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CSLI Calendar, 20 October 1999, vol. 15:5
C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S
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20 October 1999 Stanford Vol. 15, No. 5
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
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ACTIVITIES FROM 20 OCTOBER TO 29 OCTOBER 1999
WEDNESDAY, 20 OCTOBER
3:15pm ME297: Design Theory and Methodology Forum
Bldg. 560
The Place of Design Research in the World of Modern
Philosophical Thought, and Vice-Versa: An Illustrative
Example
Dave Cannon
http://cdr.stanford.edu/DD/Courses/me297/
Abstract below
3:45pm Psychology Colloquium
Jordan Hall, 420:041
Contingencies of self-esteem:
Evaluating the worth of the self
Jennifer Crocker
University of Michigan
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Automated Generation of System-Specific Processors
Beatrice Fu
VP of Engineering, Tensilica Inc.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium
TCseq 201
Taming the Giants and The Monsters:
Recent Developments in Data Mining
Usama Fayyad
Microsoft Corp.
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 21 OCTOBER
12 noon Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching
Hartley Conference Room, Mitchell Earth Sciences
Teaching Large Humanities Courses for the Frosh
Philippe Buc
History
http://www-ctl.stanford.edu/teach/awt/awtmain.html
12:15pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
The Bluetooth Wireless Protocol
Jon Inouye
Mobile & Handheld Products Group, Intel
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
RSA: Past, Present, and Future
Dan Boneh
Stanford University
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
Abstract below
4:15pm US-Japan Technology Management Center
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
Videoconference Presentation from Tokyo about the new
"Center for Advanced Science and Technology Incubation
Ltd.," University of Tokyo
Megumi Takata and Yutaka Hara
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
Abstract below
7:30pm Stanford Phonology Workshop
Building 460, Room 126
English Vowel Length and Stem-Based (not word-based)
Morphology
Orhan Orgun
UC Davis
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
FRIDAY, 22 OCTOBER
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
The Soft Machine - Design in the Cyborg Age
Marie O'Mahony
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm CS545: Infolab Seminar
188 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
To be announced
Vishal Sikka
PatternRx
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
3:15pm FRISEM: Cognitive Psychology Seminar
Jordan 420:100
Bayesian modeling of human concept learning
Josh Tenenbaum
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
4:00pm Semantics Workshop
Margaret Jacks 126
The Metaphysics of Words
Nicholas Asher
(University of Texas, Austin)
Local Prepositions Revisited
Jean Mark Gawron
(SRI International)
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/semgroup/
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 26 OCTOBER
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Room 380:381T
Logical Frameworks
Dave Barker-Plummer
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 27 OCTOBER
10:00am Knowledge on the Web Seminar
Gates 104
To be announced
Mike Genesereth
Associate Professor, Stanford University Computer Science
Department and Chief Technology Officer of Mergent
Systems
http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/KnOWS.html
12 noon Stanford Computer Industry Project (SCIP)
Littlefield room L107
to be announced
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scip/
12 noon Developmental Brownbag
Jordan Hall, 420:286
Fast Mapping of Proper and Common Names by Preschoolers
Vikram Jaswal
Stanford
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Transistors:
From Molecules to Large Scale Circuits
Ananth Dodabalapur
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium
TCseq 201
AI Meets the Real World: Applying Weak Methods to
Practical Problems
Matt Ginsberg
CIRL, University of Oregon
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 28 OCTOBER
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Library
Bruno Repp review
Charles Nichols
(CCRMA)
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html#hearing
3:15pm Experiments in Learning at Stanford
Press Warehouse, room 118
Learning with a Computer vs. Learning with a Person: A
Social Perspective
Clifford Nass
Department of Communication, Stanford University
http://sll.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Cordura 100
To be announced
Nina Mishra Fox
HP Laboratories
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
4:15pm US-Japan Technology Management Center
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
New opportunities versus old mistakes: foreign companies
in Japan's high-tech world
Dr. Gerhard Fasol
President & CEO, Eurotechnology Japan K.K.
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
FRIDAY, 29 OCTOBER
12 noon Logic Lunch
Room 380:383N
Dialectica Categories: a survey
Valeria de Paiva
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham UK
Visiting Xerox PARC
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
How Human is Human-Computer Interaction?
Clifford Nass
Stanford Communications Dept. and CSLI
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm CS545: Infolab Seminar
188 tcSEQ (across from Gates)
To be announced
Alex Russakovskii
Hyperion
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
3:15pm Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, Room 92Q
Mathematical Explanation: a new challenge for the
philosophy of mathematics?
