Next NAME/Alergic: Chris Watkins, Wed 24th Oct, ARUN401

The next NAME meeting is a combined NAME/Alergic event. Chris Watkins, Royal Holloway, will be talking about his research into information theoretic approaches to evolution and in particular the 'channel capacity' of evolution. Please see abstract below.

16:30, Wednesday 24th October
Arundel room 401

All welcome.



Abstract

This talk will consider some familiar genetic and evolutionary algorithms from a new point of view. Instead of viewing these algorithms as optimisation methods, I will consider them information-theoretically, as communication channels. After a brief introduction to Shannon's theory of communication, I will show how to view an evolutionary algorithm as a communication channel, and then show that different algorithms have very different channel capacities.
Intuitively, the channel capacity of an evolutionary algorithm is a measure of how much information -- or how much complexity -- can be put into the "genomes" as a result of selection. This seems a basic limitative computational property, which may be relevant to choosing useful regimes to get evolutionary algorithms to work effectively.
In biological evolution, in each generation genetic information is degraded by mutation, but also in some sense restored by selection. Some natural basic questions are: How much information could be encoded in a genome as a result of selection? How complex could organisms conceivably become? Does the potential complexity depend on whether the organisms are sexual? How could information be encoded most efficiently, in the sense that the greatest amount could be encoded for the lowest intensity of selection? The theoretical approach I will present may have some bearing on these questions.



New Approaches to Modelling Evolution/Ecosystems

http://newapproaches.blogspot.com

Next meeting: Wed 17th October, 14:00, room TBC

A PDF of David's talk can be found online here.

Professor David Waxmam from the Department of Biology and Environmental Science, University of Sussex will be leading the next NAME meeting this Wednesday 14:00, room TBC. The topic for this meeting is random genetic drift in populations.

NAME meetings are biased towards group discussions rather than a single presentation with questions. Therefore they are interactive and we positively welcome contributions from all participants. Come armed with puzzles, comments and queries!

All welcome.

Alergic meeting Wed 10 October, 16:30, ARUN 401

The first meeting of the term for Alergic (Artificial Life Reading Group in Cogs) is today. The NAME group can be seen as a spin off from Alergic and used the 'Alergic slot' on Wednesday afternoons. In today's meeting we will introduce the NAME group and discuss where and when to hold NAME meetings this term.