Machine Learning List: Vol. 13, No. 2 Friday, Mar 2, 2001 Contents Calls for Papers and Other Meeting Announcements CFP: K-CAP 2001 Symposium on Computational Discovery CFP: 4th Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis ICCBR'01 CfP: 2nd Announcement FP: Bayesian Models in Medicine - WS during AIME'01 Coevolution workshop, DEADLINE EXTENDED DEADLINE EXTENSION: IC-AI'01 Session "Learning & Adapting in AI Planning" ACL-2001 CoNLL-2001 Workshop Call for Papers [EXTENDED DEADLINE] CFP: ROPNET-2001 Workshop at GECCO-2001 CFP -- Autonomous Agents'01 workshop on Learning Agents Jobs Job offers Open Research Positions Other book announcement--Spirtes The Machine Learning List is moderated. Contributions should be relevant to the scientific study of machine learning. Please send submissions for distribution to: ml@isle.org. For requests to be added, removed, or to change your email address, send email to: ml-request@isle.org. In general, submissions should be no more than a few full-screens of text. For meeting announcements, highlight the conference or workshop web page and give a summary description of the goals of the event. Information such as the list of program committee members, talk schedules, and registration forms are unnecessary and should not be included. Job adds are usually no more than a few full-screens so they should fit naturally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Calls for Papers and Other Meeting Announcements ------------------------------ From: Jude Shavlik Subject: CFP: K-CAP 2001 Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 07:48:31 -0600 First International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2001) October 21-23, 2001 Victoria, British Columbia http://sern.ucalgary.ca/ksi/K-CAP/K-CAP2001 In today's Web-linked and data-rich world, there is a growing need to manage and utilize burgeoning amounts of information effectively. The aim of K-CAP 2001 is to provide a forum in which to bring together disparate research communities whose members are interested in efficiently capturing and refining knowledge from a variety of sources. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Knowledge acquisition tools - Advice taking systems - Authoring tools - Programming-by-demonstration systems - Learning apprentices - Knowledge engineering and modeling methodologies - Knowledge extraction systems - Knowledge management environments - User preferences elicitation tools - Mixed-initiative decision-support tools - Knowledge-based markup techniques CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS Yolanda Gil, USC/Information Sciences Institute Mark Musen, Stanford University Jude Shavlik, University of Wisconsin at Madison IMPORTANT DATES Electronic titlepage submission due: April 25, 2001 Paper submission due: May 1, 2001 Acceptance notifications: July 1, 2001 Final camera-ready copies due: August 1, 2001 Conference dates: October 21-23, 2001 CONFERENCE WEB SITE The Web site for the conference is http://sern.ucalgary.ca/ksi/K-CAP/K-CAP2001. A longer version of this announcement can be found there. WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS A small number of focused workshops and tutorials will be held prior to the main technical sessions. A call for workshop proposals is posted at the conference web site. ------------------------------ From: Pat Langley Subject: Symposium on Computational Discovery Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 20:46:58 -0800 (PST) ************************************************************************ Symposium on Computational Discovery of Communicable Knowledge Center for the Study and Language and Information Stanford University, March 24-25, 2001 ************************************************************************ Research on computational approaches to scientific discovery has a long history in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Early efforts focused on reconstructing episodes from the history of science, but the past decade has seen similar techniques produce a variety of new scientific discoveries, many of them leading to publications in the relevant scientific literatures. Work in this paradigm has emphasized formalisms used to communicate among scientists, including numeric equations, structural models, and reaction pathways. However, in recent years, research on data mining and knowledge discovery has produced another paradigm. Even when applied to scientific domains, this framework employs formalisms developed by AI researchers themselves, such as decision trees, rule sets, and Bayesian networks. Although such methods can produce predictive models that are highly accurate, their outputs are not cast in terms familiar to scientists, and thus typically are not very communicable. This symposium aims to bring together researchers who are pursuing computational methods for discovery of communicable knowledge and to review recent advances in this area. The primary focus will be on discovery in scientific disciplines, since communication is often central there. For more information about the symposium schedule and presentations, see http://www.isle.org/symposia/comdisc.html The symposium will take place on Saturday, March 24, and Sunday, March 25, just before the AAAI Spring Symposia, at Stanford University's Center for the Study and Language and Information. Attendance will be by invitation only, but there will be no registration fee. There will be 15 invited speakers presenting at the meeting over two days and we will have space for a similar number