Paolo Mancuso
UC Berkeley
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/
3:15pm FRISEM: Cognitive Psychology Seminar
Jordan 420:100
Ken Forbus
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
3:30pm Stanford Linguistics Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
The Social Geography of Variation: connecting the local
and the global
Penelope Eckert
Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/colloq.html
Abstract below
____________
ME297: DESIGN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 20 October 1999, 3:15pm
http://cdr.stanford.edu/DD/Courses/me297/
The Place of Design Research in the World of Modern Philosophical
Thought, and Vice-Versa: An Illustrative Example
David Cannon
Note From Dave:
I presented a paper at ICED last August about one of the things that
philosophy has to contribute to design research. I've talked about
the subject here before, and Ken thought it would be a good idea to
get an update, based on the ICED paper. Of course, I plan to make it
a bit more interactive, given the advantages that a smaller forum like
the DT&M seminar offers, so the abstract I wrote for ICED may be a bit
misleading in its formal tone. But rather than take the time to
rework it, I thought I'd just offer it up as-is and ask that people
imagine the same subject, but (hopefully) less dull. (The 'we' refers
to myself my coauthor, Larry Leifer, and to a lesser degree the design
research community as a whole.) Oh, and don't count on all the
references being covered -- they're for the proverbial 'interested
reader.'
Abstract
ICED abstract for the paper, "The Place of Design Research in the
World of Modern Philosophical Thought, and Vice-Versa: An Illustrative
Example"
As a research community, our forays into areas outside of traditional
engineering have often been uneasy. As we look to borrow more from
fields that focus on the complexity of the day-to-day activities of
people, they seem to rely less and less on clear evidence, and to
achieve less incontrovertible conclusions. These difficulties have
created a subtle but growing rift in the design research community,
splitting it (to make a broad generalization) into two camps. This
fragmentation, left unexplained, threatens to hold back progress by
making it difficult for us to build on each other's work. Similar
fragmentation has long been discussed openly in philosophical circles,
and we believe that the discussion has much to teach us. We claim
that a major reason for the rift in design research perspectives is a
difference between the kind of theories of knowledge that each group
relies on. We describe two categories of theories of knowledge,
called reductionist and constitutive views. We believe these views
lie at the root of, for instance, the two paradigms for describing
design activity that have been studied by (Dorst and Dijkhuis 1996),
and can be related to the two styles of design characterized by
(Gunther and Ehrlenspiel 1998). We wish to expand on this kind of
characterization, bringing into the discussion the work of such
scholars as Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein 1958), Karl Popper
(Miller 1985), Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn 1970), Don Ihde (Ihde 1991), John
Dupre (Dupre 1993) and Carl Mitcham (Mitcham 1994).
References
Dorst, K. and J. Dijkhuis (1996). Comparing Paradigms for Describing
Design Activity. Analysing Design Activity. N. Cross, H. Christiaans
and K. Dorst. New York, John Wiley and Sons: 253-269.
Dupre, J. (1993). The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of
the Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Gunther, J. and K. Ehrlenspiel (1998). How Do Designers Practise
Design? What Can Design Methodology Learn From Them? How Can Design
Methodology Support Them? Designers -- The Key to Successful Product
Management. H. Birkhofer, P. Badke-Schaub and
E. Frankenberger. London, Springer-Verlag.
Ihde, D. (1991). Instrumental Realism: The Interface Between
Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Technology. Bloomington,
Indiana, Indiana University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press.
Miller, D. W., Ed. (1985). Popper Selections. Princeton, NJ, Princeton
University Press.
Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between
Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Biography: David Cannon is a doctoral student with several years of
experience as an engineer in industry. As part of his research, he has
helped develop software to support sketching and note taking
activities, both at Stanford and in industry. His dissertation work
concerns the use of sketches by engineers in conceptual design work.
____________
BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM FOR
AI-GEOMETRY-GRAPHICS-ROBOTICS-VISION
on Wednesday, 20 October 1999, 4:15pm
Science and Engineering Quad Teaching Center (TCseq201)
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Taming the Giants and The Monsters:
Recent Developments in Data Mining
Usama Fayyad
Microsoft Research
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Data Mining are concerned
with the extraction of interesting structure from databases,
especially large stores. Following a brief overview of this rapidly
growing area of research and applications, I'll focus on data mining
methods. These methods have their origins in statistics, pattern
recognition, learning, visualization, databases, optimization, and
parallel computing.
