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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 26 November 2003, vol. 19:13
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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26 November 2003 Stanford Vol. 19, No. 13
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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
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
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ACTIVITIES FROM 26 NOVEMBER 2003 TO 5 DECEMBER 2003
WEDNESDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 2003
4:15pm Information Systems Seminar
Packard 101
"Distributed Signal Processing With a Sensor Network"
Tom Luo
University of Minnesota (Visitor ISL, Stanford University)
http://isl.stanford.edu/groups/seminar/
THURSDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2003 - Thanksgiving break
FRIDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 2003 - Thanksgiving break
MONDAY, 1 DECEMBER 2003
3:30pm Social Lab
Jordan Hall 420:050
Title to be announced
Michael Bratman
Philosophy, Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#social_lab
4:15pm CS528: Broad Area Colloquium in AI,
Geometry, Graphics, Robotics, and Vision
TCSeq 200
"Arrangements in Computational Geometry: Past, Present, and Future"
Micha Sharir
Tel Aviv
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs528/
Abstract below
5:45pm Syntax Workshop
Margaret Jacks 460:126
"Probabilistic Models of Syntactic Discontinuity"
Roger Levy
Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/sssg/
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2003
3:00pm CSLI/EPGY Tea
Cordura Greenhouse
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:380F (math corner)
"Boolean Relation Theory"
Harvey Friedman
Ohio State University, Columbus
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 3 DECEMBER 2003
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags
Bldg. 420:286
"How children avoid the logical problem of language learning"
Michael Ramscar
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#dev_brownbag
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Jordan Hall 420:041
"Small Changes in Question Wording Can Produce Big Changes in
People's Reports of Their Attitudes: Unravelling the Mysteries
of Questionnaire Design with the Theory of Satisficing"
Jon Krosnick
Ohio State University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html
4:00pm Fifth Annual CS248 3D Video Game Competition
Graphics Teaching Labs, Basement, Sweet Hall
Information below
4:30pm Logical Methods in the Humanities
Baker Room, Stanford Humanities Center
"Unprovable Theorems"
Harvey Friedman
Ohio State
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Title to be announced
David J. Farber
Carnegie Mellon University
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2003
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
email for location mailto:digitalvision@csli.stanford.edu
John M. Cioffi
http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/reuters/cgi-bin/calendar/index.cgi
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Automated Systems Administration: Taming the Chaos in IT"
Steve Traugott
Founder, Infrastructures.Org
http://www.parc.com/forum/
Abstract below
4:00pm SRI AI Seminar Series
EJ228, SRI International
"Open Source at the AIC:
Issues in releasing and using open source software"
Sunil Mishra
SRI
http://www.ai.sri.com/seminars/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"Machine learning and autonomous helicopter flight"
Andrew Ng
Computer Science, Stanford
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm US-Asia Technology Management Center Public Lecture Series
Terman Auditorium
"A China/Taiwan Vision"
Morris Chang, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
http://asia.stanford.edu/events/fall03/
RSVP required, see web site
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
"Molecular Determinants of Neurotransmitter Release"
Thomas Sudhof
Psychiatry, University of Texas at Southwestern Medical Center
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
FRIDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2003
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
"Neural Plasticity and Consciousness: An Enactive Approach"
Alva Noe
Philosophy, UC Berkeley
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:4247/seminar.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
"People Paper and Computers"
Francois Guimbretiere
University of Maryland
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 380:380Y (note unusual location)
"Representation and Perspective in Science"
Bas van Fraassen
Princeton
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Title to be announced
Alexander Klippel
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#frisem
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Stanford Blood Center status: Shortage of O+, O-, A-, B-, and AB-.
For an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call
650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time.
