[This is an email sent to wedtech about a book reading that you might
be interested in as well. It also was sent to the Complex discuss
list for organizational reasons. If you are interested, join wedtech,
see below, and natch, buy the book!]
WedTech'ers: Here's our current status on A Winter's Read:
- We've decided to meet for the discussions at 11:30, then go to Tesoro
for our usual lunch. This is so that WedTech lunch will go on as
usual for those not wanting to partake in the book reading.
- We've decided to wait a week or two so that our books arrive in time
for us to have read the first 25 pages or so for the first discussion.
- In the mean time, Roger has volunteered to discuss his experiences
with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This cloud computing platform has
been of interest in modeling for parameter scans, for example.
- We'll hold the discussions, including Roger's, in the 624 agua fria
conference room.
Discuss'ers:
- Yesterday, during the projects meeting, it was suggested that the
reading group might be an interesting prototype for managing
projects .. a Guinea Pig for things like a project blogs, logs,
mail lists and so on. So hence the cross-post.
- Also, there may be folks on the Discuss list that would also
be interested in the book: http://tinyurl.com/5jrpr6
If so, respond, hop on the wedtech mail list and buy the book.
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/wedtech_redfish.com
All: I'm cross-posting so that we can decide whether or not to
incorporate the reading into the Complex's planning. Further mail
will be on the wedtech list until we make possible changes discussed
above. Sorry for the annoying cross-post!
-- Owen
On Oct 21, 2008, at 8:38 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
Let's jump in and buy our books for this, and start up shortly.
Steve agreed that the conference room at 624 would be fine for the
meetings. I'll get a white board for our first meeting. I think
our Wednesday time slot would make sense too.
Frank suggests we follow a format like Bios Group used: we have
leaders for each chapter/section. I like that. We also want to
work out how to deal with weeks when we can't make it. Maybe take
notes? Or have a buddy system where when we miss, we get in touch
with the group and meet with a volunteer?
My experience of the first 30-40 pages is that I have written down
questions that I'd like to resolve. I've also written some netlogo
hacks to clarify some of the questions I encountered. So far, so
good!
I'll bring the book for tomorrow's 12:30 lunch at Tesoro's.
-- Owen
Begin forwarded message:
From: Owen Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 13, 2008 11:22:44 AM MDT
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]
>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Main Page - Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms
and Computations
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]
>
Well, winter is besetting us, so it occurred to me that we might
want to turn either the Krauth book (the subject), or your earlier
excellent find:
Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms
David J. C. MacKay
.. into a group reading at the sfComplex. Our Data Mining one was
interesting.
I decided I went at the Krauth book with the wrong mind set, so
started over, looking at it as a conversation with an expert
delighted to give a deep and complete look at the subject. This
has led me to write some simple netlogo example programs, looking
at several distributions used in simple Monte Carlo
implementations. Its really kinda fun! Also a bit embarrassing
when I come up with distributions that are a bit unexpected. I
think this area takes a *lot* of care!
I gotta say that Krauth hits on a lot of topics heard in the halls
of SFI.
MacKay's book is quite deep and broad as well, and has the
advantage of being available as a PDF. I haven't looked at his
site recently, but he also had several open source implementations
of interest. I went after his first chapter with the J programming
language for the hell of it (J is an APL derivative, also by
Iverson .. both Ken and his son). This was the one where Dilbert
was used as a source for noisy transmission lines. I bet most of
it too could be netlogo-ized. Or possibly R or Sage.
I ramble .. but .. would some of us be interested in A Winter's
Read in Mathematics?? I can bring the book to wedtech or other
venues. Like beer. Just for instance.
-- Owen
Begin forwarded message:
From: Owen Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 8, 2008 10:42:01 AM MDT
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]
>
Subject: Main Page - Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and
Computations
I recently bought this book, and was delighted to see how complete a
wiki was associated with it:
http://www.smac.lps.ens.fr/index.php/Main_Page
-- Owen
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