of non-presenting attendees. If you would like to attend, please send email to langley@csli.stanford.edu with a brief account of your previous and current work in the area. As an important note, Jan Zytkow passed away on Tuesday, January 16, and Herbert Simon died on Friday, February 9, only a few weeks later. Both were instrumental in launching and nurturing the field of computational scientific discovery, and we will reserve some time to remember them and their many contributions. Both will be sorely missed, but the best way to honor them is to continue building on the tradition they both helped establish. ------------------------------ From: Frank Hoeppner Subject: CFP: 4th Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:34:43 +0100 (CET) Call for Paper IDA-2001 Fourth International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis New University of Lisbon, Portugal 13th-15th September 2001 Call for papers =============== IDA-2001 will take place in Lisbon from 13th to 15th September 2001, and is organised by the Department of Computer Science of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon. It will consist of a stimulating program of tutorials, invited talks by leading international experts in intelligent data analysis, contributed papers, poster sessions, and an exciting social program. Our aim is for IDA-2001 to bring together a wide variety of re- searchers concerned with extracting knowledge from data, including people from statistics, machine learning, neural networks, computer science, pattern recognition, database management, and other areas. The strategies adopted by people from these areas are often different, and a synergy results if this is recognised. IDA-2001 is intended to stimulate interaction between these different areas, so that more powerful tools emerge for extracting knowledge from data and a better understanding is developed of the process of intelligent data analysis. It is the fourth symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis after the successful symposia in 1999 (Amsterdam), 1997 (London) and 1995 (Baden- Baden). IDA-2001 Organisation ===================== General Chair: Doug Fisher, Vanderbilt University, USA Program Chair: David Hand, Imperial College, UK Conference Chair: Gabriela Guimaraes, New University Lisbon,Portugal Important Dates =============== April, 23rd, 2001 Deadline for submitting papers June, 4th, 2001 Notification of acceptance July, 4th, 2001 Deadline for submission of final papers Publications ============ The proceedings will be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series of Springer (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/). The proceedings of Intelligent Data Analysis 97 and 99 appeared in this series as LNCS 1280 and LNCS 1642. (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/ volumes/1280.htm). Additional Information ====================== A list of topics of interest, guidelines for submissions, and infor- mation about the conference-site will shortly be available on the con- ference web site: http://centria.di.fct.unl.pt/ida01/ ------------------------------ From: David Aha Subject: ICCBR'01 CfP: 2nd Announcement Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 17:02:46 -0500 (EST) Call for Papers Second Announcement Fourth International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 30 July - 2 August 2001 www.iccbr.org/iccbr01 ICCBR'01 is the preeminent international meeting on case-based reasoning. This four-day conference will be held at Simon Fraser University's campus in Vancouver, immediately prior to IJCAI'01 (which will be held in nearby Seattle). The four-day program's initial day will be devoted to the Second Workshop on Innovative Customer-Centered Applications (ICCA'01), formally known as "ICCBR Industry Day". The second day of ICCBR will include (approximately five) workshops devoted to specific areas of interest to the CBR community. Announcements concerning these events are being distributed and are posted at the ICCBR'01 website. Submission Topics: The ICCBR'01 Program Committee invites submissions of original research and application papers on all aspects of Case-Based Reasoning. Example submission areas include, but are not limited to: * Case-based and lazy/instance-based learning, index learning, and integration with other learning methods * Formal, empirical, and psychological evaluations of CBR models and systems * Adaptive interfaces, user modeling and visualization techniques for/using CBR * Case and knowledge representation, acquisition, modeling, maintenance, and management for CBR * CBR system design issues (e.g., retrieval, similarity assessment, adaptation, and indexing) * CBR inference and process formalization * Case-based approaches for planning, scheduling, and design * System architectures and integration of CBR with other methods * Collaborative agent architectures involving CBR * Analogical reasoning, cognitive models, and creative reasoning approaches based on CBR * CBR-related areas (e.g., corporate memories, decision support, intelligent retrieval, networked information discovery, software reuse) * Case-based reasoning-inspired approaches to education * Applications of CBR (e.g., in customer support, education, electronic commerce, image processing, legal reasoning, knowledge management, manufacturing, medicine, natural language processing, quality management, robotics/navigation, WWW) * Methodologies for developing CBR applications Important Dates: Submission Deadline: 17 March 2001 Notification of acceptance: 13 April 