Subject: AIList Digest V5 #76

From: vtcs1::in% <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 87 02:15:58 est

AIList Digest           Thursday, 12 Mar 1987      Volume 5 : Issue 76

Today's Topics:
  Discussion Lists - AI-CHI & Info-1100/Bug-1100,
  Queries - Washington-Area TI Seminar & Chess Evaluator &
    AI bibliographies & 3-D Clustering Algorithms &
    Comparative Psychology of Intelligence

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Date: Mon, 9 Mar 87 11:00:38 PST
From: [email-masked] (Sherman Tyler)
Subject: AI Lists

You recently sent a message about existing mailing lists on ARPANET that
related to AI. Not long ago, we started another list called AI-CHI to look
at artificial intelligence applications to computer-human interaction.
We would appreciate it if you could appropriately update your own list of
AI lists with this item. The list is:
[email-masked]
and requests to be added to the list can be sent to:
[email-masked]
Thanks very much.

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Date: Mon 9 Mar 87 21:52:30-PST
From: Christopher Schmidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Info-1100/Bug-1100

        For the record, Info-1100 and Bug-1100 have been merged into
one list; Info-1100.
--Christopher

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Date: 9 Mar 87 09:27:00 EST
From: "WHITE::PSOTKA" <[email-masked]>
Reply-to: "WHITE::PSOTKA" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Washington-Area TI Seminar?

Is anyone in the greater Washington D.C. area going to be showing the
TI AI seminar in a semi-public facility? I would like to attend.

Psotka (202)274-5540

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Date: 10 Mar 87 14:43:09 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (G Wilson)
Subject: HHelp needed with computer chess

I am writing a chess program to run on a Meiko Computing Surface,
a highly parallel MIMD machine containing 40 transputers.  I started
by converting the Free Software Foundation's GNUChess program, and I have
move generation and tree search fairly well in hand, but I desperately
need a better board evaluation function.  All of the literature I have
been able to locate on computer chess describes some of the features
a good function should have, but no-one actually lists a set of
numerical weights!

Does anywhere out there in net.land have an old chess program running
on an Apple-II or a BBC Micro or even source code for the standard
UNIX chess program that has an evaluation function I could use?  Any
language will do.  Failing that, does anyone have pointers to
literature which doesn't just talk about such functions, but actually
lists one or two (or three, or four, or ...)?

Much appreciated.

Greg Wilson

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Date: Wed, 11 Mar 87 17:17:42 EST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: AI bibliographies

Does anyone have a file containing all the titles of papers published
in the leading AI sources e.g. Journal, IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI etc.?  It
would be nice to do a string search for certain topics and find relevant
papers instantly.

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Date: Mon, 09 Mar 87 18:31:38 n
From: [email-masked]
Subject: 3D Clustering algorithms

The subject just about sums it up......anyone out there in the 'lectronic
village overly proud, or overly knowledgeable, or even just familiar with
clustering algorithms for use in three dimensions ? That is to say, I have
a bunch of points in a 3D space, and I want to cluster them. Simple huh ?
Tell me how, or tell me how to find out how......replies directly to me,
or post them on the list.

with thanks,

Paul Davis

Euopean Molecular Biology Laboratory,
Postfach 10.2209
6900 Heidelberg
West Germany

bitnet: [email-masked]
uucp: ...psuvax!embl.bitnet!davis
petnet: homing pigeons to....

"a time for dreams, a time for sleep, a time for love  .... its now!"

  [What makes three-space special?  Any similarity or dissimilarity
  metric that works in three dimensions should work in N dimensions.
  The really interesting cases are those where no reasonable weighting
  exists for combining distances in the different dimensions.

  Any of the major subroutine packages -- BMD, SPSS, etc. -- have
  clustering routines and associated documentation.  Euclidean space
  is generally assumed, which causes problems with circular scales
  such as hue in a color space.  (One heuristic for color spaces is
  to linearize the usual 256^3 cells by tracing through the space with
  a fractal curve, then search for clusters in the 1-D result.)
  Other 3-D spaces are best analysed in terms of direction cosines
  for vectors to the points from some origin.  Statistical metrics
  based on within-cluster and between-cluster variances are optimal
  for some applications, but gravitational or potential-based models
  are better in others.  ISODATA is a time-honored heuristic method
  for growing and splitting clusters, but is only suitable for
  circular clusters in isometric spaces.  Zahn's method of analyzing
  minimal spanning trees is one way of overcoming the common faults
  (e.g., chaining or lack thereof) of heuristic approaches.

