[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
CSLI Calendar, 23 February 2000, vol. 15:20
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
______________________________________________________________________
23 February 2000 Stanford Vol. 15, No.20
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 23 FEBRUARY TO 3 MARCH 2000
WEDNESDAY, 23 FEBRUARY
4:00pm Symplectic Geometry Seminar
Building 380:380W
Deformation Theory and Dualities
Yan Soibelman
Kansas State University and IHES
http://math.stanford.edu/html/seminars.html
4:00pm Geometric Analysis Seminar
Building 380:381T
Besov's Regularity Persistence For
The Koch-Tataru Solutions to Navier-Stokes in R^3
Giulia Furioli
Universite Orsay
http://math.stanford.edu/html/seminars.html
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium For
AI-Geometry-Graphics-Robotics-Vision
TCseq201, Lecture Hall B
Motion Capture from Movies
Jim Rehg
Cambridge Research Lab
Compaq Computer Corporation
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03
Perspectives on Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
David Brumley
Stanford University
Joel de la Garza
Securify Labs
Mark Seiden
Securify Labs
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 24 FEBRUARY
12:00pm Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching
Econ 134
Back to the Basics: Presenting
the Foundations of One's Discipline
Peter Sells
Linguistics, Stanford University
http://www-ctl.stanford.edu/events.html
12:15pm CSLI Coglunch
Cordura 100
Predator Avoidance by Wild Bonnet Macaques:
The Roles of Classical Conditioning and Innate
Cognitive Processes.
Richard Coss
Department of Psychology, UC Davis
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Power-laws, Fractals, and the Internet Topology
Michalis Faloutsos
UC Riverside
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
2:00pm International Computer Science Institute Talk
ICSI, Main Lecture Hall
Discrete Curve Evolution: Shape Simplification in
Maps
Thomas Barkowsky
University of Hamburg - Department for Informatics
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at Xerox PARC
Where Stuff Comes From
Harvey Molotch
Metropolitan Studies & Sociology, NYU
http://www.parc.xerox.com/forum
Abstract below
4:15pm Mathematics Colloquium
Local Well-Posedness for Nonlinear
Hyperbolic Equations
Daniel Tataru
Northwestern University
http://math.stanford.edu/html/seminars.html
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Ventura 17
Lazy Bayesian Rules: A Technique for Making
Highly Accurate Predictions
Zijian Zheng
Data Mining Applications
Blue Martini Software, Inc.
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Abstract below
7:30pm Phonology Workshop
Building 460:126
Cyclicity in Finnish Noun Inflection
Paul Kiparsky
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 25 FEBRUARY
11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
CCRMA Ballroom
Head-Related Transfer Functions and Spatial Hearing
Richard O. Duda
SJSU
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Effects of Humor in Task-Oriented
Human-Computer Interaction
and Computer-Mediated Communication
John Morkes
Trilogy
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
2:30pm Informal Geometry and Topology Seminar
Building 380:383N
Deformations of Hyperbolic Structures on 3-Manifolds
Nathan Kutz
University of Washington
http://math.stanford.edu/html/seminars.html
3:00pm Applied Math Seminar
Building 380:380C
The Optical Parametric Oscillator:
Dynamics, Bifurcations and Stability
Nathan Kutz
University of Washington
http://math.stanford.edu/html/seminars.html
3:15pm Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, room 92Q
Modal Rationalism and the Mind-Body Problem
David Chalmers
Philosophy, University of Arizona
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/philosophy/
3:30pm Semantics Workshop
Building 460:126
Information Withheld:
The Unspoken Properties of Specific Indefinites
Roger Schwarzschild
Rutgers University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/
MONDAY, 28 FEBRUARY
3:30pm Social Lab Talk
Building 420:050
The Role of Ethnicity and Situational
Ambiguity in Perceptions of Discrimination
Teceta Thomas
Stanford University
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#social_lab
3:30pm Social Lab Talk
Building 420:050
What Does Psychology Have To Do With
Software Engineering?
