In geometry, space partitioning is the process of dividing an entire space (usually a Euclidean space) into two or more disjoint subsets (see also partition of a set). In other words, space partitioning divides a space into non-overlapping regions. Any point in the space can then be identified to lie in exactly one of the regions. == Overview == Space-partitioning systems are often hierarchical, meaning that a space (or a region of space) is divided into several regions, and then the same space-partitioning system is recursively applied to each of the regions thus created. The regions can be organized into a tree, called a space-partitioning tree. Most space-partitioning systems use planes (or, in higher dimensions, hyperplanes) to divide space: points on one side of the plane form one region, and points on the other side form another. Points exactly on the plane are usually arbitrarily assigned to one or the other side. Recursively partitioning space using planes in this way produces a BSP tree, one of the most common forms of space partitioning. == Uses == === In computer graphics === Space partitioning is particularly important in computer graphics, especially heavily used in ray tracing, where it is frequently used to organize the objects in a virtual scene. A typical scene may contain millions of polygons. Performing a ray/polygon intersection test with each would be a very computationally expensive task. Storing objects in a space-partitioning data structure (k-d tree or BSP tree for example) makes it easy and fast to perform certain kinds of geometry queries—for example in determining whether a ray intersects an object, space partitioning can reduce the number of intersection test to just a few per primary ray, yielding a logarithmic time complexity with respect to the number of polygons. Space partitioning is also often used in scanline algorithms to eliminate the polygons out of the camera's viewing frustum, limiting the number of polygons processed by the pipeline. There is also a usage in collision detection: determining whether two objects are close to each other can be much faster using space partitioning. === In integrated circuit design === In integrated circuit design, an important step is design rule check. This step ensures that the completed design is manufacturable. The check involves rules that specify widths and spacings and other geometry patterns. A modern design can have billions of polygons that represent wires and transistors. Efficient checking relies heavily on geometry query. For example, a rule may specify that any polygon must be at least n nanometers from any other polygon. This is converted into a geometry query by enlarging a polygon by n/2 at all sides and query to find all intersecting polygons. === In probability and statistical learning theory === The number of components in a space partition plays a central role in some results in probability theory. See Growth function for more details. === In geography and GIS === There are many studies and applications where Geographical Spatial Reality is partitioned by hydrological criteria, administrative criteria, mathematical criteria or many others. In the context of cartography and GIS - Geographic Information System, is common to identify cells of the partition by standard codes. For example the for HUC code identifying hydrographical basins and sub-basins, ISO 3166-2 codes identifying countries and its subdivisions, or arbitrary DGGs - discrete global grids identifying quadrants or locations. == Data structures == Common space-partitioning systems include: BSP trees Quadtrees Octrees k-d trees Bins == Number of components == Suppose the n-dimensional Euclidean space is partitioned by r {\displaystyle r} hyperplanes that are ( n − 1 ) {\displaystyle (n-1)} -dimensional. What is the number of components in the partition? The largest number of components is attained when the hyperplanes are in general position, i.e, no two are parallel and no three have the same intersection. Denote this maximum number of components by C o m p ( n , r ) {\displaystyle Comp(n,r)} . Then, the following recurrence relation holds: C o m p ( n , r ) = C o m p ( n , r − 1 ) + C o m p ( n − 1 , r − 1 ) {\displaystyle Comp(n,r)=Comp(n,r-1)+Comp(n-1,r-1)} C o m p ( 0 , r ) = 1 {\displaystyle Comp(0,r)=1} - when there are no dimensions, there is a single point. C o m p ( n , 0 ) = 1 {\displaystyle Comp(n,0)=1} - when there are no hyperplanes, all the space is a single component. And its solution is: C o m p ( n , r ) = ∑ k = 0 n ( r k ) {\displaystyle Comp(n,r)=\sum _{k=0}^{n}{r \choose k}} if r ≥ n {\displaystyle r\geq n} C o m p ( n , r ) = 2 r {\displaystyle Comp(n,r)=2^{r}} if r ≤ n {\displaystyle r\leq n} (consider e.g. r {\displaystyle r} perpendicular hyperplanes; each additional hyperplane divides each existing component to 2). which is upper-bounded as: C o m p ( n , r ) ≤ r n + 1 {\displaystyle Comp(n,r)\leq r^{n}+1}
Radek Maneuver
The Radek Maneuver is a scale-up-then-scale-down tactic used in the administration of web services, specifically those deployed under a cloud computing paradigm (by a provider e.g. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or Microsoft Azure). == History == Developed by Olivier "Radek" Dabrowski in the mid-2010s, the Radek Maneuver was originally conceived of in using and maintaining applications running on a PaaS system. == Execution == The Radek Maneuver consists of a series of steps, usually executed via the PaaS or web portal interface. The tactic should be used when a service is misbehaving or otherwise experiencing errors, and the suspected cause is the underlying cloud layer, rather than the application layer. This includes networking issues and other "bad box" problems. The steps are as follows: Identify the application or service which is misbehaving. Increase the compute resource (number of CPU cores, amount of ram) for the instance on which the application is running. This is also known as scaling up. Wait for the application to re-deploy and stabilize. Scale back down to the original instance size. == Principle of action == This scale-up-scale-down method is understood to shift the application to a different physical machine underlying the PaaS service or application virtual machine. While this layer of the cloud computing stack is generally out of the access of an application developer (instead in the hands of the cloud provider), the maneuver allows troubleshooting and dodging errors in that layer.