I'll discuss some classification and clustering methods and how they
are scaled to large databases. I'll present results from our recent
work to demonstrate that the methods can be effectively scaled to work
with large databases with only limited memory resources. I'll outline
the research challenges and opportunities posed by the problem of
extracting models from massive data sets. Operating under such
scalability constraints poses interesting problems for how models can
be built and what methods are practical. Some applications will be
used to motivate and illustrate the techniques.
Biography: Usama Fayyad is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research
(http://research.microsoft.com/~fayyad). His research interests
include scaling data mining algorithms to large databases, learning
algorithms, and statistical pattern recognition, especially
classification and clustering. After receiving the Ph.D. degree from
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1991, he joined the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, where
(until 1996) he headed the Machine Learning Systems Group and
developed data mining systems for automated science data analysis. He
received the 1994 NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the JPL 1993
Lew Allen Award for Excellence in Research for his work on developing
data mining systems to solve challenging science analysis problems in
astronomy and remote sensing. He remains affiliated with JPL as a
Distinguished Visiting Scientist. He is a co-editor of Advances in
Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (AAAI/MIT Press, 1996) and is an
Editor-in-Chief of the journal: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.
He was program co-chair of KDD-94 and KDD-95 (the First International
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining) and is general
chair of KDD-96 and KDD-99. He co-chaired the 1997 Workshops on the
role of KDD in Visualizations held at KDD-97 and IEEE Vis-97
conferences.
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 21 October 1999, 12:15pm
Gates 104
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
The Bluetooth Wireless Protocol
Jon Inouye
Mobile & Handheld Products Group, Intel
Bluetooth is a technology specification for small form factor,
low-cost, short range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile phones
and other portable devices.
This talk will give a quick overview of the Bluetooth specification
and additional details on the Bluetooth radio protocol.
____________
XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 21 October 1999, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
RSA: Past, Present, and Future
Dan Boneh
Stanford University
The RSA cryptosystem is currently one of the most widely deployed
public key encryption schemes. It is commonly used to secure web
traffic via SSL, and is at the heart of the emerging Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI). In this talk we will survey the RSA
cryptosystem, and describe how it is currently being used. We will
discuss various attacks on RSA and how to properly defend against
them. The talk will illustrate how a seemingly simple encryption
scheme such as RSA can be very tricky to implement securely.
Biography: Dan Boneh is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at
Stanford University. He joined the faculty at Stanford after spending
a year at Bellcore. He received his doctorate from Princeton
University.
____________
US-JAPAN TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT CENTER
on Thursday, 21 October 1999, 4:15pm
Skilling Engineering Auditorium
http://www.stanford.edu/~viji/
Videoconference Presentation from Tokyo about the new
"Center for Advanced Science and Technology Incubation Ltd.,"
University of Tokyo
Megumi Takata and Yutaka Hara
Technology transfer between academia and industry has been promoted by
the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry over the past few years as a strategy to revive Japanese
universities and industries. Since the enactment of the Technology
Transfer Law in August 1998, eight technology licensing organizations
have been identified for government support under this law. The
government also announced a new policy to enhance technology transfer
in order to reinforce industrial competitiveness in June 1999.
CASTI, which is a technology licensing organization of the University
of Tokyo, was founded in August 1998 in the form of a privately held
stock company. Now, CASTI not only functions in a patent licensing
capacity, but also supports university-industry liaison activities.
Recruit Co., Ltd. is one of the major publishing and information
management companies in Japan. The company started two years ago as a
project in technology transfer from academia to industry, and was seen
as a potential new business in information management. The Technology
Licensing Group of Recruit is now one of the most active technology
transfer organizations in Japan.
____________
SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 22 October 1999, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
The Soft Machine - Design in the Cyborg Age
Marie O'Mahony
The term cyborg was coined by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in
1960 to refer to an enhanced man machine hybrid who could survive in
extra-terrestrial environments. Technology and thinking have moved a
long way since the first cyborg (a white rat) and, since it has
started to become part of our design and popular culture, it is time
to assess the implications of what is becoming the cyborg age.
This slide presentation will move between such diverse disciplines as
Art, Medicine, Science Fiction, Design and Science. This juxtaposition
of images and ideas from very different areas reflects the current
trend towards closer links between Art and Science.