2001 Camera ready copy due: 11 May 2001 Additional information: For additional information (e.g., submission procedures and formats, review criteria, social events), please see www.iccbr.org/iccbr01. ------------------------------ From: Ameen Abu-Hanna Subject: FP: Bayesian Models in Medicine - WS during AIME'01 Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:06:17 +0100 ** BAYESIAN MODELS IN MEDICINE ** Workshop during the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME'01), Cascais, Portugal, 1 July 2001 For details, see http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~plucas/aime01-ws.html o Submission of papers: 1 May, 2001 o Conference: 1-4 July, 2001 o Workshop: Sunday, 1 July, 2001 o Special issue: second half of 2002 (planned) Bayesian networks (also known as causal probabilistic networks) with their associated methods have now been around in biomedicine for more than a decade. They have become increasingly popular for representing and handling uncertain knowledge in medicine. Almost simultaneously, the use of Bayesian statistics has increased in popularity in medicine. This workshop aims to bring together researchers in these fields in order to assess the current state of the art, to identify obstacles for progress and to determine future research directions. The workshop's aim is also to promote research collaboration among different groups in these fields. Extended versions of the best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. For more information about the workshop, please contact one of the co-chairs: Peter Lucas, plucas@csd.abdn.ac.uk Linda van der Gaag, linda@cs.uu.nl Ameen Abu-Hanna, A.Abu-Hanna@amc.uva.nl or consult http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~plucas/aime01-ws.html. ------------------------------ From: "Richard K. Belew" Subject: Coevolution workshop, DEADLINE EXTENDED Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 12:45:15 -0800 2nd Call for Papers COEVOLUTION: TURNING ADAPTIVE ALGORITHMS UPON THEMSELVES Birds-of-a-feather Workshop at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2001 ( GECCO-2001 ) San Francisco, California, July 7 - 11, 2001 (Saturday - Wednesday) organized by Richard K. Belew & Hugues Juille http://www.eurobios.com/GECCO-2001/ * * * SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: 11 March 01 * * * ------------------------------ From: M.Garagnani@open.ac.uk Subject: DEADLINE EXTENSION: IC-AI'01 Session "Learning & Adapting in AI Planning" Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 13:09:20 -0000 *** EXTENDED DEADLINE: MARCH 15 *** LAST CALL for PAPERS Special Session on "Learning and Adapting in AI Planning" at IC-AI 2001 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 25-28, 2001 http://mcs.open.ac.uk/mg343/AI-session.htm A Special Session on "Learning and Adapting in AI Planning" will take place at the Monte Carlo Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), during June 25-28, as part of the 2001 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI'2001, held in conjunction with the International Multiconference: http://www.ashland.edu/~iajwa/conferences/). Important Dates: --------------- - March 15, 2001 (Thursday): Draft papers (about 4 to 5 pages) due - April 1, 2001 (Sunday): Notification of acceptance/rejection - May 1, 2001 (Tuesday): Camera-Ready papers and Pre-registration due - June 25 - 28, 2001: Special Session & IC-AI Conference ------------------------------ From: Priscilla Rasmussen Subject: ACL-2001 CoNLL-2001 Workshop Call for Papers Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 13:50:02 EST CALL FOR PAPERS CoNLL-2001 Fifth Computational Natural Language Learning Workshop Toulouse, France, July 6-7, 2001 http://lcg-www.uia.ac.be/conll2001/ BACKGROUND CoNLL is the yearly workshop organized by SIGNLL, the Association for Computational Linguistics Special Interest Group on Natural Language Learning (http://www.aclweb.org/signll/). The 2001 event will be held as a two-days workshop at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), July 6-11, 2001 in Toulouse, France. This year, a special theme will be the focus of the workshop: Interaction and Automation in Language Learning Resources Apart from this special theme, the workshop will accept contributions about language learning topics, including, but not limited to: - Computational models of human language acquisition - Computational models of the origins and evolution of language - Machine learning methods applied to natural language processing tasks (speech processing, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse processing, language engineering applications) - Symbolic learning methods (Rule Induction and Decision Tree Learning, Lazy Learning, Inductive Logic Programming, Analytical Learning, Transformation-based Error-driven Learning) - Biologically-inspired methods (Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computing) - Statistical methods (Bayesian Learning, HMM, maximum entropy, SNoW, Support Vector Machines) - Reinforcement Learning - Active learning, ensemble methods, meta-learning - Computational Learning Theory analyses of language learning - Empirical and theoretical comparisons of language learning methods - Models of induction and analogy in Linguistics THE WORKSHOP Main Session Theme: Interaction and Automation in Language Learning Resources The purpose of the special theme is to present and discuss state-of-the-art learning mechanisms for the automated acquisition of language resources (dictionaries, ontologies, grammars) or the