Feature (machine learning)
In machine learning and pattern recognition, a feature is an individual measurable property or characteristic of a data set. Choosing informative, discriminating, and independent features is crucial to producing effective algorithms for pattern recognition, classification, and regression tasks. Features are usually numeric, but other types such as strings and graphs are used in syntactic pattern recognition, after some pre-processing step such as one-hot encoding. The concept of "features" is related to that of explanatory variables used in statistical techniques such as linear regression. == Feature types == In feature engineering, two types of features are commonly used: numerical and categorical. Numerical features are continuous values that can be measured on a scale. Examples of numerical features include age, height, weight, and income. Numerical features can be used in machine learning algorithms directly. Categorical features are discrete values that can be grouped into categories. Examples of categorical features include gender, color, and zip code. Categorical features typically need to be converted to numerical features before they can be used in machine learning algorithms. This can be done using a variety of techniques, such as one-hot encoding, label encoding, and ordinal encoding. The type of feature that is used in feature engineering depends on the specific machine learning algorithm that is being used. Some machine learning algorithms, such as decision trees, can handle both numerical and categorical features. Other machine learning algorithms, such as linear regression, can only handle numerical features. == Classification == A numeric feature can be conveniently described by a feature vector. One way to achieve binary classification is using a linear predictor function (related to the perceptron) with a feature vector as input. The method consists of calculating the scalar product between the feature vector and a vector of weights, qualifying those observations whose result exceeds a threshold. Algorithms for classification from a feature vector include nearest neighbor classification, neural networks, and statistical techniques such as Bayesian approaches. == Examples == In character recognition, features may include histograms counting the number of black pixels along horizontal and vertical directions, number of internal holes, stroke detection and many others. In speech recognition, features for recognizing phonemes can include noise ratios, length of sounds, relative power, filter matches, logarithmic Mel-scale spectral vectors and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, which represent the frequency characteristics of audio signals. In spam detection algorithms, features may include the presence or absence of certain email headers, the email structure, the language, the frequency of specific terms, the grammatical correctness of the text. In computer vision, there are a large number of possible features, such as edges and objects. == Feature vectors == In pattern recognition and machine learning, a feature vector is an n-dimensional vector of numerical features that represent some object. Many algorithms in machine learning require a numerical representation of objects, since such representations facilitate processing and statistical analysis. When representing images, the feature values might correspond to the pixels of an image, while when representing texts the features might be the frequencies of occurrence of textual terms. Feature vectors are equivalent to the vectors of explanatory variables used in statistical procedures such as linear regression. Feature vectors are often combined with weights using a dot product in order to construct a linear predictor function that is used to determine a score for making a prediction. The vector space associated with these vectors is often called the feature space. In order to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space, a number of dimensionality reduction techniques can be employed. Higher-level features can be obtained from already available features and added to the feature vector; for example, for the study of diseases the feature 'Age' is useful and is defined as Age = 'Year of death' minus 'Year of birth' . This process is referred to as feature construction. Feature construction is the application of a set of constructive operators to a set of existing features resulting in construction of new features. Examples of such constructive operators include checking for the equality conditions {=, ≠}, the arithmetic operators {+,−,×, /}, the array operators {max(S), min(S), average(S)} as well as other more sophisticated operators, for example count(S, C) that counts the number of features in the feature vector S satisfying some condition C or, for example, distances to other recognition classes generalized by some accepting device. Feature construction has long been considered a powerful tool for increasing both accuracy and understanding of structure, particularly in high-dimensional problems. Applications include studies of disease and emotion recognition from speech. == Selection and extraction == The initial set of raw features can be redundant and large enough that estimation and optimization is made difficult or ineffective. Therefore, a preliminary step in many applications of machine learning and pattern recognition consists of selecting a subset of features, or constructing a new and reduced set of features to facilitate learning, and to improve generalization and interpretability. Extracting or selecting features is a combination of art and science; developing systems to do so is known as feature engineering. It requires the experimentation of multiple possibilities and the combination of automated techniques with the intuition and knowledge of the domain expert. Automating this process is feature learning, where a machine not only uses features for learning, but learns the features itself.