Biography: Marie O'Mahony is an independent consultant specializing in
textiles and technology based in London. She has worked for companies
and institutions advising on projects, preparing reports and
organizing workshops, symposiums and exhibitions. Clients include The
Netherlands Design Institute, Interval Research Corporation, Ove Arup
and Partners, Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Interstoff at Messe
Frankfurt and Zaha M Hadid. She is co-author of TechnoTextiles and
currently researching a book to be titled The Soft Machine - Design in
the Cyborg Age for publication in Spring 2001.
____________
STANFORD SEMANTICS WORKSHOP
on Friday, 22 October 1999, 2:15pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/semgroup/
The Metaphysics of Words
Nicholas Asher
University of Texas, Austin
In this talk I will examine some aspects of the interactions between
lexical semantics, compositional semantics and pragmatics. My starting
point will be the contrast between the Generative Lexicon (GL) view of
lexical semantics and a Fodorian, minimalist conception. GL's view of
the lexicon is one that meshes naturally with a dynamic and discourse
oriented view of meaning; in other work colleagues and I have argued
that a rich lexical theory is needed to drive discourse
interpretation.
I will then critically review some aspects of GL, endorsing the basic
picture but criticizing certain technical implementations. In
particular I propose a different formal type calculus with a new
analysis of LCP's or dot objects. I argue that dot objects like qualia
are best understood as type constructors whose semantics can be
constrained if not fully understood by how these constructors work in
the process of building up a logical form for semantic interpretation.
I will apply the calculus to certain familiar constructions like
complement coercion and co-composition. I will if time permits then
investigate the possibility of thinking of complex causative verbs as
dot types.
Recommended Readings:
* Asher, N. and A. Lascarides, 1995. Lexical Disambiguation in a
Discourse Context. Journal of Semantics 12:1, 69-108.
* Pustejovski, J., 1991. The Generative Lexicon. Computational
Linguistics 17:4, 409-441.
* Pustejovski, J., 1996. The Generative Lexicon. MIT Press.
Local Prepositions Revisited
Jean Mark Gawron
SRI International
This talk is a reconsideration of the seminal Herskovits (1986). Much
of H's discussion of spatial preposition meaning is centered on the
interaction between her relatively simple ideal meanings (her term)
and the highly specific ground interpretations the prepositions
receive in context. H compares the relationship of an ideal meaning to
its ground interpretations with that of a prototype to its instances,
implying that the ideal meaning serves as ideal exemplar. In prototype
theory, ideal exemplars are too specific to cover all instances of the
locative relation, but particular exemplars may be characterized as
odd or apt depending on how well they fit the ideal. Since particular
interpretations may violate some features of the ideal, H's theory of
spatial relations posits in principle a non-monotonic relationship
between meaning and interpretation. In this talk, we propose an
account that requires no such non-monotonic relation, but we do so at
the usual price, by adopting locative meanings that are quite vague
and general. Two issues then become urgent: (1) an account of the fact
that ideal meanings are resolved into highly specific ground
interpretations; and (2) an account of preposition choice. Considering
a variety of ordinary objects in spatial situations, H. shows again
and again that the most natural preposition choice is quite
constrained. What mechanism provides a choice among vague meanings for
situations they can all accommodate?
One of the most interesting things about H's work is that she often
approaches data from the perspective of the generation problem: Given
a particular real world situation, what preposition best expresses the
spatial relations? This kind of question, a question of best fit or
best match, is the kind prototype theory is designed to answer. It is
less clear how standard semantic accounts provide answers to such
questions. Focusing on the case of the topological prepositions 'at',
'on/against', and 'in' we propose an account that treats these
prepositions as part of a lexical subsystem expressed in first-order
axioms. The axioms must interact with those of a knowledge base
encoding facts about the world (that is, nonlinguistic facts). What
permits a characterization of best fit is that the axioms will be
applied within a framework of abduction (Hobbs.et al. 1987), with
assumability costs controlling interpretation choices.
We consider several cases, using Talmy's terms figure and ground for
the object located and the object denoted by object of spatial
preposition First, there is a class of cases that involve what might
be called functional spaces of objects.
(1a) under | in the water
(1b) man under the tree
(1c) bird in the tree
(1d) knees under the desk
(1e) pen in the desk
Being under the water means being under the surface. On the other
hand, being in the water means breaking the plane of the surface; a
large object can count as in the water even when only a small portion
is submerged. Thus for these prepositions at least, the relevant space
for evaluation of the spatial relation is not the entire volume of
water, but the two-dimensional surface. For both (1b) and (1c) the
relevant space for the tree is not the entire tree volume, but a
region surrounding the bower or crown. Something is in the tree when
in that region, and under the tree when under it. In (1d) and (1e), it
appears that different functional regions are needed for different
spatial relations. For (1d) the knees need to be under the functional
desktop, the working space on top of the desk, and for (1e), the pen
needs to be in a region intended for storage, such as a drawer. One
can perhaps construct contexts in which all these interpretations do
not apply. For our purposes this is irrelevant. It suffices that the
very specific interpretations cited for (1a)-(1e) are natural default
interpretations. The question is: How are such highly specific
interpretations resolved?