Isabelle Gingras
Stanford University
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#social_lab
4:15pm Probability and Stochastic Processes Seminar
Sequoia Hall
Measures on Peierls Contours: A Probabilistic Approach
Nancy Garcia
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~amir/prob-seminar/
TUESDAY, 29 FEBRUARY
3:15pm Stanford Learning Lab Lecture
Press Warehouse, Press Staff Training Room
C.R.E.A.T.E. (Creating Research Examples
Across the Teaching Enterprise)
Rick Reis
Associate Director,
Global Learning Partnership Program
Stanford Learning Lab
http://sll.stanford.edu/speakers/win00.html
3:45pm Statistics Seminar
Sequoia Hall:200
Variance Reduction via Lattice Rules
Christiane Lemieux
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/seminars/seminars.html
WEDNESDAY, 1 MARCH
9:30am Phonology Laboratory
46 Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley)
Things, Relations, and Interactions
Janet Pierrehumbert
Northwestern University
http://trill.berkeley.edu/Talks/Talksch.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03
IA-64 Linux Kernel Internals
David Mosberger
HP Labs
Walt Drummond
VALinux
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 2 MARCH
12:15pm CSLI Coglunch
Cordura 100
A New Look at Hume's Theory of Causal Inference
Mark Collier
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy,
Stanford University
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
12:45pm Stanford Networking Seminar
Gates 104
Content Distribution in AT&T:
An Architecture and Research Overview
Fred Douglis
AT&T Labs - Research
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 3 MARCH
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Designing with Haptic Feedback
Karon Maclean
Interval Research
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
3:30pm Linguistics Colloquium
Building 460:126
Double Scope Creativity
Gilles Fauconnier
http://calendus.stanford.edu/linguistics-colloquia/
Abstract below
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Building 420:100
Conceptual and Perceptual Processes in
Picture-Name Priming
Justin Ream
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Building 420:100
The Effects of Odorant Sorption Rate on
Olfactory Cortex Activation
Michael Martinez
http://matia.stanford.edu/html/talks.html#frisem
____________
BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM FOR
AI-GEOMETRY-GRAPHICS-ROBOTICS-VISION
on Wednesday, 23 February 2000, 4:15pm
TCseq201, Lecture Hall B
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
Motion Capture from Movies
Jim Rehg
Cambridge Research Lab
Compaq Computer Corporation
Video is the primary archival source for human movement, with examples
ranging from sports coverage of Olympic events to dance routines in
Hollywood movies. If the human figure could be tracked reliably in
unconstrained monocular video, much of this archive could be unlocked
for analysis. Significant technical challenges exist, however, due to
the complexity of human movement, the variability of human appearance,
and the loss of 3-D information.
My talk will describe some recent progress in modeling and estimating
figure motion from monocular video. Two important themes are the
separation of 2-D (registration) and 3-D (reconstruction) effects in
kinematic modeling, and the role of learning in dynamic modeling. In
particular, I will describe a framework for learning switching linear
dynamic system models from data and show its application to figure
motion. I will describe some applications to video editing and
computer animation currently underway at Compaq Research.
About the Speaker:
Jim Rehg received his Ph.D. under Takeo Kanade in 1995. He leads the
Vision-Based Human Sensing project at the Cambridge Research Lab of
Digital Equipment Corporation.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LABORATORY COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 23 February 2000, 4:15pm
Gates B03
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
Perspectives on Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
David Brumley
Stanford University
Joel de la Garza
Securify Labs
Mark Seiden
Securify Labs
"...still no news on who is behind the concerted
DoS attacks that so crippled America's ability to
buy Pokemon trading cards earlier this week."
--"Need to Know", www.ntk.net
"In a case like this, there is no Interpol, no
Pinkerton's, that you can turn to for help."
--Wall Street Journal
"Who're you gonna call?"
--Ghostbusters
Recent attacks on e-commerce sites have demonstrated the trust
misplaced in today's Internet Protocols, and the codependence between
the vast shopping mall that the Internet has become and government,
law enforcement, and journalism.
We'll go in some detail into denial of service attacks: how they work,
what happened in these cases, and how they can be prevented, detected
and responded to.
Maybe we'll even show you some juicy chat sessions which took place
among possible perpetrators of some of the attacks.
About the speakers:
David Brumley is the Assistant Computer Security Officer for Stanford
University. He has responded to over 1000 incidents, authored such
programs as the remote intrusion detector (RID) and SULinux (Stanford
University Linux). David received his bachelor's degree in
Mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado.
Joel de la Garza is a security consultant for Securify. He attended
Stanford University where he began working for SUNsET, Stanford
University's Network Security Team. He was a founding member of the
Meeker Group, which worked to develop web applications for the medical
device industry.