Sample complexity
The sample complexity of a machine learning algorithm represents the number of training-samples that it needs in order to successfully learn a target function. More precisely, the sample complexity is the number of training-samples that we need to supply to the algorithm, so that the function returned by the algorithm is within an arbitrarily small error of the best possible function, with probability arbitrarily close to 1. There are two variants of sample complexity: The weak variant fixes a particular input-output distribution; The strong variant takes the worst-case sample complexity over all input-output distributions. The No free lunch theorem, discussed below, proves that, in general, the strong sample complexity is infinite, i.e. that there is no algorithm that can learn the globally-optimal target function using a finite number of training samples. However, if we are only interested in a particular class of target functions (e.g., only linear functions) then the sample complexity is finite, and it depends linearly on the VC dimension on the class of target functions. == Definition == Let X {\displaystyle X} be a space which we call the input space, and Y {\displaystyle Y} be a space which we call the output space, and let Z {\displaystyle Z} denote the product X × Y {\displaystyle X\times Y} . For example, in the setting of binary classification, X {\displaystyle X} is typically a finite-dimensional vector space and Y {\displaystyle Y} is the set { − 1 , 1 } {\displaystyle \{-1,1\}} . Fix a hypothesis space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} of functions h : X → Y {\displaystyle h\colon X\to Y} . A learning algorithm over H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is a computable map from Z {\displaystyle Z} to H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} . In other words, it is an algorithm that takes as input a finite sequence of training samples and outputs a function from X {\displaystyle X} to Y {\displaystyle Y} . Typical learning algorithms include empirical risk minimization, without or with Tikhonov regularization. Fix a loss function L : Y × Y → R ≥ 0 {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}\colon Y\times Y\to \mathbb {R} _{\geq 0}} , for example, the square loss L ( y , y ′ ) = ( y − y ′ ) 2 {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}(y,y')=(y-y')^{2}} , where h ( x ) = y ′ {\displaystyle h(x)=y'} . For a given distribution ρ {\displaystyle \rho } on X × Y {\displaystyle X\times Y} , the expected risk of a hypothesis (a function) h ∈ H {\displaystyle h\in {\mathcal {H}}} is E ( h ) := E ρ [ L ( h ( x ) , y ) ] = ∫ X × Y L ( h ( x ) , y ) d ρ ( x , y ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}(h):=\mathbb {E} _{\rho }[{\mathcal {L}}(h(x),y)]=\int _{X\times Y}{\mathcal {L}}(h(x),y)\,d\rho (x,y)} In our setting, we have h = A ( S n ) {\displaystyle h={\mathcal {A}}(S_{n})} , where A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} is a learning algorithm and S n = ( ( x 1 , y 1 ) , … , ( x n , y n ) ) ∼ ρ n {\displaystyle S_{n}=((x_{1},y_{1}),\ldots ,(x_{n},y_{n}))\sim \rho ^{n}} is a sequence of vectors which are all drawn independently from ρ {\displaystyle \rho } . Define the optimal risk E H ∗ = inf h ∈ H E ( h ) . {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}={\underset {h\in {\mathcal {H}}}{\inf }}{\mathcal {E}}(h).} Set h n = A ( S n ) {\displaystyle h_{n}={\mathcal {A}}(S_{n})} , for each sample size n {\displaystyle n} . h n {\displaystyle h_{n}} is a random variable and depends on the random variable S n {\displaystyle S_{n}} , which is drawn from the distribution ρ n {\displaystyle \rho ^{n}} . The algorithm A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} is called consistent if E ( h n ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}(h_{n})} probabilistically converges to E H ∗ {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}} . In other words, for all ϵ , δ > 0 {\displaystyle \epsilon ,\delta >0} , there exists a positive integer N {\displaystyle N} , such that, for all sample sizes n ≥ N {\displaystyle n\geq N} , we have Pr ρ n [ E ( h n ) − E H ∗ ≥ ε ] < δ . {\displaystyle \Pr _{\rho ^{n}}[{\mathcal {E}}(h_{n})-{\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}\geq \varepsilon ]<\delta .