Karl Lieberherr Ahmed Abdelmeged The Scientific Community Game for STEM Innovation and Education (STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Karl Lieberherr Ahmed Abdelmeged 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Why Scientific Community Game (SCG) … motives in academic publishing: desire for recognition and respect from the people one regards as peers, desire to have impact (on conclusions being reached, on the development of the discipline, etc.), and desire to participate in significant knowledge-building discourse. e.g., Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994) 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Why do we model Scientific Communities? Scientific Communities create and disseminate new knowledge to help society. A computational model of scientific communities supports the same efforts for computational problems: focused collaboration and competition checking of the rules of a scientific community knowledge maintenance and evaluation 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Idea: Use Scientific Community Model to focus scientific discourse Scholars propose and oppose (refute or strengthen) or agree on claims. Claims predict the outcome of a refutation protocol. Parameterized by two structures: Domain and Protocol. Claim Example: Alice claims that she can solve problem instances in instance set I with quality at least q using resources at most r. 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Karl Popper 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

SCG is a web-based implementation of Karl Popper’s science ideas One of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion could be shown false by a particular observation or physical experiment. Error elimination (refutation), performs a similar function for science that natural selection performs for biological evolution. from Wikipedia 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Comparison Karl Popper: Conjectures and Refutations Scientific Community Game: Claims and Refutations Our claims are about computational problems. 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Automating the refutations There can be “bugs” in refutations. With a computational model of scientific communities we can check for many “bugs”. Fair evaluation. 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Designers SCG Domain Protocol: using protocol language Instance, Solution, InstanceSet, valid, quality basic domain functionality, like standard solvers and solvers for niches. providing instances with “interesting” solutions Protocol: using protocol language standard protocols: ForAllExists, PositiveSecret, etc. Playground: Configurate Research/Development Managers (Innovation) Professors (Teaching) Avatar researchers, developers students 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Domain Instance (language) Solution (language) boolean valid(Instance) [0,1] quality(Instance) InstanceSet (language, subset of Instance) boolean valid() boolean belongsTo(Instance) Response = Instance union Solution 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

SCG(Domain) Protocol (fixed language) Claim(Domain) boolean strengthen(Claim other) // other strengthens this Domain.InstanceSet getInstanceSet() Protocol getProtocol() [0,1] getQuality() [-1..1] getResult(List(Domain.Response)) 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Claim involving Experiment Claim ExperimentalTechnique(X,Y,q,r) I claim, given raw materials x in X, I can produce product y in Y of quality q and using resources at most r. Bionetics 2010

Our vision Researchers and Professors come to the SCG website and configure a new playground X in which tournaments will take place. Participating teams get baby avatars generated for X that participate in daily competitions. Competition generates a wealth of information: educated employees/students, good (undefeated) software, good algorithms, good potential employees. Reward is given to the winner. 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Conclusions Computational Modeling of Scientific Communities is a good idea: foster Innovation improve education STEM domains: use the web effectively Current use: Algorithms class Software development class 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Thank you! 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Both refutations are efficient Claim: F unsatisfiable !Claim if refuted: Bob finds satisfying J; proof of !Claim. If defended: baby step towards proof of Claim. if refuted: Alice does not find satisfying J; baby step towards proof of Claim. If defended: proof of !Claim. Alice should never have made the claim! 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Both refutations are efficient Claim: Exists F in IS All J: fsat(F,J)<=t !Claim: F has J: fsat(F,J)>=t All F in IS Exists J: fsat(F,J)>=t if refuted: Bob finds J; proof of !Claim assuming Alice is perfect. If defended: baby step towards proof of Claim. if refuted: Alice does not find J; baby step towards proof of !Claim. If defended: proof of Claim if Bob is perfect. Alice should never have made the claim!? 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Designers SCG Domain Protocol includes designing basic components for avatar like standard solvers. Example: HSR: linear search solver Protocol Playground: Goal: make playground designers configurators. Avatar designers 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Example Playground Design Highest Safe Rung Configuration: domain HSR claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass initialReputation = 100 … 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Designers: what they produce SCG /scg scg.cd, scg.beh /protocol Java classes: Singleton Pattern Domain /domain /hsr: hsr.cd, hsr.beh /avatar (components for avatar) Playground config file: location of configuration file is given as argument to admin 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Config Config = // to configure admin Example entries: <scgCfg> SCGConfig <domainConfigWrapper> Wrap(DomainConfigI). Example entries: domain CSP claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass initialReputation = 100 … 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Where can we find configuration settings If there is a configuration file location given to the admin in the configuration file If not: the default value given in the code. 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Designers SCG Domain Protocol: using protocol language Instance, Solution, InstanceSet, valid, quality basic domain functionality, like standard solvers and solvers for niches. providing instances with “interesting” solutions Protocol: using protocol language standard protocols: ForAllExists, PositiveSecret, etc. Playground: Configurate Research/Development Managers (Innovation) Professors (Teaching) Avatar researchers, developers students 3/16/2011 Open House 2011

Example Playground Design Highest Safe Rung Configuration: domain HSR claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass initialReputation = 100 … 3/16/2011 Open House 2011