The Scientific Community Game
for STEM Innovation and Education
(STEM: Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics)
Karl Lieberherr
Ahmed Abdelmeged
3/16/2011
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Why Scientific Community Game
(SCG)
• … motives in academic publishing:
– desire for recognition and respect from the people
one regards as peers,
– desire to have impact (on conclusions being
reached, on the development of the discipline,
etc.), and
– desire to participate in significant knowledgebuilding discourse.
• e.g., Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994)
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Why do we model Scientific
Communities?
• Scientific Communities create and disseminate
new knowledge to help society.
• A computational model of scientific
communities supports the same efforts for
computational problems:
– focused collaboration and competition
– checking of the rules of a scientific community
– knowledge maintenance and evaluation
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Idea: Use Scientific Community Model
to focus scientific discourse
• Scholars propose and oppose (refute or
strengthen) or agree on claims.
• Claims predict the outcome of a refutation
protocol.
• Parameterized by two structures: Domain and
Protocol.
• Claim Example: Alice claims that she can solve
problem instances in instance set I with
quality at least q using resources at most r.
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Karl Popper
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SCG is a web-based implementation
of Karl Popper’s science ideas
• One of the greatest philosophers of science of
the 20th century.
• Falsifiability or refutability is the logical
possibility that an assertion could be shown
false by a particular observation or physical
experiment.
• Error elimination (refutation), performs a
similar function for science that natural
selection performs for biological evolution.
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from
Wikipedia
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Comparison
• Karl Popper: Conjectures and Refutations
• Scientific Community Game: Claims and
Refutations
• Our claims are about computational problems.
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Automating the refutations
• There can be “bugs” in refutations.
• With a computational model of scientific
communities we can check for many “bugs”.
Fair evaluation.
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Designers
• SCG
• Domain
– Instance, Solution, InstanceSet, valid, quality
– basic domain functionality, like
• standard solvers and solvers for niches.
• providing instances with “interesting” solutions
• Protocol: using protocol language
– standard protocols: ForAllExists, PositiveSecret, etc.
• Playground: Configurate
– Research/Development Managers (Innovation)
– Professors (Teaching)
• Avatar
– researchers, developers
– students
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Domain
• Instance (language)
• Solution (language)
– boolean valid(Instance)
– [0,1] quality(Instance)
• InstanceSet (language, subset of Instance)
– boolean valid()
– boolean belongsTo(Instance)
• Response = Instance union Solution
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SCG(Domain)
• Protocol (fixed language)
• Claim(Domain)
– boolean strengthen(Claim other) // other
strengthens this
– Domain.InstanceSet getInstanceSet()
– Protocol getProtocol()
– [0,1] getQuality()
– [-1..1] getResult(List(Domain.Response))
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Claim involving Experiment
Claim ExperimentalTechnique(X,Y,q,r)
I claim, given raw materials x in X,
I can produce product y in Y of quality q
and using resources at most r.
Bionetics 2010
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Our vision
• Researchers and Professors come to the SCG
website and configure a new playground X in
which tournaments will take place.
• Participating teams get baby avatars generated
for X that participate in daily competitions.
• Competition generates a wealth of information:
educated employees/students, good
(undefeated) software, good algorithms, good
potential employees. Reward is given to the
winner.
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Conclusions
• Computational Modeling of Scientific
Communities is a good idea:
– foster Innovation
– improve education
• STEM domains: use the web effectively
• Current use:
– Algorithms class
– Software development class
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Thank you!
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Both refutations are efficient
Claim: F unsatisfiable
• if refuted: Bob finds
satisfying J; proof of !Claim.
• If defended: baby step
towards proof of Claim.
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!Claim
• if refuted: Alice does not
find satisfying J; baby step
towards proof of Claim.
• If defended: proof of !Claim.
• Alice should never have
made the claim!
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Both refutations are efficient
Claim:
Exists F in IS All J: fsat(F,J)<=t
!Claim: F has J: fsat(F,J)>=t
All F in IS Exists J: fsat(F,J)>=t
• if refuted: Bob finds J; proof
of !Claim assuming Alice is
perfect.
• If defended: baby step
towards proof of Claim.
• if refuted: Alice does not
find J; baby step towards
proof of !Claim.
• If defended: proof of Claim
if Bob is perfect.
• Alice should never have
made the claim!?
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Designers
• SCG
• Domain
– includes designing basic components for avatar
like standard solvers. Example: HSR: linear search
solver
• Protocol
• Playground: Goal: make playground designers
configurators.
• Avatar designers
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Example Playground Design
Highest Safe Rung
• Configuration:
– domain HSR
– claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass
– claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass
– initialReputation = 100
–…
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Designers: what they produce
• SCG /scg
– scg.cd, scg.beh
– /protocol
• Java classes: Singleton Pattern
• Domain /domain
– /hsr: hsr.cd, hsr.beh
• /avatar (components for avatar)
• Playground
– config file: location of configuration file is given as
argument to admin
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Config
• Config = // to configure admin
<scgCfg> SCGConfig
<domainConfigWrapper> Wrap(DomainConfigI).
• Example entries:
– domain CSP
– claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass
– claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass
– initialReputation = 100
–…
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Where can we find configuration
settings
• If there is a configuration file location given to
the admin
– in the configuration file
• If not: the default value given in the code.
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Designers
• SCG
• Domain
– Instance, Solution, InstanceSet, valid, quality
– basic domain functionality, like
• standard solvers and solvers for niches.
• providing instances with “interesting” solutions
• Protocol: using protocol language
– standard protocols: ForAllExists, PositiveSecret, etc.
• Playground: Configurate
– Research/Development Managers (Innovation)
– Professors (Teaching)
• Avatar
– researchers, developers
– students
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Example Playground Design
Highest Safe Rung
• Configuration:
– domain HSR
– claim 1: instanceSetClass protocolClass
– claim 2: instanceSetClass !protocolClass
– initialReputation = 100
–…
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