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INFORMATION SYSTEMS SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 26 November 2003, 4:15pm
Packard 101
http://isl.stanford.edu/groups/seminar/
"Distributed Signal Processing With a Sensor Network"
Tom Luo
University of Minnesota (Visitor ISL, Stanford University)
Consider a situation where a set of distributed sensors and a fusion
center wish to cooperate to estimate an unknown parameter over a
bounded interval. Each sensor collects one noise-corrupted sample,
performs a local estimation, and transmits a message to the fusion
center, while the latter combines the received messages to produce a
final estimate. In this talk we will discuss optimal local estimation
and final fusion schemes under the constraint that the communication
from each sensor to the fusion center must be an one-bit binary
message. Such binary message constraint is well motivated by the
bandwidth limitation of the communication links, and by the limited
power budget of local sensors. The proposed decentralized estimation
scheme is universal (i.e., works for all noise pdf), satisfies the
binary message constraint, and is approximately optimal (within a
factor of 4). Furthermore, this scheme suggests allocating 1/2 of the
sensors to estimate the first bit of the unknown parameter, 1/4 of the
sensors to estimate the second bit, and so on. For ad hoc sensor
networks (with no fusion center) where network size and topology
change dynamically, we propose an isotropic universal scheme with a
provable near-optimal performance guarantee. Extensions to distributed
detection and distributed least squares will also be discussed.
This talk is an enhanced version of an earlier talk presented in
Andrea Goldsmith's group.
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CS528: BROAD AREA COLLOQUIUM FOR
AI-GEOMETRY-GRAPHICS-VISION-ROBOTICS
on Monday, 1 December 2003, 4:15pm
TCSeq 200
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs528/
"Arrangements in Computational Geometry: Past, Present, and Future"
Micha Sharir,
Tel Aviv University and MSRI
We review the progress, during the past 20 years, in the study of
arrangements of curves in the plane and of surfaces in higher
dimensions. (Informally, such an arrangement is the subdivision of
space induced by ``drawing'' the given surfaces.) Arrangements of this
kind are a central construct in computational geometry, and arise in
many applications, such as motion planning in robotics, ray shooting
and visibility in three dimensions, Voronoi diagrams, geometric
optimization, union of geometric objects, and more. In these
applications, one is interested not in the full arrangement, but in
various portions, such as the lower or upper envelope of the surfaces,
a single cell of the arrangement, a `zone' traced by another surface,
etc.
The extensive study of arrangements has led to many nearly tight
bounds on the complexity of lower envelopes, single cells, zones, and
other substructures in such arrangements, and to the design of
efficient algorithms (near optimal in the worst case) for constructing
and manipulating these structures, and for a myriad of applications in
the various areas mentioned above. We will present several highlights
of the theory and of its applications, focussing on the more recent
developments and on the challenges that still lie ahead.
About the Speaker: Micha Sharir is a Nizri Professor of Computational
Geometry and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv
University, and a Research Professor at the Courant Institute
(NYU). He has published the monograph Davenport-Schinzel Sequences and
Their Geometric Applications (with P.K. Agarwal, Cambridge University
Press, 1995) and about 230 research papers. He serves on the editorial
boards of several technical journals, is an ACM Fellow, and is a
recipient of the Max-Planck Research Prize (jointly with E. Welzl,
1992), a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the University of Utrecht
(1996), the Feher Prize in Computer Science (1999), and the Landau
Prize for Research and Sciences (2002).
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SYNTAX WORKSHOP
on Monday, 1 December 2003, 5:45pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/sssg/
"Probabilistic models of syntactic discontinuity"
Roger Levy
Stanford University
Empirically-derived broad-coverage stochastic models for syntactic
parsing have proven highly effective in practical terms for
high-quality, robust parsing (Collins 1999), and also show promise as
well-founded frequentistic models of human online syntactic processing
(Jurafsky 1996, Hale 2001). However, these models almost exclusively
embrace a strictly context-free backbone as the basis of
approximation, yielding the well-understood class of probabilistic
context-free grammars (PCFGs; Grenander 1967). This move is consistent
with the fact that context-free grammar is in some sense at the the
heart of the majority of both formal and computational syntactic and
semantic research. A great number of compositional natural language
semantic relationships can be transparently understood as relations
between a head and sister node in a local context-free tree. Yet this
move to embrace PCFGs excludes stochastic dependencies that may be
induced by syntactic discontinuity, broadly defined as compositional
semantic relations between context-free tree nodes that are not a
head-sister relation. Although it is community wisdom that languages
vary in the amount of word-order freedom and discontinuity, with
English being on the low end of the scale, these differences are not
well-understood in quantitative terms (but see Kruijff 2002).