  The book on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing by Duda and
  Hart offers an easy introduction to some of the statistical and
  heuristic methods.  Other pattern recognition books are more
  thorough.  Clustering is still a black art, though, and you are
  probably best off getting a commercial package and trying a few
  of the options to get a feel for what works with your data.  -- KIL]

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Date: Wed, 11 Mar 87 23:17:17 est
From: Stevan Harnad <[email-masked]>
Subject: Comparative Psychology of Intelligence: BBS Call for
         Commentators

The following is the abstract of a forthcoming article on which BBS
[Behavioral and Brain Sciences -- An international, interdisciplinary
Journal of Open Peer Commentary, published by Cambridge University Press]
invites self-nominations by potential commentators.

(Please note that the editorial office must exercise selectivity among the
nominations received so as to ensure a strong and balanced cross-specialty
spectrum of eligible commentators. The procedure is explained after
the abstract.)

-----

                THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF INTELLIGENCE

                Euan M. Macphail
                Department of Psychology
                University of York
                Heslington, York YO1 5DD
                United Kingdom

        Recent decades have seen a number of influential attacks on
        the comparative psychology of learning and intelligence. Two
        specific charges have been that the use of distantly related
        species has prevented making valid evolutionary inferences and that
        learning mechanisms are species-specific adaptations to
        ecological niches and hence not properly comparable between
        species. It is argued here that investigating distantly related
        species may allow valuable insights into the structure of
        intelligence and that the question of whether learning
        mechanisms are niche-specific is one that can only be answered
        by comparative work in "non-natural" situations. The problems
        involved in the definition and assessment of intelligence are
        discussed. Experimental work has not succeeded in
        demonstrating differences in intellect among nonhuman
        vertebrates; hence the null hypothesus that there exist no
        differences in intellect amongst nonhuman vertebrates should
        be adopted. The superiority of human intelligence stems from
        our possession of a species-specific language-aquisition
        device. One implication of the null hypothesis is that general
        problem-solving capacity is independent of niche-specific
        adaptations. A second implication is that problem-solving may
        involve relatively simple mechanisms: Association formation in
        particular may play a central role in nonhuman intelligence,
        allowing the successful detection of causal links between
        events, causality being a common constraint to all niches.

-----

This is an experiment in using the Net to find eligible commentators
for articles in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an
international, interdisciplinary journal of "open peer commentary,"
published by Cambridge University Press, with its editorial office in
Princeton NJ.

The journal publishes important and controversial interdisciplinary
articles in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, cognitive science,
artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy. Articles are
rigorously refereed and, if accepted, are circulated to a large number
of potential commentators around the world in the various specialties
on which the article impinges. Their 1000-word commentaries are then
co-published with the target article as well as the author's response
to each. The commentaries consist of analyses, elaborations,
complementary and supplementary data and theory, criticisms and
cross-specialty syntheses.

Commentators are selected by the following means: (1) BBS maintains a
computerized file of over 3000 BBS Associates; the size of this group
is increased annually as authors, referees, commentators and nominees
of current Associates become eligible to become Associates. Many
commentators are selected from this list. (2) The BBS editorial office
does informal as well as formal computerized literature searches on
the topic of the target articles to find additional potential commentators
from across specialties and around the world who are not yet BBS Associates.
(3) The referees recommend potential commentators. (4) The author recommends
potential commentators.

We now propose to add the following source for selecting potential
commentators: The abstract of the target article will be posted in the
relevant newsgroups on the net. Eligible individuals who judge that they
would have a relevant commentary to contribute should contact the editor at
the e-mail address indicated at the bottom of this message, or should
write by normal mail to:

                        Stevan Harnad
                        Editor
                        Behavioral and Brain Sciences
                        20 Nassau Street, Room 240
                        Princeton NJ 08542
                        (phone: 609-921-7771)

"Eligibility" usually means being an academically trained professional
contributor to one of the disciplines mentioned earlier, or to related
academic disciplines. The letter should indicate the candidate's
general qualifications as well as their basis for wishing to serve as
commentator for the particular target article in question. It is
preferable also to enclose a Curriculum Vitae. (This self-nomination
format may also be used by those who wish to become BBS Associates,
but they must also specify a current Associate who knows their work
and is prepared to nominate them; where no current Associate is known
by the candidate, the editorial office will send the Vita to
approporiate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to
nominate the candidate.)

BBS has rapidly become a widely read read and highly influential forum in the
biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. A recent recalculation of BBS's
"impact factor" (ratio of citations to number of articles) in the
American Psychologist [41(3) 1986] reports that already in its fifth year of
publication (1982) BBS's impact factor had risen to become the highest of
all psychology journals indexed as well as 3rd highest of all 1300 journals
indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and 50th of all 3900 journals
indexed in the Science Citation index, which indexes all the scientific
disciplines.

Potential commentators should send their names, addresses, a description of
their general qualifications and their basis for seeking to comment on
this target article in particular to the address indicated earlier or
to the following e-mail address:

{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard}  !princeton!mind!harnad
[email-masked]

[Subscription information is available from Harry Florentine at
Cambridge University Press:  800-221-4512]

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End of AIList Digest
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