} The sample complexity of A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} is then the minimum N {\displaystyle N} for which this holds, as a function of ρ , ϵ {\displaystyle \rho ,\epsilon } , and δ {\displaystyle \delta } . We write the sample complexity as N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} to emphasize that this value of N {\displaystyle N} depends on ρ , ϵ {\displaystyle \rho ,\epsilon } , and δ {\displaystyle \delta } . If A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} is not consistent, then we set N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) = ∞ {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )=\infty } . If there exists an algorithm for which N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} is finite, then we say that the hypothesis space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is learnable. In others words, the sample complexity N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} defines the rate of consistency of the algorithm: given a desired accuracy ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } and confidence δ {\displaystyle \delta } , one needs to sample N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} data points to guarantee that the risk of the output function is within ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } of the best possible, with probability at least 1 − δ {\displaystyle 1-\delta } . In probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, one is concerned with whether the sample complexity is polynomial, that is, whether N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} is bounded by a polynomial in 1 / ϵ {\displaystyle 1/\epsilon } and 1 / δ {\displaystyle 1/\delta } . If N ( ρ , ϵ , δ ) {\displaystyle N(\rho ,\epsilon ,\delta )} is polynomial for some learning algorithm, then one says that the hypothesis space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is PAC-learnable. This is a stronger notion than being learnable. == Unrestricted hypothesis space: infinite sample complexity == One can ask whether there exists a learning algorithm so that the sample complexity is finite in the strong sense, that is, there is a bound on the number of samples needed so that the algorithm can learn any distribution over the input-output space with a specified target error. More formally, one asks whether there exists a learning algorithm A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} , such that, for all ϵ , δ > 0 {\displaystyle \epsilon ,\delta >0} , there exists a positive integer N {\displaystyle N} such that for all n ≥ N {\displaystyle n\geq N} , we have sup ρ ( Pr ρ n [ E ( h n ) − E H ∗ ≥ ε ] ) < δ , {\displaystyle \sup _{\rho }\left(\Pr _{\rho ^{n}}[{\mathcal {E}}(h_{n})-{\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}\geq \varepsilon ]\right)<\delta ,} where h n = A ( S n ) {\displaystyle h_{n}={\mathcal {A}}(S_{n})} , with S n = ( ( x 1 , y 1 ) , … , ( x n , y n ) ) ∼ ρ n {\displaystyle S_{n}=((x_{1},y_{1}),\ldots ,(x_{n},y_{n}))\sim \rho ^{n}} as above. The No Free Lunch Theorem says that without restrictions on the hypothesis space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} , this is not the case, i.e., there always exist "bad" distributions for which the sample complexity is arbitrarily large. Thus, in order to make statements about the rate of convergence of the quantity sup ρ ( Pr ρ n [ E ( h n ) − E H ∗ ≥ ε ] ) , {\displaystyle \sup _{\rho }\left(\Pr _{\rho ^{n}}[{\mathcal {E}}(h_{n})-{\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}\geq \varepsilon ]\right),} one must either constrain the space of probability distributions ρ {\displaystyle \rho } , e.g. via a parametric approach, or constrain the space of hypotheses H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} , as in distribution-free approaches. == Restricted hypothesis space: finite sample-complexity == The latter approach leads to concepts such as VC dimension and Rademacher complexity which control the complexity of the space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} . A smaller hypothesis space introduces more bias into the inference process, meaning that E H ∗ {\displaystyle {\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {H}}^{}} may be greater than the best possible risk in a larger space. However, by restricting the complexity of the hypothesis space it becomes possible for an algorithm to produce more uniformly consistent functions. This trade-off leads to the concept of regularization. It is a theorem from VC theory that the following three statements are equivalent for a hypothesis space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} : H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is PAC-learnable. The VC dimension of H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is finite. H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is a uniform Glivenko-Cantelli class. This gives a way to prove that certain hypothesis spaces are PAC learnable, and by extension, learnable. === An example of a PAC-learnable hypothesis space === X = R d , Y = { − 1 , 1 } {\displaystyle X=\mathbb {R} ^{d},Y=\{-1,1\}} , and let H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} be the space of affine functions on X {\displaystyle X} , that is, functions of the form x ↦ ⟨ w , x ⟩ + b {\displaystyle x\mapsto \langl