The examples in (1) suggest that at least some objects (for example
artifacts designed for storage and containment) have special
privileged functional spaces associated with them. Further evidence
for this can be found by contrasting examples with and without
prepositions:
(2a) The best place to hide this letter is the desk | cabinet | back
yard.
(2b) The best place to hide this letter is under the desk | cabinet |
back yard.
(2c) The best place to hide this letter is where the desk is.
The copular construction forces identification of two spaces, and in
the variants of (a) a salient functional space associated with each
object is used. In the case of the desk and cabinet, the functional
interiors, and in the case of the yard, the usable volume immediately
above the yard surface (and not 1000 feet above it). Note that the
default functional space is DISTINCT from the object's location. Thus
(2c) means something different from the desk variant of (2a).
We use the notion functional space together with our axioms for `in'
and `on' to explain the contrasting situations that best fit with the
following pair.
(3a) The chopsticks in the bowl
(3b) The chopsticks on the bowl
Recommended Readings:
* Herskovits, A., 1986. Language and Spatial Cognition. Cambridge
University Press.
(Especially Chapters 4, 6, and 9)
____________
LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 26 October 1999, 4:15pm
Math Corner 380:381T
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Logical Frameworks
David Barker-Plummer
Stanford
A logical framework is a formal meta-language for deductive systems.
The primary tasks supported in logical frameworks to varying degrees
are:
- specification of deductive systems,
- search for derivations within deductive systems,
- meta-programming of algorithms pertaining to deductive systems,
- proving meta-theorems about deductive systems.
This definition is due to Frank Pfenning (from the Logical Frameworks
home page: http://www.lb.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/lfs.html ).
I'll describe the main features of logical frameworks, how they are
used, how to specify a logic and to do a proof in that logic. For
definiteness, I will focus on the Isabelle framework, while making
references to others where appropriate.
____________
BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM FOR
AI-GEOMETRY-GRAPHICS-ROBOTICS-VISION
on Wednesday, 29 September 1999, 4:15pm
Science and Engineering Quad Teaching Center (TCseq201)
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
AI Meets the Real World:
Applying Weak Methods to Practical Problems
Matthew L. Ginsberg
CIRL, University of Oregon
The conventional wisdom in AI (even as taught at Stanford) is that
NP-complete problems are intractable in general.
In practice, however, this is simply wrong: NP-complete problems are
typically easy and almost always tractable. This suggests (correctly,
I would argue) that the computational problems of intelligence can
best be addressed by finding and solving NP-complete approximations of
them.
In this talk, I discuss this overall approach, describing leading
methods for solving satisfiability problems and considering the main
difficulty encountered by these methods: The NP-complete problems
associated with difficult realistic problems are awkwardly large. I
present a new technique that can reduce both the size of the problems
and the time needed to solve them by multiple orders of magnitude.
Biography: Matthew L. Ginsberg received his doctorate in mathematics
from Oxford in 1980 at the age of 24. He remained on the faculty in
Oxford until 1983, doing research in mathematical physics and computer
science; during this period, he wrote a program that was used
successfully to trade stock and stock options on Wall Street.
Ginsberg's continuing interest in artificial intelligence brought him
to Stanford in late 1983, where he remained for nine years. He then
went on to found CIRL, the computational intelligence research
laboratory at the University of Oregon, which he directed until 1996.
Ginsberg's present interests include constraint satisfaction,
planning, and computer bridge. He is the author of numerous
publications in these areas, the editor of "Readings in Nonmonotonic
Reasoning," and the author of "Essentials of Artificial Intelligence,"
both published by Morgan Kaufmann. He is also the author of the
bridge-playing program GIB, which recently made international news by
participating in the world bridge championships in Lille, France, and
the CEO of On Time Systems, Inc., CIRL's commercial scheduling
spinoff.
