Category: Science

Evolving buildable Lego structures

Animated GIF of evolving bridge

More cool work out of Jordan Pollack’s lab at Brandeis. They’ve build a nice force simulator and design system for Legos called EvoCAD that lets you evolve Lego structures that satisfy various conditions. Pablo Funes, who recently finished his PhD, used this to evolve spans of over 2 meters, tree-like structures, and counter-balanced cranes (cool video of it lifting 1/2 kg).

Evolved Lego bridge

As pointed out by Think Artificial in their discussion of this work

…genetic algorithms result in … naturally messy constructs. This is actually one of the reasons that genetic algorithms are popular within artificial creativity research. Evolution results in various “unanticipatedâ€? or “surprisingâ€? constructs which can be perceived as creative.

Evolution, whether biological or “artificial” like that reported here, is an inherently messy business. It’s always forced to work with what it has, and is further hampered by the lack of any long-term plan or design. An incredibly powerful process, but unquestionably messy.

Thanks to Genetic Argonaut for the initial pointer.

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But what about “Moon Unit”?

2007 Byte Bash - 41
WeatherGirl tipped me to an Observer article entitled “Names really do make a difference“, and I keep wavering between “Oh, surely not!” and “Well, duh, that was pretty obvious”. Apparently giving a girl a “girlie” name significantly reduces her likelihood of studying math and science:

Both subjects [math and physics], which are traditionally seen as predominantly male, are far more popular among girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren and Ashley, which have been judged as less feminine in a linguistic test. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.

The (highly speculative) causalities are the reasonably obvious ones: Seeing names like “Barbie” or “Breeze” on the class list or application form brings beaucoup baggage to the party. This is hardly a win, especially since the patriarchy already ensures that females already have plenty of baggage when it comes to science and math. It’s also telling, if not entirely shocking, that giving boys certain names can have similar effects. Seeing “Bubba” on the football roster might elicit a snicker, but likely no surprise; seeing “Bubba” at the math league finals, on the other hand…

So it would seem that some parents have a fair bit to answer for:

‘A name is part of an impression package,’ said Mehrabian. ‘Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.’

In the case of the Zappa family, I’m voting for “arrogant”; Frank certainly wasn’t ignorant.

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