Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] A Winter's Read
[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 friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Main Page - Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com 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 friam@redfish.com 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
Re: [FRIAM] [WedTech] A Winter's Read
Do you want me to reserve the 624 room for you? -d- On Oct 23, 2008, at 2:04 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: [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 friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Main Page - Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com 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 friam@redfish.com 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:
Re: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures
Of course!, the reason they fooled everyone so completely was that they were designed to be completely sensible. That's what is meant by the black swan. Phil Henshaw -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:11 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] MIT experts analyze financial crisis, debate cures This seemed to be a pretty sound analysis of the current crisis: http://techtv.mit.edu/file/1448/ In particular, I was surprised to see how reasonable several things I had thought to be bad were. For example, the securitization of mortgages arose from a very reasonable desire to smooth out risk. I hadn't understood their function before. -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Grappa Wireless Internet
http://grappawireless.com/about.html Anyone in the group have any experience or comments on these guys ( : ( : pete -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