Mark Seiden is Director of Securify Labs and Practice Area Head for
Physical Security (see www.securify.com). Programming since the '60s,
consulting for 17 years in diverse areas of network engineering and
security, clients have included major computer companies, investment
banks and law firms, UN agencies, online content providers, ISPs,
research projects and non-profits. A minor-league writer, he's been
published in the New York Times, Wired, Sun Expert, Unix Review and
(after being involved in a number of high profile activities, such as
the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick) was featured as one of the
50 CyberElite by Time Digital.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 24 February 2000, 12:15pm to 1:30pm
Cordura 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Predator Avoidance by Wild Bonnet Macaques:
The Roles of Classical Conditioning and Innate Cognitive Processes
Richard Coss
Department of Psychology, UC Davis
Wild bonnets macaques (Macaca radiata) living in urban and forest
settings react to conspecific alarm calls by running up trees to seek
refuge. The alarm calls of neighboring species, such as langurs and
sambar deer, are also provocative to these monkeys, but only among
troops that hear these alarm calls routinely in the forest. Juvenile
monkeys treat interspecific alarm calls as signifying danger,
indicating that the time frame for learning occurs during infant
development. A Pavlovian process of associative learning is proposed
to explain how bonnet macaques in the forest learn the alarm calls of
neighboring species. Although alarm calls provide information about
the potential presence of a predator, bonnet macaques rely on vision
to detect stealthy predators, such a pythons and leopards, partly
occluded by vegetation. Experience is not a prerequisite for leopard
recognition and juveniles are more excited by snakes than are adults,
suggesting that long-term experience attenuates the reactivity to
snakes. Unlike snakes, leopards are provocative to both juveniles and
adults. Experimental evidence will be presented showing that the
felid configuration and the spotted yellow coat are essential
leopard-recognition cues, possibly because these cues have been
available historically as contextual sources for natural
selection. Similar processes of natural selection might explain the
high reactivity of other primates to leopards. Together, these
examples provide a backdrop for evaluating how early learning and
evolved cognitive systems promote survival in a dangerous world.
____________
XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 24 February 2000, 4:00pm to 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium at Xerox PARC
http://www.parc.xerox.com/forum
Where Stuff Comes From
Harvey Molotch
Metropolitan Studies & Sociology, NYU
How can we understand how social and material forces, like art and
technology, culture and politics, combine to produce mundane
commodities? Economists say "the market" or "taste" determine
production; the intelligentsia portray a capitalist behemoth tricking
people into "false needs." From closer in to the industrial design
process, one finds more subtle and wide-ranging patterns at work: some
products do not change much because of social, legal, and moral
attachments to things as they are (e.g., bathtubs), others are more
subject to fashion and indeed demand change to make them viable (e.g.,
women's high-heels). Innovations are especially difficult for "taboo
products" (e.g., toilets ), while other goods do very well almost on
their own because circulation and demonstration are built into their
routine use (e.g., post-its). Cars are a middling case. For all the
stuff, the process of production, use, and disposal yields some bad
social and ecological effects, but effects that can perhaps be better
addressed by understanding the dynamics that create them.
Harvey Molotch is well known for his work as an urbanist; his book
Urban Fortunes won several major awards including being named Book of
the Year by the American Sociological Association. He has also
published over 100 scholarly articles and monographs on media,
interpersonal power, and environmental problems and has made numerous
radio and TV appearances, primarily on BBC. Prof. Molotch's most
recent project involves interviews and observation in the field of
industrial design. Before his current post as Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Study in Stanford, he was Centennial Professor at the London
School of Economics and served on the sociology faculty at University
of California, Santa Barbara.
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Thursday, 24 February 2000, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Ventura 17
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Lazy Bayesian Rules: A Technique for Making Highly
Accurate Predictions
Zijian Zheng
Data Mining Applications
Blue Martini Software, Inc.
