Question on Sparse Links and deadline reminder

[Tim Gerrits]

Dear all, we received a question aksing about the simulation process that might be of interest to you as well.

The question was, why only few connections are created between nodes that are in very close proximity to each other.

Our domain experts provided the following explanation:

This effect is (to some extent) expected: The probability of forming a synapse decreases with the distance; however, the number of neurons available grows (quadratically) with the distance.

For an easy visual comparison, please see the normal distribution and the normal distribution scaled with x^2 (and a factor so that they are of approximately the same height):

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=f%28x%29+%3D+e%5E%28-x%5E2%2F200%29%2C+g%28x%29+%3D+e%5E%28-x%5E2%2F200%29%2F%2830+sqrt%282+%CF%80%29%29+*+x%5E2+from+x+%3D+0+to+100

I hope this helps.

While I'm at it, this is a short reminder that the submission deadline for this year is July 31st. So there's still 1 1/2 months left to tackle this contest! The submission system is already open and I am looking forward to all your creative ideas!

Don't hesitate to contact us, if there's still some open questions.

Best
Tim