POP-11
POP-11 is a reflective, incrementally compiled programming language with many of the features of an interpreted language. It is the core language of the Poplog programming environment developed originally by the University of Sussex, and recently in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, which hosts the main Poplog website. POP-11 is an evolution of the language POP-2, developed in Edinburgh University, and features an open stack model (like Forth, among others). It is mainly procedural, but supports declarative language constructs, including a pattern matcher, and is mostly used for research and teaching in artificial intelligence, although it has features sufficient for many other classes of problems. It is often used to introduce symbolic programming techniques to programmers of more conventional languages like Pascal, who find POP syntax more familiar than that of Lisp. One of POP-11's features is that it supports first-class functions. POP-11 is the core language of the Poplog system. The availability of the compiler and compiler subroutines at run-time (a requirement for incremental compiling) gives it the ability to support a far wider range of extensions (including run-time extensions, such as adding new data-types) than would be possible using only a macro facility. This made it possible for (optional) incremental compilers to be added for Prolog, Common Lisp and Standard ML, which could be added as required to support either mixed language development or development in the second language without using any POP-11 constructs. This made it possible for Poplog to be used by teachers, researchers, and developers who were interested in only one of the languages. The most successful product developed in POP-11 was the Clementine data mining system, developed by ISL. After SPSS bought ISL, they renamed Clementine to SPSS Modeler and decided to port it to C++ and Java, and eventually succeeded with great effort, and perhaps some loss of the flexibility provided by the use of an AI language. POP-11 was for a time available only as part of an expensive commercial package (Poplog), but since about 1999 it has been freely available as part of the open-source software version of Poplog, including various added packages and teaching libraries. An online version of ELIZA using POP-11 is available at Birmingham. At the University of Sussex, David Young used POP-11 in combination with C and Fortran to develop a suite of teaching and interactive development tools for image processing and vision, and has made them available in the Popvision extension to Poplog. == Simple code examples == Here is an example of a simple POP-11 program: define Double(Source) -> Result; Source2 -> Result; enddefine; Double(123) => That prints out: 246 This one includes some list processing: define RemoveElementsMatching(Element, Source) -> Result; lvars Index; [[% for Index in Source do unless Index = Element or Index matches Element then Index; endunless; endfor; %]] -> Result; enddefine; RemoveElementsMatching("the", [[the cat sat on the mat]]) => ;;; outputs [[cat sat on mat]] RemoveElementsMatching("the", [[the cat] [sat on] the mat]) => ;;; outputs [[the cat] [sat on] mat] RemoveElementsMatching([[= cat]], [[the cat]] is a [[big cat]]) => ;;; outputs [[is a]] Examples using the POP-11 pattern matcher, which makes it relatively easy for students to learn to develop sophisticated list-processing programs without having to treat patterns as tree structures accessed by 'head' and 'tail' functions (CAR and CDR in Lisp), can be found in the online introductory tutorial. The matcher is at the heart of the SimAgent (sim_agent) toolkit. Some of the powerful features of the toolkit, such as linking pattern variables to inline code variables, would have been very difficult to implement without the incremental compiler facilities.
