Maciek should fill this in. pondy 15 Oct 2008

Mechanisms of analysis and perception Before the discoveries in this book, one might have thought that all perceptual processes were, in some sense, complex, and...

The notion of computation Here's a not so digestable synopsis of the points in this chapter Tim Field * Computation as a Framework * a program is somet...

http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/pics/circularCA.jpg The Principle of Computational Equivalence * The notion of universal computation places an upper l...

http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/pics/circularCA.jpg The crucial experiment Salient points: * 4 types of behaviour in simple cellular automata: regular ...

http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/pics/circularCA.jpg The world of simple programs Salient points: * If a CA is too simple the behaviour is boring (stat...

Systems based on numbers Salient points: * lots of 'simple' sequences of numbers look 'complex' if you write them in binary and draw them... * the shift m...

Two dimensions and beyond Salient points: * 2D systems are pretty much like the 1D ones * networks examples are given where each node has 2 outgoing link...

Starting from Randomness An old kind of concept...? Wolfram describes a CA classification with four classes: *Class 1 Starting from random initial conditio...

mechanisms in programs and nature Salient points / claims: * there are 3 mechanisms for generating randomness: * from the environment (i.e. get it from s...

Implications for everyday systems Covering: Natural systems and the advantages of modeling them algorithmically. Note: This is a paraphrased summary of the chap...

Fundamental physics Summary of chapter 9 (pdf) Sean Devine . http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/pics/flat3body.jpg back to Wolframania

Poems inspired by ANKoS Before the discoveries in this book One might have thought But instead one finds And indeed in a sense This is what I have sh...

Consider two alleles, A and B. Denote the density of A by %$ \rho $%. We have * a 2 by 2 payoff matrix %$V(\mathrm{self} \mathrm{other}) $% * a 2 by 2 matrix o...

I'd like to talk about how much sense it might make to apply concepts of social network analysis (SNA) to software engineering. Among other things, social network...

Technological Singularity The technological singularity is the idea that when machines become more intelligent than humans, they will be able to augment themselve...

Lists used by automatic seminar title generator: * first names * last names * locations * institutions * institution modifiers * adjectives ...

big sex questions This is (a) my list of "why is it like this?" questions, (b) an attempt to trigger VUW's `websense' filter by using the s word lots on one page ...

AI Graduate Theses (completed) (this list has not been kept up to date!) Student Thesis degree supervisor Tony Butler Yeoman Disentangling complex c...

Symbolic systems often assume a 'vision' system that maps symbols to objects in the real world. How safe is this assumption and how exactly can it be implemented?...

Festival of Doubt The AI group at Victoria University runs an informal discussion series called the Festival of Doubt, for staff, students and the curious. We use...

Fisher's run away sexual selection process is a mechanism Fisher put forward to answer one of the big sex questions (go to the end) the apparently excessive...

What is FoD? "Festive", because if there isn't the occasional loud bang then why bother, and "doubt", because that's a fundamental notion driving interesting scie...

The FoD, Reanimated We had a discussion about re starting the festival: * Seminars aren't discussions. Maybe it's useful to think of two types of informal pre...

Honest Signals FIRST, have a look at this lovely intro by Carl Bergstrom great stuff: http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/handicap/honest_intro_01.html . I...

kourosh 15 Dec 2008 Most of the existing definitions for an intelligent agent are around thinking/acting humanly/rationally. These definitions are not very scalab...

Jeff is fishy: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sbs/staff/staff_academic/shimajeff/jeff shima.aspx

Keith says: To make things more entertaining, to me at least, I thought we would try introducing some "rules" about who has the right to speak. You've heard of R...

(Notes on a lunchtime discussion between Sean Stephen, 2 July 2003) Although Wolfram identifies a class of cellular automata that generate 'complex' structure t...

Dirk Derom is a grad student in psychology at VUW who is creating a meta analysis tool for the cognitive sciences Abstract: Metaneva ( http://metaneva.org) tri...

Here's a list of interested parties for anouncement of Festival of Doubt discussions cut and paste this into your mailer to send us something. Move your own nam...

PersonTitle:MarcusFrean official VUW homepage

Discussion on the paper : Bhaskar, H. and Mihaylova, L. and Maskell, S. (2008) POPULATION BASED PARTICLE FILTERING. In: The Institution of Engineering and Technol...

Previously at the Festival of Doubt: This page lists all the talks, discussions, dogmatic rantings, collective sharings, and bunfights, since records began in 200...

Price's Equation * Price_1972.pdf: Price (1972) "Fisher's 'fundamental theorem' made clear" * Gardner_2008.pdf: Gardner (2008) "The Price Equation" * G...

List of regular doubters Dubious in 2016: (just a list of names non binding!) Staff: * David Balduzzi * JP (John Lewis) * Marcus Frean * Chris Holl...

Background Our AI staff members have a wide variety of research interests; the list below gives a high level overview that is intended to be helpful for potential...

Extreme Executive Summaries... (just prettiness but anyway here goes): * Scaling laws in biology * Hierarchical branching systems * Energy dissipati...

Social evolution reading group Over the summer of 2008 2009 we looked into some social evolution ideas from a mathematical perspective. The first few were based o...

Stag Hunt A page for ideas about modeling signalling in the stag hunt game. (Anna can you edit this okay? Use the "raw edit" rather than "edit" as the latter ac...

Suggested topics for future FoDs If you're lucky enough to find yourself hosting this week's Festival, you get to start a discussion about A Topic In Machine Lear...

Suggestions for Social Evolution Reading Group topics How about... * chapter X of Prof Y's fab book on Z. I, YOUR NAME HERE, will distribute the PDF a week ahe...

(a.k.a. "the search for momentum"). I like this one, as you can say things like "I'll see YOU at the Consequences". It has a certain Chuck Norrisness about it. ...

STARTLIST abstract, acceptable, active, adaptive, additive, advanced, agent based, agile, algebraic, algorithmic, amorphous, analog, analogue, analytic, anticipa...

STARTLIST partially ENDLIST

STARTLIST Alex, Alfred, Anakin, Andrew, Anna, Archibald, Arindam, Arezou, Beatrice, Bob, Boris, Brian, Chris, Christopher, Dale, Daniel, Darth, David, Dillon, Don...

STARTLIST Agricultural, All American, Astronomical, Athletic, Buddhist, Baptist, Botanical, Catholic, Central, Christian, Chilean, Contemporary, Cybernetic, Digit...

STARTLIST Academy, Agency, Bureau, Bus Stop, Center, Church, Clinic, College, College, College, Conservatory, Corporation, Department, Department, Department, Em...

STARTLIST Abraham, Ali, Andreae, Archer, Arnold, Aryan, Asimov, Atkin, Axelrod, Bailey, Bak, Balduzzi, Barabasi, Baxter, Beckham, Berlusconi, Berners Lee, Bhakta,...