

CMU computer scientist creates problem-solving algorithm - edw519
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08297/922155-298.stm

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randrews
"The key to Dr. Guestrin's algorithm ... is that it can assemble the maximum
amount of information for the least effort."

So it's efficient then? As opposed to every other inefficient algorithm?

I bet this is what medical researchers feel like every time they open a
newspaper.

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hendler
Another, higher rated post here on HN today is on marketing yourself. "The One
Thing Every Software Engineer Should Know"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341095>

Despite the quality of the article on Dr Guestrin, he's a legit computer
scientist who got in the press. That's a "good thing", right? There is a large
portion of the population who only uses computers for emails and web, and this
article at least opens them up to the _basic_ idea that computers and computer
scientists can help people.

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Dilpil
NEWSFLASH: Chemist does stuff with chemicals.

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michael_dorfman
His list of publications is here:
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guestrin/publications.html>

~~~
henning
As far as I can tell, the actual paper that this story is about is
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guestrin/Publications/JMLR08SensorPla...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guestrin/Publications/JMLR08SensorPlace/jmlr08-sensor-
place.pdf) \- it was published months ago, and was actually submitted in 2006,
meaning they probably thought of this and did the research 2-3 years ago.
Given that, it's almost hard to call this 'news', although it is interesting.

~~~
pchristensen
It's because of the PopSci "Brilliant 10" list:
<http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/brilliant-10-class-2008>

Came out today, so today would be a good day for a local paper to report it.
The Post-Gazette can't vet the importance of individual CMU research projects,
but they trust PopSci to.

~~~
bd
Here is the actual project page:

CASCADES project: Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jure/blogs/>

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jfischer
I don't get what the difference is between "machine learning" and plain-old
constraint solving. From looking at the abstract of his paper, he's solving an
NP-Complete problem using a new approximation algorithm. So, the real
contributions of his work are 1) mapping his particular sensor network problem
to the NP-Complete complexity class, and 2) an improved approximation
algorithm. The newspaper article seems astounded that multiple (real-world)
problems can be mapped to the same algorithm.

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brianobush
The title is chilling. A computer scientist creating algorithms that solve
problems. Bet he is using one of those computer things too.

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cliffy
Computer scientist solves all problems with an algorithm! Alan Turing spinning
in his grave! News at 11!

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jganetsk
This is why I left Pittsburgh.

~~~
jimbokun
?

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natch
No source... lame.