Autognostics
Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware. It is considered one of the major components of Autonomic Networking. == Introduction == One of the most important characteristics of today's Internet that has contributed to its success is its basic design principle: a simple and transparent core with intelligence at the edges (the so-called "end-to-end principle"). Based on this principle, the network carries data without knowing the characteristics of that data (e.g., voice, video, etc.) - only the end-points have application-specific knowledge. If something goes wrong with the data, only the edge may be able to recognize that since it knows about the application and what the expected behavior is. The core has no information about what should happen with that data - it only forwards packets. Although an effective and beneficial attribute, this design principle has also led to many of today's problems, limitations, and frustrations. Currently, it is almost impossible for most end-users to know why certain network-based applications do not work well and what they need to do to make it better. Also, network operators who interact with the core in low-level terms such as router configuration have problems expressing their high-level goals into low-level actions. In high-level terms, this may be summarized as a weak coupling between the network and application layers of the overall system. As a consequence of the Internet end-to-end principle, the network performance experienced by a particular application is difficult to attribute based on the behavior of the individual elements. At any given moment, the measure of performance between any two points is typically unknown and applications must operate blindly. As a further consequence, changes to the configuration of given element, or changes in the end-to-end path, cannot easily be validated. Optimization and provisioning cannot then be automated except against only the simplest design specifications. There is an increasing interest in Autonomic Networking research, and a strong conviction that an evolution from the current networking status quo is necessary. Although to date there have not been any practical implementations demonstrating the benefits of an effective autonomic networking paradigm, there seems to be a consensus as to the characteristics which such implementations would need to demonstrate. These specifically include continuous monitoring, identifying, diagnosing and fixing problems based on high-level policies and objectives. Autognostics, as a major part of the autonomic networking concept, intends to bring networks to a new level of awareness and eliminate the lack of visibility which currently exists in today's networks. == Definition == Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware, in part and as a whole, and dynamically adapt to the applications running on them by autonomously monitoring, identifying, diagnosing, resolving issues, subsequently verifying that any remediation was successful, and reporting the impact with respect to the application's use (i.e., providing visibility into the changes to networks and their effects). Although similar to the concept of network awareness, i.e., the capability of network devices and applications to be aware of network characteristics (see References section below), it is noteworthy that autognostics takes that concept one step further. The main difference is the auto part of autognostics, which entails that network devices are self-aware of network characteristics, and have the capability to adapt themselves as a result of continuous monitoring and diagnostics. == Path to autognostics == Autognostics, or in other words deep self-knowledge, can be best described as the ability of a network to know itself and the applications that run on it. This knowledge is used to autonomously adapt to dynamic network and application conditions such as utilization, capacity, quality of service/application/user experience, etc. In order to achieve autognosis, networks need a means to: Continuously monitor/test the network for application-specific performance Analyze the monitoring/test data to detect problems (e.g., performance degradation) Diagnose, identify and localize sources of degradation Automatically take actions to resolve problems via remediation/provisioning Verify the problems have been resolved (potentially rolling back changes if ineffective) Subsequently, continue to monitor/test for performance
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine
Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine (also titled Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms) is a book on the growing influence of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) on human life, authored by mathematician and science communicator Hannah Fry. The book examines how algorithms are increasingly shaping decisions in critical areas such as healthcare, transportation, justice, finance, and the arts. == Overview == Fry uses real-world examples, such as driverless cars and predictive policing, to illustrate her points. She emphasizes that algorithms are not inherently objective; they reflect biases embedded in their design and data inputs. While acknowledging their potential to improve efficiency and accuracy, Fry cautions against over-reliance on machines without human judgment. Fry explores moral questions surrounding algorithmic decision-making, such as whether machines can replace human empathy in critical situations. She advocates for greater scrutiny of algorithms to ensure fairness and avoid harmful biases. The book proposes a "cyborg future", where humans work alongside algorithms to enhance decision-making while retaining ultimate control. == Reception == Hello World has been praised for its clarity, engaging storytelling, and balanced perspective. Critics have highlighted Fry's ability to make complex topics accessible to general audiences while raising important questions about technology's impact on society. The book was shortlisted for awards such as the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize and the Royal Society Science Book Prize.