The naive Bayesian classifier provides a simple and effective approach
to classifier learning, but its attribute independence assumption is
often violated in the real world. A number of approaches have sought
to alleviate this problem. A Bayesian tree learning algorithm builds a
decision tree, and generates a local naive Bayesian classifier at each
leaf. The tests leading to a leaf can alleviate attribute
inter-dependencies for the local naive Bayesian classifier. However,
Bayesian tree learning still suffers from the replication,
fragmentation, and small disjunct problems of tree learning. While
inferred Bayesian trees demonstrate low average prediction error
rates, there is reason to believe that error rates will be higher for
those leaves with few training examples. In this talk, I present an
application of lazy learning techniques to Bayesian tree induction and
presents the resulting lazy Bayesian rule learning algorithm, called
LBR. For each test example, it builds a most appropriate rule with a
local naive Bayesian classifier as its consequent. I will show that,
on average, this new algorithm obtains lower error rates significantly
more often than the reverse in comparison to a naive Bayesian
classifier, C4.5, a Bayesian tree learning algorithm, a constructive
Bayesian classifier that eliminates attributes and constructs new
attributes using Cartesian products of existing nominal attributes,
and a lazy decision tree learning algorithm in a wide cross-selection
of natural domains. It also outperforms, although the result is not
statistically significant, a selective naive Bayesian classifier. I
will also demonstrate using experiments with these domains that the
computational requirements of LBR are reasonable.
Furthermore, I analyze the LBR algorithm using the bias and variance
decomposition. I will show that LBR significantly reduces the bias of
naive Bayesian classification at a cost of a slight increase in
variance. Empirical comparison of LBR with boosting decision trees, a
technique being considered as a breakthrough in recent machine
learning research, shows that LBR has, on average, significantly lower
variance and higher bias. As a result of the interaction of these
effects, the average prediction error of LBR over a range of learning
tasks is at a level directly comparable to boosting. Empirical
comparison of LBR with bagging decision trees shows that LBR has lower
average variance and bias, and thus lower average error.
All these results suggest that LBR provides a very competitive
learning technique where error minimization is an important criterion.
____________
PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Thursday, 24 February 2000, 7:30pm
Building 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/
Cyclicity in Finnish Noun Inflection
Paul Kiparsky
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
Inflected words in Finnish show a range of interdependent stem and
suffix alternations which are conditioned by syllable structure and
stress. The patterns of variability in these alternations have been
studied by Anttila (1997). Building on his work, I address certain
systematic paradigmatic effects which emerge in the nominal declension
of Finnish, and argue that they lend support to OT-based Lexical
Phonology over fully parallel versions of OT.
____________
CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
on Friday, 25 February 2000, 11:00am
CCRMA Ballroom
http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/
Head-Related Transfer Functions and Spatial Hearing
Richard O. Duda
SJSU
The famous statement by von Bekesy that " ... the purpose of the ears
is to point the eyes ... " testifies to the central biological
importance of sound localization. Among the most important sound
localization cues are the acoustic cues created when incident sound
waves are diffracted and scattered by the torso, head and
pinnae. These cues are captured by the two Head Related Transfer
Functions (HRTFs), one for the left ear and one for the right ear.
HRTFs are complicated functions of four variables -- frequency,
azimuth, elevation and range. Although HRTFs have been studied quite
intensively for many years, the factors that control the detailed
behavior of HRTFs, the source and nature of person-to-person
differences, and the importance of these differences for synthesizing
virtual auditory space are still not fully understood.
This presentation will provide an overview of how HRTFs vary with
azimuth, elevation and range. Along the way we will show how both
frequency-domain and time-domain models can shed light on their
behavior, and even reveal unexpected localization cues.
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Friday, 25 February 2000, 12:45pm to 1:15pm
Gates 104
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Power-laws, Fractals, and the Internet Topology
Michalis Faloutsos
UC Riverside
Despite the apparent randomness of the Internet, we discover some
surprisingly simple power-laws of the Internet topology. These
power-laws hold for several snapshots of the Internet, between
November 1997 and Aug 1999, despite a 50% growth of its size during
that period. We show that our power-laws fit the real data very well
resulting in correlation coefficients of 96% or higher. Our
observations provide a novel perspective of the structure of the
Internet. The power-laws describe concisely skewed distributions of
graph properties such as the node outdegree.
An open question is why such regularities exist in something as ad-hoc
and "random" as the Internet. We attempt to provide an intuitive
exaplantion.
Joint work with Petros Faloutsos, Christos Faloutsos and George
Siganos.