automated adaptation of natural language resources/processors to new domains or languages. The dimensions of learning that are of interest for this session include: - The integration of humans/linguists in the learning process - The structure of the training data - The kind of knowledge that is learned - General study of learning methods that are suitable for natural language related tasks Important dates Deadline for Abstract Submission: April 6, 2001 Deadline for Shared Task Submission: April 6, 2001 Notification: April 27, 2001 Deadline camera-ready full paper: May 16, 2001 Workshop: July 6/7, 2001 ------------------------------ From: Franz Rothlauf Subject: [EXTENDED DEADLINE] CFP: ROPNET-2001 Workshop at GECCO-2001 Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 09:49:31 -0600 ROPNET-2001 REPRESENTATIONS AND OPERATORS FOR NETWORK PROBLEMS Bird-of-a-feather Workshop at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2001 ( GECCO-2001 ) San Francisco, California, July 7 - 11, 2001 (Saturday - Wednesday) http://www.isgec.org/GECCO-2001/ IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission deadline: March 12, 2001 Decisions will be mailed by: April 5, 2001 Submissions of camera-ready papers: April 20, 2001 Presentation: July 7, 2001 Further information will be posted on the workshop web pages ( http://btw6x2.oec.uni-bayreuth.de/ropnet/ ). ------------------------------ From: Peter Stone Subject: CFP -- Autonomous Agents'01 workshop on Learning Agents Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 11:10:34 -0500 AGENTS-2001 Workshop on Learning Agents May 29,2001 Montreal, Canada **************************************** Submission Deadline: March 16th, 2001 **************************************** Description ----------- The goal of this workshop is to focus on research addressing the unique requirements that autonomous agents impose on learning methods. The Learning Agents workshop organized jointly at the Agents'2000 and ECML'2000 conferences started a fruitful discussion between researchers involved in designing and applying machine learning techniques to autonomous agents. The workshop attracted more than 40 researchers studying learning agents. The workshop ended with a lively discussion regarding the special properties of agent learning as opposed to machine learning in general. The proposed workshop aims to continue and extend the discussion started last year. We especially encourage the submission of papers addressing the following topics: 1) Benefits of adaptive/learning agents over agents with fixed behavior. 2) Evaluation of the effectiveness of individual learning strategies (e.g., case-based, explanation-based, inductive, reinforcement learning), or multistrategy combinations. 3) Characterization of learning and adaptation methods in terms of modeling power, communication abilities, knowledge requirements and processing abilities of individual agents. 4) Developing learning and adaptation strategies, or reward structures, for environments with cooperative agents, selfish agents, partially cooperative agents (agents that will cooperate only if individual goals are not sacrificed) and for environments that can contain mixture of these types of agents. 5) Analyzing and constructing algorithms that guarantee the convergence and stability of group behavior in multi-agent systems. 6) Analyzing the effects of knowledge acquisition mechanisms on the responsiveness of agents or groups to the addition/deletion of other agents from the environment. 7) Agents learning by observing users or other agents. 8) Evolving agent behaviors or co-evolving multiple agents with similar/opposing interests. 9) Investigation of teacher-student relationships between agents and users. Submission Requirements: ----------------------- E-mail the URL of either a -- brief statement of interest (1 page), -- complete paper (3000 words maximum) including keywords and authors' complete address to pstone@research.att.com and dprecup@cs.mcgill.ca. Papers and statements of interest must be in one of the following formats: postscript, pdf, HTML. Important Dates --------------- Deadline for paper submission: March 16, 2001 Acceptance notice to participants: April 1, 2001 Camera-ready papers due: April 16, 2001 Workshop: May 29, 2001 For further information visit the following URL: http://www.research.att.com/~pstone/Workshops/2001agents/ ------------------------------ Jobs ------------------------------ From: Eric Bonabeau Subject: Job offers Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:16:34 +0100 Icosystem combines advances in network theory, leading-edge economic simulation modeling techniques and evolutionary computation to discover winning business models for exploitation through partnership with consulting clients or external investors, through independent spin-off activities and as part of an IP portfolio. More information about Icosystem can be found at www.icosystem.net. The company is looking for outstanding individuals to join its team. Positions to be filled immediately include: 1.. Senior modeler: You will lead Icosystem's modeling research. Experienced in modeling business systems, but open to other modeling approaches, you will be comfortable with a range of different modeling approaches (e.g. system dynamics, uml, ontologies, business process modeling) as well as a number of programming languages, such as C, C++ and/or Java and/or Matlab and Simulink. Probably PhD qualified, you are able to explore many options without knowing what ideal is until you find it. Your mission will be to come up with new insights on how to model business issues at a strategic level. 