____________
EXPERIMENTS IN LEARNING
on Thursday, 28 October 1999, 3:15pm
Stanford Press Warehouse, room 118
http://sll.stanford.edu/
Learning with a Computer vs. Learning with a Person:
A Social Perspective
Clifford Nass
Communication, Stanford
In this talk, I'll describe a series of studies grounded in the idea
that individuals' interactions with interactive media are
fundamentally social. I will discuss the results of experiments that
examine effects of a wide variety of interface manipulations,
including adaptation, text-to-speech, consistency between modalities,
interface personality, character appearance, and number of characters
on performance and attitudes. I will also discuss implications for the
design of systems that support teaching and learning.
Biography: Clifford Nass is an associate professor of communication at
Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Science,
Technology, and Society, Sociology, and Symbolic System. He is
co-director of the Interface Lab at the Center for the Study of
Language and Information at Stanford University. Nass is co-author of
"The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New
Media Like Real People and Places" and over 40 articles on
human-technology interaction and statistical methodology. He has
consulted on the design of over 100 media products, for companies such
as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, General Magic, Netsage, British Cable
and Wireless, and OMRON.
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 29 October 1999, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Dialectica Categories: a survey
Valeria de Paiva
University of Birmingham UK
In this talk I will start by explaining briefly how dialectica
categories get their name, from Goedel's dialectica interpretation.
Then I present two kinds of dialectica categories in the literature
and show that they are categorical models of, respectively
intuitionistic and classical Linear Logic. I also describe how they
compare with Chu Spaces. Finally I shall present a mild generalization
of the construction and suggest some further work.
____________
SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 29 October 1999, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
How Human is Human-Computer Interaction?
Anthropomorphic Interfaces and Social Responses to Computers
Clifford Nass
Communication, Stanford
In a series of studies summarized in The Media Equation (1996), my
colleagues and I demonstrated that many responses to text-based
interfaces were consistent with the social-psychological
literature. That is, users applied the same rules and expectations
toward text-based computers that they applied toward people. In the
present talk, I will discuss our extensions of the research in three
ways: 1) comparison of HCI to CMC rather than the psych. literature;
2) use of voice and character interfaces rather than text; 3) richer
behavioral responses. I will discuss recent research concerning humor,
self-disclosure, text-to-speech and personality, ethnicity, character
appearance, reciprocity, adaptation, and emotion.
Biography: Clifford Nass is an associate professor of communication at
Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Science,
Technology, and Society, Sociology, and Symbolic System. He is
co-director of the Interface Lab at the Center for the Study of
Language and Information at Stanford University. Nass is co-author of
The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New
Media Like Real People and Places and over 40 articles on
human-technology interaction and statistical methodology. He has
consulted on the design of over 100 media products, for companies such
as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, General Magic, Netsage, British Cable
and Wireless, and OMRON.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 29 October 1999, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/colloq.html
The Social Geography of Variation:
connecting the local and the global
Penny Eckert
Stanford University
Abstract: The study of the social significance of linguistic variation
has focused on the patterning of use of variants within communities,
whether through large-scale survey studies or through more localized
ethnographic studies. While such studies tell us something about the
local meaning of variables, they do not explain how these local
meanings connect to the larger social order, nor do they explain how
these meanings play out across communities. Without this piece, we
have no coherent explanation of the systematic social nature of the
spread of linguistic influence and change. Based on a series of
ethnographic studies of variation in adolescent communities across an
urban-suburban continuum, this talk will bring together patterns of
variation across this continuum and within each local community. By
showing the connections among the age of a variable, its geographic
distribution, and its role in local sociolinguistic practice, I will
show how social meaning in variation is constructed in the
intersection between the local social order and the broader
socio-geographic context.
____________
CSLI IAP CONFERENCE
ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
November 10-12, 1999
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Stanford University
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Tutorials/schedule.shtml
The latest research on how humans and computers interact will be the
subject of a conference November 10 to 12, sponsored by the Stanford
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). Planned for
businesses and other organizations concerned with this topic, the
conference is free and open to the public; however, space is limited
so registration is required by October 27, 1999.
Sessions will run from 9am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 5pm on November 10
and 11 in Room 100 of Cordura Hall, at the corner of Panama Street and
Campus Drive West. On November 12, the conference will be in the same
location but finish by 2:30pm. Between speakers, demonstrations of
research prototypes in progress will be offered.
To register or for further information, go to the web page
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/Tutorials/schedule.shtml
or contact
Michele King
Industrial Affiliates Program
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Ventura Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Tel:(650) 723-3084
Fax:(650) 723-0758
Email: mking@csli.stanford.edu
____________
END MATERIAL
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