Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory

Its that sleepy time of summer, and I’ve not been a good blogging boy over the last week or so. To make matters worse, I’ll be going on vacation on the West Coast (of Michigan) for the next two weeks and won’t blog one bit.
My IB comrades (hint, hint) will fill in keeping you […]

The preliminary program for CEC is available. Interestingly, at least for an LCS guy like me, there is a session on Learning Classifier Systems.
Related PostsLearning classifier systems for bioinformatics @ IWLCS 2006International Workshop on Learning Classifier SystemsThe new LCS and other GBML blog is in beta stage

Directions Magazine reports that MWH Soft, a software firm specializing in hydraulic engineering software, has expanded its H20MAP package with significant upgrades to its GA-based Scheduler energy management package.
The new H2OMAP Scheduler extension employs the latest advances in Genetic Algorithm optimization technology with sophisticated Elitist and Global Search Control strategies to automatically determine the optimal […]

Previous posts (here and here) have explained the utility and cost effectiveness of so called “little models.” These are models that are less complex then something like the Navier-Stokes equations of motions but are more complex then mere intuition. These are the models that can be understood and provide meaningful insights into the […]

With winds gusting between 15 and 20 knots out of the northeast and waves rolling between 2 and 4 feet, IlliGAL’s genetic algorithm landlubbers became sailors on the 10-meter sailing vessel Urdragon yesterday, sailing out of Burnham Harbor in Chicago. All hands returned safely, no winch handles were lost, and the boat was returned […]

Nonstarving Artists reports (here) on the opening of an exhibition by artists Hyunjoo Oh and Noah Shibley entitled “Contagious Brain Blurbs” on July 15, 2005, hosted by dottedquad in Chicago:
‘Contagious Brain Blurbs’ is a multi-media show about the trajectory of the meme lifecycle: ‘encoding and dispersal’, ‘decoding’, ’storage’ and ‘reinfection.’ The works are a series […]

Tomorrow, six brave stalwarts of the good lab IlliGAL will travel up I-57 to Burnham Harbor in Chicago to crew the 10-meter sloop Urdragon. Landlubbing IlliGALers have been boning up on their points of sail here. They’ve also been studying their nautical terms (click here), but this requires translation into a number […]

IFTF’s Future Now has a link to Yochai Benkler’s Yale Law School article, Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm. Since reading a little Coase in the early 90s, I’ve been a transaction cost economics fan. The full article is pretty hefty, but it is worth a scan or more […]

I started reading the hideously named Freakonomics over coffee this morning and am having fun with it. Ever since reading Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson over two decades ago, I’ve enjoyed good economics writing for its concise ability to use the obvious to overturn the conventional. Levitt’s analysis of incentives and supporting statistics […]

On Sunday, I went to see March of the Penguins with all the Goldberg penguins up in Evanston, IL (the older penguin is attending journalism summer camp at Northwestern University). It was visually stunning and moving to all of us penguin lovers, but even those less attached to Aptenodytes forsteri should enjoy this flick. The […]