15 Views of a Node Link Graph: An Information Visualization Portfolio
Google engEDU
1 hr – Jun 28, 2006

Google TechTalks
June 28, 2006

Tamara Munzner received a BS in 1991 and a PhD in 2000 from Stanford. Her current research interests are information visualization, graph drawing, and dimensionality reduction. She was the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization Program/Papers Co-Chair in 2003 and 2004.

ABSTRACT
Information visualization, or infovis, is the interactive computer-based visual representation of abstract datasets. I will use collections of linked nodes as the launching point for a discussion of fifteen different approaches to infovis. Node-link graphs appear in many application domains, and people can perform many tasks faster or more effectively when they can manipulate a well-chosen visual representation of these graphs. A major challenge within infovis is how to handle the large datasets that occur in the real world. Designing algorithms with scalable speed and memory complexity is only part of the solution. The visual representation must also provide an appropriate abstraction, often requiring exploration across multiple levels of detail, to be comprehensible to the human in the loop. The talk will include examples in application domains ranging from web browsing to bioinformatics to computational linguistics, and datasets from thousands to millions of items. Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series: Parametric Polymorphism
Google engEDU
31 min – Apr 18, 2007

Google Tech Talks
April 18, 2007

ABSTRACT

Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series: Parametric Polymorphism and the Girard-Reynolds Isomorphism. This talk is based on a series of papers by Philip Wadler, a principal designer of the Haskell programming language. Featured are a number of double-barreled names in computer science:

* Hindley-Milner (Strong typing without having to type the types)
* Wadler-Blott (Making ad-hoc polymorphism less ad-hoc with parametricity)
* Curry-Howard (Isomorphism between types and theorems, terms and proofs)
* Girard-Reynolds (Isomorphism between types and terms in the presence of parametricity)

The talk will conclude with a programming technique (using the above) where the Haskell compiler (almost) writes your code for you!

Speaker: Phil Gossett Read the rest of this entry »

High End Computing and Scientific Visualization at NASA
Google engEDU
1 hr 2 min – Jan 25, 2006

Google TechTalks
January 25, 2006

Dr. Rupak Biswas and Dr. Chris Henze

Dr. Rupak Biswas is currently the Acting Chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Dr. Biswas received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1991 and has been at NASA ever since.

Chris Henze is the lead of the Visualization Group in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, in which capacity he supervises research and development activities in data analysis and visualization. Dr. Henze received his Ph.D. in computational biology from the University of Arizona in 1993. Read the rest of this entry »

Mac OS Automator: Doing things over and over is over.
Google engEDU
58 min – Jun 27, 2006

Google TechTalks
June 27, 2006

Sal Soghoian

ABSTRACT
Mac OS X "Tiger" introduces Automator, a new application that automates anything on your computer quickly and easily. Join Automator Product Manager Sal Soghoian as he demonstrates how you can use this incredible tool to make using your Mac productive and fun Read the rest of this entry »

Computers versus Common Sense
Google engEDU
1 hr 15 min – May 30, 2006

Google TechTalks
May 30, 2006

Douglas Lenat
Dr. Douglas Lenat is the President and CEO of Cycorp. Since 1984, he and his team have been constructing, experimenting with, and applying
a broad real world knowledge base and reasoning engine, collectively "Cyc".

Dr. Lenat was a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University and at Stanford University. His interest and experience in national security has led him to regularly consult for several U.S. agencies and the White House.

ABSTRACT
It’s way past 2001 now, where the heck is HAL? For several decades now we’ve had high hopes for computers amplifying our mental abilities not just giving us access to relevant stored information, but answering our complex, contextual questions.

Even applications like human-level unrestricted speech understanding continue to dangle close but just out of reach. What’s been holding AI up? The short answer is that while computers make fine idiot savants, they lack common sense: the millions of pieces of general knowledge we all share, and fall back on as needed, to cope with the rough edges of the real world. I will talk about how that situation is changing, finally, and what the timetable — and the path — realistically are on achieving Artificial Intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »