It’s a true joy, and I’m really looking forward to being able to read the “finished” work. It’s a project oriented book, though, which means that to really learn from it we’re going to have to play along at home, programming, and experimenting, and analyzing. We’re all going to have to set aside some time for this when it does come out. But it’ll be worth it. And while the claim is that we’ll be learning about Generative Projects or Genetic Programming or whatever Bill decides to have GP stand for when he wraps this thing, we’re also going to learn a lot about software development and problem solving along the way, from someone who’s got a lot of great things to say on those important subjects. So we’d best buckle our seatbelts!

I do, however, have to take issue with a claim Bill makes in the introductory “About this book” section:

This is not a textbook. If your instructors try to use it as one, complain. If they argue, send them to me.

To be honest, it’s turning out a lot more like an anti-textbook. It will not improve your performance on tests. We’ll use “advanced” techniques before we discuss “basic” ones, ignore common practices to focus on more appropriate contingent solutions for specific problems, and may not even touch on techniques your instructors think you ought to know.

Remember, my goal is to support and extend your existing skills so you can productively explore further. Seek comprehensive knowledge and historical grounding in other books. They are full of it.

I can’t help but think he had me in mind when he wrote these lines, and I doubt he’ll be surprised to learn that I’m certainly seriously considering using it in my Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Intelligence course in the Spring. <snigger>

The issue, I suspect, is what one considers a “textbook” and what the point of such a thing is. Traditionally textbooks are big, fat things that provide a “coherent” overview of “everything you need to know about subject X”. I’ve got a bunch of these on my shelves with nice overviews of things like calculus and physics and chemistry. Old things, with a clear sense of what matters and what order it should be presented in.

In teaching computer science, however, things are typically much less clear. What’s “vital” in our field? What’s the “natural” or most pedagogically sensible order to present that material? There are lots of ideas out there, but hardly consensus. And that’s on the introductory material; my upper division electives usually focus on material where there’s even less agreement.

Starting in the late 90’s I started moving away from “traditional” textbooks when I could. I found that the most important part of most of my courses was process rather then content. Most computing textbooks I’ve seen are, unfortunately, much stronger on content than process. There are piles of books full of catalogues of algorithms, but they’re mostly presented like magic tricks, things Very Smart People dreamt up in some strange opium vision, inaccessible to the rest of us. The challenge in my experience is coming up with these visions, the process and the problem solving. So a book like Fowler’s wondrous Refactoring is far more educational in the long run, giving us skills for life instead of a box full of baubles.

The contrast between process and content has been made far more pronounced by the web and its many tools and collections. Young folks (and even this old guy) almost never reach for a book when they want to look something up; that’s what Google is for. The reference value of big encyclopedias of “facts” is greatly diminished when we can so easily find things on-line, but a well-written description of an important process is still a treasure.

Which brings us back to Bill’s book.

He claims it’s not a textbook because he doesn’t plan to cover “every” technique or concept or approach. He’s going to doing things in the “wrong” order. Foolishly, he’s not going to help improve our performance on tests, choosing to instead helping us develop skills that will help us for years to come.

Silly, silly man.

So, yeah, I do want to use Bill’s book in my class, and my students are more than welcome to complain to me or take it up with Bill. I doubt, however, that they will. The writing is opinionated and ornery and humble in all the right ways, and the emphasis on projects and problem solving are the sort of thing our students just eat up. I’m guessing that they’d happily line up behind something like this vs. a more traditional text.

As will I.

P.S. You should check out the book’s LeanPub site (https://leanpub.com/pragmaticGP) and sign up for notification. It’s a great way for people to help delude Bill into thinking that he’s not actually wasting his time.

Or something like that.

A momentary interruption in the (slow) posting on the road trip (which has been done for nearly two weeks now!) to provide a time sensitive plug for those of you interested in genetic programming, evolutionary computation, and the like.

The Springer journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines is celebrating its first 10 years with a special anniversary issue of articles reviewing the state of the field and considering some of its possible futures. For the month of July (which ends in two days!) the entire issue is available for free download.

Included in the issue are:

• Human-competitive results produced by genetic programming
• Theoretical results in genetic programming: the next ten years?
• Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines: ten years of reviews
• Open issues in genetic programming
• Grammar-based genetic programming: a survey
• Developments in Cartesian Genetic Programming: self-modifying CGP
• Bio-inspired artificial intelligence: theory, methods, and technologies

Once the month ends these will all start costing money again with two exceptions: the article on human-competitive results and the survey of 10 years of reviews will remain free in perpetuity.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m on the editorial board of the journal and contributed to one of the articles. Still, it’s a cool resource marking an interesting time in the development of the field, so take advantage of it while you can!

But I’m here to tell you that the real reason we teach is for the cool drawings!

This gem was just penned by Tyler Hutchison for possible use as an illustration for a UMM piece on the paper Tyler and I wrote with Brian Ohs that won the best paper award at EuroGP 2008 in Naples earlier this year. I’m the distinguishedly disheveled fellow in the middle, Brian is steering the ship up front, and Tyler is the terrified fellow on the back (which is in stark contrast to his cool, composed presence at the conference!).

I’ve been fortunate enough to have students generate quite a few cool drawings of me over the years, ranging from notebook doodles to projects for art classes. I really need to pull all that stuff together sometime and post a little “show”. In the meantime we can all bask in the glory of the three of us riding the wondrous “Geneticorn” off into the sunset!

Thanks to Brian and Tyler for their fine work on this research project, and thanks to Tyler for the super cool drawing!

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

When I edit, I tend to scribble a lot, even when it’s my own stuff (or the writing of people I really like). Last January, for example, I took a set of photos after scribbling all over a paper that Riccardo and I were working on for GECCO. This paper went on to win the Best Paper award in the genetic programming track at GECCO last month, so I’d like to think that all this editing had some value :-).

I posted the full set over in my events account, and I plan on using some of them to show my students that I’m not just being mean to them — I’m mean to everyone, myself included!

This showed up here now because a publisher contacted me about using it in a college writing textbook. I figured I’d clean it up and post the full size version.

For those unfamiliar with MSP, the vast majority of flights use the Lindbergh terminal, and I suspect many people pass through MSP with nary a clue that the Humphrey terminal exists. I think I’ve only flown through HHH once before, on a Sun Country flight to a conference several years ago, and I’d pretty much forgotten what it was like over here.

I knew I’d have a couple of hours to kill at the airport between the arrival of my shuttle from Morris and my departure, and I figured I’d grab some lunch and try to continue revising our GECCO talks. This, however, failed to take into account my departure from the Humphrey terminal instead of Lindbergh. The Lindbergh terminal is a nice airport, with lots of restaurants (some of which are pretty decent) and even a passable book store or two. HHH is a small terminal (10 gates) servicing a ragtag group of low cost and limited traffic airlines.

It’s like a ghost town, but with airplanes.

There was almost no one here when I arrived. Only one of the dozen or so AirTran desks was open, there were no customers in sight, and I was able to just walk right up. Security also only had one queue open, but there were only four or five of us going through at the time, so it was again “Step right up and off you go”. The waiting areas were almost completely empty when I got here, and now (probably 30-40 minutes away from boarding) have a smattering of folks.

All this is most definitely to the good, especially when compared to some of the chaotic and stressful check-ins and security checks we’ve had in some of our recent flights.

The downside is that there are pretty much zip in the way of services or staff. There are a whopping two coffee/sandwich shops in the whole terminal, one on either side of security, and one bar/restaurant. After that we’re down to a magazine rack and a few vending machines. And the coffee shop inside of security didn’t have anyone at the till when I first came through.

Arguably less good, and certainly weird. No one’s going to mistake it for Heathrow or O’Hare, I promise you.

The real bummer, of course, is that there’s no free wifi here (or at the Lindbergh terminal). $4.95 for an hour, or $7.95 for the day.

Wonderful. Almost as wonderful as the fine $3 sandwich that cost me $7 for when the coffee shop finally opened up.

I’m looking forward to not flying for quite a while (perhaps as much as a year!) after I return from this trip. It’s nice being other places, but getting there isn’t always loads of fun, and it tends to suck environmentally.

¹ GECCO = Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, one of the two or three big international “mega” conferences in evolutionary computation. To be honest GECCO is much bigger and more circus-like than would be my preference. I’m much happier at smaller gigs like EuroGP, but that’s during the school year, and at an awkward time, and a lot more expensive to get to, so I’ve attended a lot more GECCOs than EuroGPs :-(.

Regular readers here will likely remember various past posts extolling the virtues of Dagstuhl, this really wonderful computing research facility in Germany. I’ve been lucky enough to attend several seminars on the Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms in the past, and have taken (and posted) quite a few photos from those trips.

A few months ago I had the (totally) unexpected pleasure of being contacted by Christian Lindig, a member of Dagstuhl’s scientific staff, and asked if I would be willing to return to Dagstuhl for the specific purpose of taking photographs for them. They’re apparently in the process of re-doing all their brochures and such, and liked what they’d seen on Flickr.

As a result I’ve spent a very pleasant few days back at Dagstuhl in some gorgeous spring weather (I’ve only every been here in the winter before), enjoying the company of a fine group studying the Design and Analysis of Randomized and Approximation Algorithms. (They’ve been very patient with an intruder who always seemed to be waving a camera about, and for this I am grateful.)

I’ve taken something over 1,000 photos, with a few more planned for tomorrow morning before I leave. Some of the participants have asked if the photos will be made available. I have uploaded everything I’ve taken this week to my “events” account on Flickr, all under a Creative Commons license, which means that participants are welcome to download and use any that they wish, as long as they provide attribution. (Note that I am not, and can not, provide any sort of permissions from individuals photographed – that’s their right and prerogative. If you want to use someone here in a beer ad, you need to get their permission first.)

Where are they all?

• Everything I’ve taken this week is on my “events” account.
• I also have a Dagstuhl set on my “real” Flickr account that has some of my favorites (with cleaning, cropping, etc.) from my various visits to Dagstuhl. At the moment this set is heavy on shots from previous trips, but I hope to add more from this visit as time allows.
• Earlier this year I posted everything (without cleaning or editing) from the Jan/Feb seminar on Evolutionary Algorithms to my “events” account.

It’s not yet clear what all Dagstuhl may do with these, but they will contact anyone who is recognizable in a photograph for permission before using your image in any of their materials. If anyone objects to being included in these vast oceans of photos, please let me know and I’d be happy to remove the photo in question.

Thanks again to Christian for inviting me out to Dagstuhl, and to the Randomized and Approximate Algorithms group for being patient “hosts”. Enjoy the photos!

I’ll try to post at least sporadically in the upcoming weeks, but I suspect things are likely to be light here well into the summer.

Without the science base, you cannot build an industrial base.

Second, science requires long term vision and public and private support in in basic research. It typically takes decades for culture changing technologies to move from the basic idea to ubiquity; Rosen gives as examples railroads, airplanes, transistors, computers, the internet, and lasers. The question then is

How do you convince the politics and the public that that lag in fact is real and that if you don’t make the investments … today … we’ll be lagging things that other folks that are making the investments

Rosen is (quite reasonably) focussed specifically on the question of support for science, but points out that this is part of a larger trend of irrationality in the U.S.:

But we all know that in the United States there are long traditions of anti-intellectualism, of what the Times today also refer to as anti-rationalism, the idea that there really are no facts, it’s all opinion, the idea that scientists [are] just playing their sand box and don’t connect with anybody.

What it really comes down to is a distressingly common failure for Americans to see any form of education (science or humanities, K12 or university) as a necessary investment in the strength and future of our society and country. For me this has become a useful litmus test to separate sensible conservatives (who understand the economic necessity of investment in key areas) from the wingnuts that have come to dominate the Republican party (who spout anti-intellectual nonsense while shredding schools and lining the pockets of themselves and their friends).

Eisenhower understood the practical necessity of an interstate road system, and encouraged and supported that investment. All Shrub can seem to invest in is Halliburton and their ilk.

Things to think (and ask) about in this happy election season.

On Friday after the EvoStar/EuroGP events wrapped up, Bill (Langdon), Riccardo (Poli), Tyler (Hutchison), and I spent a couple of hours being tourists in Naples, starting at Castel dell’Ovo ("Egg Castle"). This castle sits on a little island just off the shore right in front of our hotel and the conference center, so we saw it the whole time we were there. Most of our time there was gray, and often wet, but happily Friday afternoon turned clear and blue (if blustery). So we walked over to the castle and wandered about chatting and admiring the many views.

Here we have Tyler and Bill being blown about a bit, with Vesuvius dimly visible across the bay in the background. I love what the wind’s done to Tyler’s hair and Bill’s clothes :-).

We won!

That a paper co-authored with two undergraduates from a small, public, undergraduate liberal arts institution like the University of Minnesota, Morris, could win an award like this at an international science conference is just too damn cool. Well done to both Brian and Tyler!

In the hectic melee of the conference, most folks don’t have time to do anything more than skim the nominated papers, and usually not even that. This makes the talks a crucial part of an award like this, as much of the voting is based on them. Tyler (pictured above at Castel dell’Ovo in Naples) was a huge help in that regard. He flew over to the UK several days early so we could work on our talk, giving us the time we needed to revise and practice. He also produced a super cool little six page comic with a nifty introduction to our work that the audience could follow along with. We did a joint presentation, each covering about half the paper. Our talk was well received, and Tyler’s comic was incredibly (and deservedly) popular, and there’s no doubt that his participation was a huge help.

(And all this is on top of Brian and Tyler’s hard work and contributions on the paper itself. Obviously without that content we never would have had the paper accepted or nominated in the first place. So they both deserve huge kudos for that as well.)

Friday morning our paper was voted Best Paper by the conference attendees, and we were presented with a certificate, a box of Italian lemon cookies, and a box of Irish chocolates. All the Best Paper winners from the various EvoStar conferences and workshops also got to choose a free book from the Springer table. Tyler got a really cool book enitled Leonardo’s Lost Robots, and I got The forgotten revolution: How science was born in 300 BC and why it had to be reborn. (It was all terribly liberal arts of us – pretty much everyone else took evolutionary computation/artificial intelligence books of one form or another.)

Tyler upheld a fine tradition of our students making UMM look really good at conferences like this. From his deportment and grasp of the material, most people assumed he was a graduate student, despite the fact that the looks like he’s about 16 :-). He’s currently doing contract work as a web developer and designer, but is seriously interested in going to graduate school in the near future, and he definitely impressed the folks at the conference. I’ve been really lucky to work (and co-publish) with a string of great UMM students, and am looking forward to continue that with a very sharp student named Sara Lahr when we get back.

The trick for me (sometimes) is remembering just how good our students can be. The room we spoke in was this grand space of inlaid wood and marble that was quite a surprise in several ways. This was made worse by the fact that we were in the first session, so we had very little time to adjust and adapt. I was worried about running long (we had a lot of material to cover), and started to lose my nerve about having Tyler wandering around the room at the beginning handing out the comic. Tyler was really calm and collected about it, though, talked me down, and everything did in fact go really smoothly. The moral? Handouts are Good, really cool comics handous are Even Better, and I need to remember to listen to my students :-).

Thanks a ton to Brian and Tyler and all the people and offices at UMM that supported our work, and everyone who voted for our paper at EuroGP! Special thanks also to Riccardo Poli for hosting me on this sabbatical at the University of Essex. I’ve gotten a ton of cool work done here with Riccardo, including “A linear estimation of distribution GP system” at EuroGP, which was also nominated for Best Paper (and which I suspect was also strongly in the running).

I’ve dumped all the photos Tyler and I took in Naples onto my events account on Flickr. I’ll try to clean up a few to post to my main Flickr account in the next week or so.