Likewise, it is not well understood what kind of effect the
context-free approximation in broad-coverage parsing has on recovering
the discontinuous dependencies routinely captured by more traditional,
and more sophisticated, hand-built grammars built in frameworks such
as HPSG and LFG (see also Riezler et al., 2002). I present a case
study critically examining the context-free approximation, using a
linguistically-motivated discriminative model for reconstructing
multiple types of non-local dependency, and testing on treebanks of
not only English but also German, languages widely understood to vary
in the degree of word order flexibility and discontinuity. My results
quantitatively confirm the informal intuition that simple context-free
trees are a much poorer approximation of underlying dependency
relations in languages with freer word order than in English, a
conclusion resonant with the small extant literature on statistical
parsing in German (Plaehn 2000, Dubey and Keller 2003, Schiehlen
2003). In addition, I briefly discuss prospects for broad-coverage
statistical models allowing the direct representation of discontinuity
in parse chart entries, as well as prospects for frequentistic models
to explain recent puzzling results in online processing of a
discontinuous construction, the extraposed relative clause, in German
(Konieczny 2000).
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LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 2 December 2003, 4:15pm-5:30pm
Math Corner 380:380F
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
"Boolean Relation Theory"
Harvey Friedman
Ohio State University, Columbus
We discuss the state of the art in Boolean Relation Theory, and a
draft manuscript concerning the following statement from BRT.
Let f,g be multivariate functions from N into N of expansive linear
growth. There exists infinite sets A,B,C contained in N such that
A U. fA contained in C U. gB
A U. fB contained in C U. gC.
It is necessary and sufficient to use Mahlo cardinals of finite order
to prove the above statement.
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FIFTH ANNUAL CS248 3D VIDEO GAME COMPETITION
on Wednesday, 3 December 2003, 4:00pm-6:00pm
Graphics teaching labs, basement level, Sweet Hall
At 4:00pm on Wednesday, December 3, a judging will be held to select
the best 3D video game produced by a current student (or team of
students) in CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics.
The jury will consist of:
BILL BUDGE, Senior Software Engineer at Electronic Arts' Redwood
Shores Studio. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1979, Bill
bought an Apple II computer and immediately flunked out. Luckily
he found his life's work, building video games. Bill wrote Pinball
Construction Set, one of EA's first platinum selling games, and is
currently building world editing tools as part of the Central
Technology Group.
LANG BEECK, software design engineer at Microsoft and a Stanford
alumnus (MSCE '84). Pre-Microsoft game credits include Aces of the
Deep, Cyberstorm, ProPilot, and Red Baron II. Credits at Microsoft
include Flight Simulator 2000, Combat Flight Simulator 2, Microsoft
Flight Simulator 2002, and Combat Flight Simulator 3.
ALLAN ALCORN, co-founder of Atari, creator of coin-op Pong and the
home version of Pong. He led the development of the Atari VCS and
Cosmos, the first holographic game. After Atari, Alcorn was a
Fellow at Apple Computer where he did early work that led to the
MPEG standard and QuickTime. Al was also VP Engineering at Digital
FX and consulted at Interval Research.
RENE PATNODE, veteran of CS 248, former member of the Digital Forma
Urbis Romae Project programming team, general man-about-campus for
academic projects and courses related to video games and their
history, and stalwart teaching assistant in CS 248 this year.
IAN BUCK, senior PhD student in the Stanford Computer Graphics
Laboratory and a stalwart teaching assistant in CS 248 this year.
While grades for the assignments in CS 248 are based mainly on
"technical merit", entries in the video game competition will be
judged on technical merit, compelling game play, and originality.
Students are not required to participate in this competition.