2.. Modeler: You will participate in Icosystem's modeling R&D and will apply the team's findings to real business cases with Icosystem's consulting clients. Experienced in business modeling, you are open to other approaches and have a strong desire to apply your expertise to real-world problems. You must have programming experience using such languages as C, C++ and/or Java and/or Matlab and Simulink. 3.. Software developer: You will participate in the R&D team's efforts to build a business model discovery tool that can be applied to a number of industries. You will work closely with the R&D scientists and must be able to understand and contribute to the modeling method and the search algorithms. You must be familiar with a range of programming languages, including C, C++ and Java. Familiarity with Matlab+Simulink and/or other mathematical and data analysis software is desired as well as experience with developing GUI's. 4.. AI scientist: You will play a key technical role in the R&D team's efforts to develop a new set of evolutionary and co-evolutionary computation techniques to explore business ecosystems. An acknowledged expert in AI with a focus on evolutionary computation and/or co-evolutionary techniques, with a PhD and a broad experience of multiple techniques including genetic algorithms, classifier systems, genetic programming, evolutionary strategies, you are comfortable with one or more programming languages including C, C++ and/or Java. Experience with genetic programming and/or evolutionary computation applied to design is desired. 5.. Data mining scientist: An acknowledged expert with a PhD and preferably a postdoctoral or industry experience in market research, you will apply a wide range of statistical analysis, segmentation and other data mining techniques to the discovery of patterns in databases used by Icosystem to build and validate its models. You must have a programming experience using such languages as C, C++ and/or Java and/or Matlab and Simulink and/or other statistical and data analysis software. Work in a fast-paced, cutting-edge environment. Work with experts in the field of complexity science to invent the winning business models of tomorrow. If this sort of environment appeals and you have skills that match any of the above positions, we would like to hear from you. All positions are initially based in Paris, France. We offer competitive compensation packages. Send resumes to HR@icosystem.net ------------------------------ From: Christoph Benzmueller Subject: Open Research Positions Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 17:18:36 +0100 Open Research Positions at the OMEGA Group in Saarbrücken AG Siekmann Department of Computer Science, Saarland University & German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Further information is available at url: http://www.ags.uni-sb.de/~chris/jobs/job.html ------------------------------ Other ------------------------------ From: Jud Wolfskill Subject: book announcement--Spirtes Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 15:56:10 -0500 For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/SPICHF00. Causation, Prediction, and Search second edition Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines What assumptions and methods allow us to turn observations into causal knowledge, and how can even incomplete causal knowledge be used in planning and prediction to influence and control our environment? In this book Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines address these questions using the formalism of Bayes networks, with results that have been applied in diverse areas of research in the social, behavioral, and physical sciences. The authors show that although experimental and observational study designs may not always permit the same inferences, they are subject to uniform principles. They axiomatize the connection between causal structure and probabilistic independence, explore several varieties of causal indistinguishability, formulate a theory of manipulation, and develop asymptotically reliable procedures for searching over equivalence classes of causal models, including models of categorical data and structural equation models with and without latent variables. The authors show that the relationship between causality and probability can also help to clarify such diverse topics in statistics as the comparative power of experimentation versus observation, Simpson's paradox, errors in regression models, retrospective versus prospective sampling, and variable selection. The second edition contains a new introduction and an extensive survey of advances and applications that have appeared since the first edition was published in 1993. Peter Spirtes is Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery, Carnegie Mellon University. Clark Glymour is Alumni University Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and Valtz Family Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is also Distinguished External Member of the Center for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Richard Scheines is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery, and at the Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. 7 x 9, 496 pp., 225 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-19440-6 Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series A Bradford Book ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 13, No. 2 ***********************************