Great idea - I'd vote for the Krauth. Like I need an excuse to buy another textbook :-) Robert
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Owen Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 > > > On Oct 11, 2008, at 11:47 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: > > On Oct 11, 2008, at 5:12 AM, Robert Holmes wrote: >> >> Owen - how's the book? I've been thinking about brushing up on my >>> statistical mechanics - Robert >>> >> >> I'm just getting started. My first observation is that its not your basic >> textbook. By that I mean it does not start with axioms and grind out >> theorems. This is nice in the sense of being informal, but it also leaves a >> feeling of being a bit "loose". >> >> But it has the advantage of having a good scope: hits nearly all of the >> buzz words in an intense SFI rap! >> >> So I think I will like it, but will look up lots of stuff in wikipedia or >> other like sources to fill in gaps. >> >> One point: I got it considerably cheaper via getting it used: $29.50 + >> shipping. I can bring it to the next wedtech if you'd like. >> >> -- 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 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
