idea but there was someone outside the news media making a comment that was not only oversimplified but just plain wrong. That comment was "Oh, and the scientific community's lack of usage of evolution is primarily because it's a general term." That someone was you.
As TFA points out, the scientists in question were not avoiding the term "evolution" in favor of less general or more appropriate terms. They were using more general, less appropriate terms instead!
When you are wrong, you have the option to admit it (which might earn you the respect of people who value honesty) or you can keep arguing and running away from what you wrote (which won't).
Dean
Microcosmic? Macrocosmic? Time for you to admit you don't really know what you are talking about. And time for a moderator to mod down the GGGGP.
Dean
This is so obviously a set up. Liu was planted by the Chinese government to assist in the three steps to dominion of the deep...
Step 1: Trick the United States into removing sonar from their subs and replacing it with sensors imitating the lateral lines of fish.
Step 2: Build Chinese submarines with emourmous mouths and "Hyper Active Sonars" that mimmicks the sonar of the dolphins.
Step 3: Use said H.A.S. to stun the US submarines so they are easier to catch and eat, just as Dolphins do to fish.
Step 4: ?????
Step 5: Profit!
Dean
Hey, somebody had to say it.
Ha! Cute and pop culture reference all in one! I bet you actually believe that too. Let me give you a hint: ...
Um, the GP was talking about the only winning move from the perspective of the prospective players (the companies that could potentially file the lawsuits). Whether or not there is better move from your perspective is quite beside the point.
Dean
Please quote something he has written or said that supports this claim. With a citation, please. Thanks.
Dean
Yes, anywhere from 6 to 24 months after publication for most of them - which can be a lifetime in some fields. Let me try this again. There are highly-respected journals that give away all their content for free on the web for anyone to read before, during, and after the time that the hard copy is printed. They still use anonymous reviewers. The use of anonymous reviewers has nothing to do with greed or a desire to keep knowledge bottled up.
Don't believe me? Take a look at http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ and http://www.jair.org/
Now you know. Please stop confusing the issue.
Dean