Simplicity And Complexity In Games Of The Intellect
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Simplicity and Complexity in Games of the Intellect
Author: Lawrence B. Slobodkin
language: en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date: 1992
"If it were necessary, for some curious legal reason, to draw a clear line between human and nonhuman--for example, if a group of australopithecines were to appear and one had to decide if they were to be protected by Fair Employment Laws or by the ASPCA--I would welcome them as humans if I knew that they were seriously concerned about how to bury their dead." In this witty and wise way, Lawrence Slobodkin takes us on a spirited quest for the multiple meanings of simplicity in all facets of life. Slobodkin begins at the beginning, with a consideration of how simplicity came into play in the development of religious doctrines. He nimbly moves on to the arts--where he ranges freely from dining to painting--and then focuses more sharply on the role of simplicity in science. Here we witness the historical beginnings of modern science as a search for the fewest number of terms, the smallest number of assumptions, or the lowest exponents, while still meeting criteria for descriptive accuracy. The result may be an elegant hypothetical system that generates the apparent world from less apparent assumptions, as with the Newtonian revolution; or it may mean deducing non-obvious processes from everyday facts, as with the Darwinian revolution. Slobodkin proposes that the best intellectual work is done as if it were a game on a simplified playing field. He supplies serious arguments for considering the role of simplification and playfulness in all of our activities. The immediate effect of his unfailingly captivating essay is to throw open a new window on the world and to refresh our perspectives on matters of the heart and mind.
Simplicity, Inference and Modelling
Author: Arnold Zellner
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2002-02-07
The idea that simplicity matters in science is as old as science itself, with the much cited example of Ockham's Razor, 'entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem': entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A problem with Ockham's razor is that nearly everybody seems to accept it, but few are able to define its exact meaning and to make it operational in a non-arbitrary way. Using a multidisciplinary perspective including philosophers, mathematicians, econometricians and economists, this 2002 monograph examines simplicity by asking six questions: what is meant by simplicity? How is simplicity measured? Is there an optimum trade-off between simplicity and goodness-of-fit? What is the relation between simplicity and empirical modelling? What is the relation between simplicity and prediction? What is the connection between simplicity and convenience? The book concludes with reflections on simplicity by Nobel Laureates in Economics.
Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing
Truly personal handheld and wearable technologies should be small and unobtrusive and allow access to information and computing most of the time and in most circumstance. Complimentary, environment-based technologies make artifacts of our surrounding world computationally accessible and facilitate use of everyday environments as a ubiquitous computing interface. The International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing, held for the first time in September 1999, was initiated to investigate links and synergies in these developments, and to relate advances in personal technologies to those in environment-based technologies. The HUC 99 Symposium was organised by the University of Karlsruhe, in particular by the Telecooperation Office (TecO) of the Institute for Telematics, in close collaboration with ZKM Karlsruhe, which generously hosted the event in its truly inspiring Center for Arts and Media Technology. The symposium was supported by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the German Computer Society (Gesellschaft f r Informatik, GI) and held in cooperation with a number of special interest groups of these scientific societies. HUC 99 attracted a large number of paper submissions, from which the international programme committee selected 23 high-quality contributions for presentation at the symposium and for inclusion in these proceedings. In addition, posters were solicited to provide an outlet for novel ideas and late-breaking results; selected posters are also included with these proceedings. The technical programme was further complemented by four invited keynote addresses, and two panel sessions.