Meeting Recap 11/13

[mkrajnak]

John and I met and we compared the python implementations in
"Collective Intelligence" with my clojure implementations. Clojure
still seems obscure on a lot of points but the more I learn to program
using functional idioms the easier it gets.

John has been having problems with the invchi2 implementation in Ruby,
and promised to post the code later.

Dave wasn't there but had offered earlier to show us implementations
in groovy which we are expecting from him next week :-)

John and I both agreed with Dave's earlier proposal to schedure the
next meeting for 11/20 and change the pacing to be a little bit more
holiday friendly.

So next week we are looking froward to Dave's presentation on the CI
algorithms in groovy.

[smantix]

I found the problem in the inverse chi squared method and posted the
code as classifier.rb in the Files section. If you have a version of
Ruby installed, you're best off saving the file rather than running
it.

The problem was a misunderstanding of how range(1,n) works in Python.
I translated this into Ruby as [1..n], but it should have been [1..
(n-1)]. I'm embarrassed to say how long it took to debug this. But it
was a learning experience I'm not likely to forget.

The other item Dave and I discussed for next meeting is the ZKP (zero-
knowledge proof) for graph isomorphism. I read enough of the Austin
Mohr paper ("A Survey of Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Applications to
Cryptography") to figure out what he's talking about. I can show two
graphs and prove that I know how to map one to the other without
revealing the mapping. Much better than the cave example!

[Dave Colwell]

My wife has to cover for a co-worker tomorrow morning so I'm going to
be absent again. However, I've concocted a more clear path for my
studies over the next couple of months. My goal is to draw together
some of the machine intelligence logic with some things I'm more
likely to be able to use professionally. I've been studying Groovy
and plan to pick up Grails in the next week or so. I'd like to apply
some of the Collective Intelligence ideas to something fun/
interesting. Groovy now runs naturally on Google's App Engine, so
I'll have a place to expose whatever I come up with. The final trail
in my study path is to put GWT on top of my Grails app.

Our company, like many, is asking for a more appealing user interface
and shortening the length of time from business idea to production-
ready code. On the flip side, our application suite is growing in
functionality, platforms, and interoperability.

See you guys next time.