About the speaker:
Michalis Faloutsos is an assistant professor in the Department of
Computer Science at the University of California, Riverside. He
received his PhD and Master's from the University of Toronto and his
5-year BA from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 25 February 2000, 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Gates B01
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Effects of Humor in Task-Oriented Human-Computer Interaction
and Computer-Mediated Communication
John Morkes
Trilogy
The use of humor is becoming more prevalent in people's interactions
with computers. (Recent examples are Microsoft's Office Assistant and
the application "electronic Laugh Out Loud,"). However, little
published research exists on whether humor is a positive or a negative
in task-oriented human-computer interaction (HCI). The prevailing
notion is that humor distracts users, wastes their time, and may cause
them to take their work less seriously. Four experiments examined the
effects of successful and unsuccessful humor in task situations
involving HCI and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The studies
used the same between-subjects design and essentially the same
experimental method. Data from the studies were compared in a direct
test of the Social Responses to Communication Technologies (SRCT)
claim that people respond to humans and computers in identical ways.
Experiments 1 and 2 each had a 2-condition (successful humor or
control) between-subjects design. In the first experiment,
participants worked on a task, ostensibly with another person in a
different room, via a networked computer (CMC). All participants
received preprogrammed comments, differing only in whether they
contained humor. Humor participants rated the "other person" as more
likable and reported greater cooperation with and similarity to the
"other person." They also made more jokes and responded more
sociably. Task time and the amount of effort participants put into the
task were unaffected by humor. In the second experiment, participants
were told they were interacting with a computer in another room
(HCI). The results from Experiment 2 were generally consistent with
those from Experiment 1. However, HCI participants were less sociable,
demonstrated less mirth, felt less similar to their interaction
partner, and spent less time on the task. The results suggest both
that humor may enhance likability of an interface without distracting
users and that SRCT theory should be revised.
Experiments 3 and 4 replicated and extended the first two experiments,
with additional measures and conditions that used jokes seen as
unfunny. For each of these experiments, a 3-condition (successful
humor, unsuccessful humor or control) between-subjects design was
used. Results from the CMC study, Experiment 3, were mostly consistent
with those from Experiment 1, and they showed few differences between
measures for the unsuccessful-humor and control groups. New measures
showed no effects for negative affect or recall memory, but the
unsuccessful-humor group responded more unsociably than the
others. The Experiment 4 results were generally consistent with those
from Experiment 3 and SRCT theory. But comparisons of the data from
the HCI and CMC experiments showed that compared to HCI participants,
CMC participants felt more similar to their interaction partner, were
more sociable, demonstrated more mirth and more negative affect, and
liked their partner less, again suggesting a revision to the SRCT
model.
The talk will include a discussion of the study's implications for
interaction design and SRCT theory, examples of humor in user
interfaces, and guidelines for the use of humor in HCI. This talk is
based on a paper (by John Morkes, Hadyn K. Kernal and Clifford Nass)
accepted for publication in the journal Human-Computer Interaction.
John Morkes is the director of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at
Trilogy Software, a provider of business-to-consumer and
business-to-business e-commerce software. He has a Ph.D. in
Communication Theory and Research from Stanford.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS LABORATORY COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 1 March 2000, 4:15pm
Gates B03
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380
IA-64 Linux Kernel Internals
David Mosberger
HP Labs
Walt Drummond
VALinux
The Trillian Project was formed in early 1999 to port the Linux
operating system to the IA-64 architecture. The project currently
includes Caldera, CERN, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Red Hat (Cygnus),
SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux and VA Linux Systems, and represents the first
major effort by the server and workstation industry to support an Open
Source project of this depth and scale.
On February 2nd, the Trillian project released the IA-64 Linux source
code to the open source community (available at www.kernel.org
). Today, two of the lead engineers from the Trillian project will
discuss the internals of IA-64 Linux and they will detail how Linux
will take advantage of the new features of the IA-64 architecture.
About the speaker: David is a member of the technical staff at HP Labs
where he is working on Internet and Linux related projects. His
research interests are in high-performance Internet systems, operating
systems, and computer architecture. He holds a professional degree as
an Electronics Engineer, an HTL Diploma (BSc degree) in Computer
Science from HTL Brugg-Windisch, Switzerland and M.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from University of Arizona. He is a
member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and USENIX.
In his former life at the University of Arizona, David was one of the
primary contributors to making Linux 64-bit clean and getting it to
work on the Alpha platform. For the two years or so, he has been
spearheading the effort at HP Labs to bring Linux to the forthcoming
IA-64 platform.