Here is the schedule of events:
Wednesday, December 3:
9:00 - 3:15 Grading of video games (course students only)
3:15 - 4:00 Professor and TAs meet to choose 6-8 finalist teams
4:00 Public part of video game competition begins
4:00 - 5:30 Finalists present their games to the jury
5:30 - 5:45 Jury retires to consider their decision
5:45 Announcement of winners
5:45 - 6:30 Continued heavy partying
There will be one grand prize - an all-expenses-paid trip to Siggraph
2004 in Los Angeles next summer, and one second-place prize - dinner
for two at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto. In addition, every member of a
finalist team will receive a current video game title for the PC
platform, generously donated by Electronic Arts. Finally, there will
also be a special prize given for the wackiest or most daring
submission - a Microsoft Xbox, donated by Microsoft, with games
donated by Microsoft. If the grand prize is won by a team, it must be
split among the team members. The second-place prize will be
duplicated as necessary to cover the team. Only one Xbox will be
awarded.
Refreshments will be served beginning at 4:00pm. Finalists' entries
will be "hung" on the PCs in the graphics labs and will be available
for viewing throughout the judging and party. However, the room is
going to be crowded, so milling around to look at them will only be
possible before 4pm or after 5:30pm.
____________
PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 4 December 2003, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, PARC
http://www.parc.com/forum/
"Automated Systems Administration: Taming the Chaos in IT"
Steve Traugott
Founder, Infrastructures.Org
Most IT organizations still install and maintain computers the same
way the automotive industry built cars in the early 1900's: An
individual craftsman manually manipulates a machine into being, and
manually maintains it afterward. In most IT shops, relatively little
effort is allocated for automating changes made to systems in order to
gain economies of scale. In losing repeatability, we also lose safety
-- reliability of standby systems is mixed, and even disaster recovery
planning is often considered to be a paper exercise rather than a
technology driver.
But outside the systems administration field, it's not well understood
that computer systems administration is generally manual as well as
ad-hoc. The CIOs of some of our best and brightest Silicon Valley
companies are blissfully unaware of the chaos in their own ranks. In a
global economy dependent on information technology, the friction
generated by ineffective IT practices impacts productivity, jobless
rates, quality of life, and the growth of emerging industries.
The automotive industry discovered first mass production, then mass
customization using standardized tooling. This talk describes similar
techniques that are being applied in IT today, ranging from tools for
systems administrators to workable business models of interest to the
executive officer. Developed over the last several years by a growing,
loose-knit group of active UNIX and Linux systems administrators,
architects, and IT executives, these methodologies have been proven in
mission-critical environments as well as in recovery from major
disasters. They lower the cost of providing IT infrastructure,
increase data center scalability and efficiency, and make for rapid,
reliable, and repeatable deployments and changes.
About the Speaker: Steve Traugott's 1998 USENIX Large Installation
Systems Administration(LISA) paper, "Bootstrapping an Infrastructure",
helped launch the IT Infrastructure Architect career field. He is a
former Vice President of trading floor engineering for Chase Manhattan
Bank and a U.S. Air Force Special Operations veteran. His IT industry
experience spans over 20 years and covers platforms ranging from
embedded systems to supercomputers. He helped port the Mach kernel to
mainframes, and UNIX System V to PC's. After September 11th, 2001, he
returned to New York for three months to work with World Trade Center
survivors.
Today Steve is a consulting Infrastructure Architect, and publishes
tools and techniques for automated systems administration and disaster
recovery. His clients have included Chemical Bank, Cisco, NASA, IBM,
AT&T, DEC, Netscape, Sun, Caterpillar, Morgan Stanley, and the Central
Bank of Trinidad.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 4 December 2003, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
"Machine learning and autonomous helicopter flight"
Andrew Y. Ng
Computer Science, Stanford University
Helicopters have complex, highly non-intuitive, noisy dynamics, and
autonomous helicopter flight represents one of the most challenging
control problems. In this talk, I will describe the key ideas that
had enabled the successful application of machine learning to
designing a controller for our autonomous helicopter here at Stanford.
I will also describe the application of these ideas to some other
challenging control problems, such as four-legged robot locomotion.
About the Speaker: Andrew Ng is an assistant professor in the Computer
Science department at Stanford University. His research interests
include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms for
web and text data processing.
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END MATERIAL
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____________