Last Call for Papers: Silver 2012

*International workshop on Learning from Unexpected Results*, collocated
with ECML-PKDD 2012 <http://www.ecmlpkdd2012.net/>, August 24-28, Bristol,
United Kingdom

*Workshop website and call for papers<http://datamining.liacs.nl/silver.html>
*
The Silver Lining: learning from unexpected results
With this workshop, we want to give a voice to unexpected results that
deserve wider dissemination: thoroughly conducted studies that follow a
plausible idea that did not achieve the aspired results, but instead taught
us novel lessons; studies showing that well-known (successful) methods will
not work under certain conditions, highlighting remaining weaknesses and
new avenues of research; and stories that focus on how a successful
method was discovered after one or several failed attempts.

Unexpected results chart the boundaries of our knowledge: they identify
errors, reveal false assumptions, and force us to dig deeper.
Unfortunately, this process is rarely mentioned in the machine learning and
data mining discourse. Indeed, there exists a publication bias that favors
(incremental) successes over novel discoveries of why some ideas, while
intuitive and plausible, do not work.

With Silver, we invite original studies that fall in one of the following
categories:

   - unexpected results: thoroughly conducted studies that follow an
   intuitive and plausible idea that made perfect sense but did not achieve
   the aspired results. They should explore the underlying reasons for the
   observed results and highlight what we can learn from them;
   - counterexamples: studies showing that well-known (successful) methods
   will not work under certain conditions, highlighting remaining weaknesses
   and new avenues of research;
   - the road to success: stories that focus on how a successful method was
   discovered after one or several failed attempts, highlighting how a
   negative was turned into a positive;
   - other papers, e.g. position statements, as long as they are relevant
   to the overall aim of the workshop.

In addition, extended abstracts may present position statements or
interesting cases of (unexplained) surprising results for which the authors
would like input from the community.

Important dates

   - submission: June 29
   - notification: July 20
   - camera-ready version: August 3
   - Silver 2012: September 24 (tentative date)