Walt Drummond is the Director of Software Engineering at VA Linux
Systems. Walt leads the IA-64 Linux development effort at VA,
concentrating on the kernel and platform implementation details. Prior
to joining VA he was part of the Network Engineering group at SGI.
Walt received his degree from Rutgers University where he spent time
researching linux-based clusters and appliance-style servers.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 2 March 2000, 12:15pm to 1:30pm
Cordura 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
A New Look at Hume's Theory of Causal Inference
Mark Collier
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy,
Stanford University
In this talk, I offer a new interpretation and evaluation of Hume's
theory of causal inference. According to my interpretation, Hume
argues for his theory on the grounds that it provides a unified
explanation of a wide variety of experimentally observed phenomena,
such as the incremental nature of causal learning, the "hesitating"
confidence which accompanies probabilistic inferences, and the
tendency of human nature to succumb to the "illusion" of seeing a
necessary connection between correlated events. I then look at some
recent evidence from cognitive science which, I claim, forces us to
take Hume's theory seriously. I argue that this research gives new
plausibility to his explanation of probabilistic inference, yet it
fails to vindicate his "projectivist" account of necessity. The
philosophical upshot of this is that Hume's naturalistic investigation
into causal inference does not support the skeptical conclusions he
draws from it.
____________
STANFORD NETWORKING SEMINAR
on Thursday, 2 March 2000, 12:45pm
Gates 104
http://netseminar.stanford.edu/
Content Distribution in AT&T:
An Architecture and Research Overview
Fred Douglis
AT&T Labs - Research
Caching and replication, collectively referred to as content
distribution, are rapidly growing in importance in the Internet. On
the web hosting side, the marketplace has already passed $1B and could
reach $11B by 2002. AT&T aspires to be one of the largest web hosting
providers in addition to already being one of the largest Internet
service providers. This talk describes the Content Distribution
component of the AT&T Internet Architecture. It surveys the existing
commercial landscape and discusses some of the architectural
alternatives. Then it discusses several related research projects
within AT&T, such as delta-encoding, prefetching, connection
management, and proxy performance.
About the speaker:
Fred Douglis is the head of the Distributed Systems Research
Department at AT&T Labs--Research. He has published several papers in
the area of World Wide Web performance and is responsible for the AT&T
Internet Difference Engine, a tool for tracking and viewing changes to
resources on the Web. He has taught distributed computing at Princeton
University and the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He is the chair of
the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on the Internet, and the
1999 USENIX Symposium on Internetworking Technologies and Systems. He
has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.
____________
LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 3 March 2000, 3:30pm to 4:45pm
Building 460:126
http://calendus.stanford.edu/linguistics-colloquia/
Double Scope Creativity
Gilles Fauconnier
I will discuss the human capacity for 'conceptual blending.'
Conceptual blending is a basic operation that leads to new meaning,
global insight, and compressions useful for memory and manipulation of
otherwise diffuse ranges of meaning. The essence of the operation is
to construct a partial match between two inputs, to project
selectively from those inputs into a novel 'blended' mental space,
which then dynamically develops emergent structure. It has been
suggested that the capacity for "double-scope" integration is a
crucial requirement for thought and language as we know them.
Empirical data from linguistic and other sources will be presented,
e.g. counterfactuals, polysemy, humor, rituals, action and design.
Governing principles and constraints will be also be examined, time
willing.
____________
END MATERIAL
The CSLI Calendar appears weekly on Wednesdays throughout the academic
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in
the Calendar should be submitted to the editor, who reserves the right
to decide what does or does not go in the calendar
mailto:incalendar@csli.stanford.edu.
Requests to be added to the mailing list should be sent to
majordomo@csli.stanford.edu. With the lines in the body of the text
of either subscribe csli-calendar for the long form or subscribe
csli-short-calendar for the short form. Problems with subscribing or
unsubscribing should be sent to owner-csli-calendar@csli.stanford.edu.
The full current issue is at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Archive/calendar/current.html
and the archives at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Archive/calendar/.
People on most of the CSLI computers can type 'help csli-calendar' to
see the current issue.
The CSLI Calendar is also posted each week to
news://nntp-csli.stanford.edu/csli.bboard.
and
news://nntp.stanford.edu/su.events
Information about CSLI's research program is available at
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/.
For maps to the Stanford University campus see
http://www.stanford.edu/home/visitors/maps.html.
____________