Algorithmic

[dr_tectonic]

Today, I had a meeting about agent-based modeling with a visitor who's coming to NCAR for two years in a few weeks with whom I might collaborate, and I also started sketching out the architecture of a simple ABM that models information propagation through different ethnic groups ("information epidemiology"). Plus, I found an algorithm for hierarchical clustering based on correlation distance (yay for dendrograms) that will be useful for this little network visualizer I'm playing with. And saintpookie and I spent the evening making new Mythos decks, which is all about simultaneous optimization in many dimensions.

So I'm feeling very architect-y, and it's nice. There's a pleasant mental fatigue that I think is akin to the warm ache of well-exercised muscles, except it's parts of my brain that I hadn't been using recently.

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

One of my long-standing ideas is to use similar methods to cluster sequences for vaccine targeting.

You do know about these people, no?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about tomsawyer, actually. The project is mostly for my own entertainment, though, and half the fun is writing the code. So not much budget for licensed software. But it looks like interesting stuff; I'll keep it in mind if I ever do something serious with it. Thanks!

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Well, it's surprising how large the number of people who are expert in this area is. If you do a search for "graph drawing", you'll find quite a lot. I'm never entirely clear how useful it is in practice; for that, you'd have to ask tbiedl or folks like her.