Stanford edu Machine Learning Course

We’ve all been to various .edu sites to the engineering courses only to find a Power Point Presentation with little information.

Stanford Engineering’s Machine Learning Course is an exception.

You have access to video of all the lectures, transcripts of all the lectures and class notes. I started working through it last week, brushing up on old topics and filling in gaps in my knowledge. Of all the online artificial intelligence and machine learning courses online, this is the best I’ve seen so far. The math is very low level, programming minimal, you’ll find it a very easy to work through introduction to machine learning.

Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Instructor: Ng, Andrew

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning and statistical pattern recognition.

Topics include: supervised learning (generative/discriminative learning, parametric/non-parametric learning, neural networks, support vector machines); unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, kernel methods); learning theory (bias/variance tradeoffs; VC theory; large margins); reinforcement learning and adaptive control.
The course will also discuss recent applications of machine learning, such as to robotic control, data mining, autonomous navigation, bioinformatics, speech recognition, and text and web data processing.
Students are expected to have the following background:

Prerequisites: - Knowledge of basic computer science principles and skills, at a level sufficient to write a reasonably non-trivial computer program.
- Familiarity with the basic probability theory. (Stat 116 is sufficient but not necessary.)
- Familiarity with the basic linear algebra (any one of Math 51, Math 103, Math 113, or CS 205 would be much more than necessary.)

Evolving 3d virtual creature software and papers

I’ve been catching up reading AI papers on my Sony Reader, it’s very nice to have all these books and papers with you all the time, and I ran across a paper on 3d creatures that evolve and battle. The software is open source and there is extensive information explaining the project.

Evolving Virtual Creatures

I evolve virtual creatures. That is, instead of designing the creatures myself, I let Darwinian evolution do the work for me. Starting with a bunch of completely random creatures, I evaluate them, select the “best” (where the definition of “best” depends on what you are trying to obtain: distance covered, outcome of a fight, etc.), allow these “good” creatures to “reproduce” (that is, generate new creatures based on recombination and mutations of these “good” creatures), and start this cycle again with the new population. After a while, increasingly efficient behaviours appear spontaneously.

Both the morphology (body) and behaviour (neural network) of the creatures are fully evolved: I only specify the evaluation function (that is, how to determine the “score” of a creature), and evolution takes care of the design, slowly turning random creatures into highly efficient machines.

This research builds upon the seminal work of Karl Sims; in fact, this was the first successful reimplementation of Karl Sims’ system. I improved the genetic encoding and the developmental system. I also chose to use standard, McCulloch-Pitts neurons instead of the complex functional neurons used by Sims (which makes the problem harder, but more interesting: creatures can’t rely on complex neurons to directly provide useful behaviours, they need come up with their own coordinated neural systems).

I also managed to evolve “fighting” creatures: creatures evolve to smash each other out. I believe this is a first (previous attempts used simplistic forms of “combat”).

Yet another computing language, R the language of statistics

Yet another year, yet another dozen languages. Some times it seems as if all my time gets sapped up learning new languages. R is growing rapidly in popularity making news on Slashdot and the NYT late last year.

R provides a graphics package for visualizing your data, a data editor, data manipulation and has C/C++ interfaces. When R is open it provides a set of windows allowing you to interact with your data. The instruction manuals, tutorials, source code for Linux, OSX and Windows are available for free at the R Project site

R is also the name of a popular programming language used by a growing number of data analysts inside corporations and academia. It is becoming their lingua franca partly because data mining has entered a golden age, whether being used to set ad prices, find new drugs more quickly or fine-tune financial models. Companies as diverse as Google, Pfizer, Merck, Bank of America, the InterContinental Hotels Group and Shell use it.

But R has also quickly found a following because statisticians, engineers and scientists without computer programming skills find it easy to use.

“R is really important to the point that it’s hard to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”

It is also free. R is an open-source program, and its popularity reflects a shift in the type of software used inside corporations. Open-source software is free for anyone to use and modify. I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Dell make billions of dollars a year selling servers that run the open-source Linux operating system, which competes with Windows from Microsoft. Most Web sites are displayed using an open-source application called Apache, and companies increasingly rely on the open-source MySQL database to store their critical information. Many people view the end results of all this technology via the Firefox Web browser, also open-source software. R, the software, finds fans in data analysts read more . . .

The R Project for Statistical Computing

Electrodes implanted in the brain

We know that our brains work by sending electrical signals along our neurons.  Sometimes the built in damping mechanism for the signals fails to work and things like Parkinsons and epilispy strike the victim.  Much like a pacemaker for hearts, electric implants in the brain can smooth out signals and treat these illnesses.

Over 35,000 people have successfully had their Parkinsons disease treated this way, some with results lasting over seven years.

Surprisingly brain illnesses not commonly associated with electric signal problems also can be treated with implanted electrodes; depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, among them.

Patients can also be treated with electrodes placed outside the skull but the results tend to be very short term.  It is thought that the brain learns to rewire itself with the electrodes implanted and helps to cure itself.

Occasionally electrodes can be bumped, covered in scar tissure and fail to keep working.  One group of scientists has come up with an implant that moves itself to the strongest near signal hoping to over come this problem.

See also:

Moving brain implant seeks out signals
Wireheads: Healing the brain with electricity
Mind Hacks: Brain electrodes awake brain injured man
Technology Review: Tiny electrodes for the brain
Brain surgery helps a mute man speak
Brain surgery helps a mute man speak
This is your brain on electricity

How long before the government can read your mind?

Maybe soon, perhaps never, but recent advances have brought mind reading closer to reality.

An fMRI is a machine that takes pictures inside your body, like the familiar CAT scanner but in much greater detail. While you are in the machine scans your brain and can see which areas of your brain are getting more blood flow.

Had you sat in the machine while you looked at images or thought specific thoughts, a computer attached to the fMRI could learn which parts of your brain get active when you look at a specific photo or think a specific thought. Then the next time you entered the machine and thought those same thoughts it could recognize the pattern.

All our brains are different, not unlike our finger prints and so don’t all behave exactly the same. But they are a like enough that in time, with lots and lots of data, researchers might some day have a general mind map.

Perhaps your defense could be that you store murder weapons in a different part of your brain than the average person and so therefore are not guilty as charged. It’s too soon to know, but perhaps not as far away as we’d like.

News Stories;
fMRI Brain Scan Debate Neurology Research in Interrogations, Courtroom, Office
Scary or Sensational, A machine that can look into the mind
Can brain scans read our minds?

Papers:
Functional magnetic resonance imaging ( pdf )