Computational Intelligence and Co-evolution Google Group

IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games: new keynote speakers, competitions, tutorials...

julian.togel...@gmail.com (Julian Togelius) — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:31:41 UT

IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG-2009)
Milano, Italy - September 7-10, 2009
[link]

The 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games brings
together leading researchers and practitioners from academia and
industry to discuss recent advances and explore future directions in

Re: CFP: Special Session on Coevolution at IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:31:54 UT

Last reminder - less that a week to go for CIG papers. Still time to
polish off that coevolution paper and submit to the Special Session on
Coevolution in Games. The weather in Perth is perfect for the beach in
December!

2008 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'08)
Perth, Australia, 15-18 December 2008

Re: No coevolution track at GECCO next year

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:10:22 UT

I agree - that seems rough justice ...

as an alternative, I see that there is no coevolution track at CEC
next year. Special session submissions close Sept 1
([link]). And it's in Trondheim next
year - interesting location! Tutorial proposals are open until Dec 1.

Re: [coevolve] No coevolution track at GECCO next year

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:20:15 UT

I emailed Franz with this question. The numbers he gave for # of
submisions, starting in 2003 I believe, were: 14, 18, 18, 12, 24, 8.
He mentioned that GECCO likes to have about 20 submissions to its
active tracks, but that theory is an exception.
These numbers could hardly be called a steady decline. I'd say they

No coevolution track at GECCO next year

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:45:07 UT

FYI: Because the submissions to the coevolution track at GECCO have
gradually decreased (and were especially low this year), GECCO has
dropped the track ... at least for the time being.

When I spoke with Franz Rothlauf (chair for GECCO 2009) about this, he
pointed out the steady decline, which surprised me. Every year, I

Re: CFP: Special Session on Coevolution at IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:34:22 UT

Just a note to let you all know the deadline for papers has been
extended to August 15.

Re: Coevolution as game tree search

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:29:55 UT

Hi Peter

I had a look at your paper at [link]
. Interesting. Haven't seen this idea before (but that doesn't mean to
say it doesn't exist). It seems vaguely reminiscent of LCS's, but not
the same, and as you point out, a lot of these things (GA's,

CFP: Special Session on Coevolution at IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:45:11 UT

Coevolution in Games ( [link]
)

A Special Session at IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and
Games
Perth, Australia
15-18 December, 2008

Special Session Chairs: Julian Togelius, Alan Blair and Philip
Hingston
Contact: julian.togelius AT gmail.com

Coevolution as game tree search

dr...@lclark.edu (Peter Drake) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:18:21 UT

Greetings, everyone.
My research group is exploring coevolution as game tree search,
specifically for the game of Go. We are aware of many attempt to use
genetic algorithms to evolve players or board evaluators over the
course of many games, but we are trying to use coevolution to find
the best move (or at least a good move) during the course of a single

WCCI

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:30:49 UT

Hi everyone

Would anyone be interested in getting together at WCCI to discuss
life, co-evolution, and this group?

cheers, phi

Task force chair

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:17:06 UT

Dear all

I have been invited to continue as task force chair for 2008.

If anyone would like to take on the role, perhaps you could email me
privately (p.hings...@ecu.edu.au). While I'm happy to continue in the
role, some of you are closer to the pulse than me and if you are
motivated, would stand a better chance of being effective, I feel.

Book Chapter

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:09:03 UT

Hi everyone

I have been invited to contribute a co-evolution chapter to an
upcoming book (well anyway to submit a proposal for one), "Nature-
Inspired Informatics for Intelligent Applications and Knowledge
Discovery: Implications in Business, Science and Engineering". I feel
uneasy about representing myself as an expert on co-evolution. I

fitness for coevolution

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:27:21 UT

Hi all

We have discussed this topic before, but I have been thinking about a
specific application lately which I think provides a different
perspective on the question. I thought I'd ask what you all think.

The question is: what is the "correct" fitness function for co-
evolution?

Xin Yao gave a very nice plenary at CEC ([link]

Re: [coevolve] CEC report

julian.togel...@gmail.com (Julian Togelius) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:05:29 UT

Hi everyone, I have my own impressions from CEC at:
[link]
A special session on co-evolution is certainly a good idea - I would
definitely try to attend, whether I would submit anything depends on
what directions my research will take after I start at IDSIA.

CEC report

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:31:30 UT

Hi everyone
I thought I would post a brief report on the recent CEC in Singapore.
It's brief because, unfortunately, I got a stomach bug early on in the
conference and had to spend the rest of the time close to my bathroom.
So I didn't get to many talks and missed out on catching up with lots
of people. If anyone else was there, maybe you could fill in some

Re: [coevolve] More questions than answers.

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:28:54 UT

I would have to see more detail about how you approached checkers. But I'm
inclined to say, coming from my own bias, that you're probably adjusting
weights using some average or aggregate of the outcomes over many games or
over many configurations of the board. Aggregates have a tendency to detect

SSCI Symposium/Workshop

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:20:07 UT

Hi everyone
I have received the following suggestion from Vin Piuri:
"in 2009 I will lead a proposal for organizing the Symposium Series on
Computational Inteligence, sponsored by IEEE CIS, as David Fogel did
in 2007 in the Hawaii.
We are considering various locations in the east coast of the USA
about in March-April 2009. We will finalize the choice soon.

Re: [coevolve] Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:44:14 UT

Well, we could write a CFP which would only attract papers from people like
us. Or, we could write a CFP which is very broad to the point of being
vague ("we welcome submissions on the theory and practice of coevolutionary
algorithms..."). I expect a very broad CFP would receive a lot of "what I
did on my summer vacation" papers, weird theoretical ideas out of left field

Re: [coevolve] Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

se...@eecs.harvard.edu (Sevan G. Ficici) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:34:13 UT

It's certainly a good idea to get a sense of whether people will want
to contribute to a special issue -- that might be helpful in selling
the idea to the journal. But, I'm a bit unclear about the purpose of
seeing what topics in coevolution others want to publish about.
Wouldn't we want to open the special issue to a broad range of

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:05:28 UT

I agree, we should fish a bit for interest outside of our typical
group. What's the best way to go about that? Have you a list of
people in mind? We could scan over the last few conference
proceedings and email authors of coevolution papers. Or are you
wondering about the wider EC audience?
As to many guest editors problem: I actually don't <i>want</i> to

Re: [coevolve] Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:12:58 UT

Jordan said he'd guest edit a special issue, too. So, we have lots of
people willing to work on it. All we have to do is decide what's in it. -)
He also pointed out that it doesn't look good if most of the papers in the
issue are written by the guest editor(s).
I'm wondering about turning the question around and seeing what other people

Re: [coevolve] Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

se...@eecs.harvard.edu (Sevan G. Ficici) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:02:33 UT

Hi All,
I agree that a book might be a better way to spread the word than a
special issue, but at least the special issue might be a way to
stimulate participation in coevolution research.
I agree that persistence is necessary to get the word out -- it will
take a little time. I think older coevolution heuristics are more

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

abu...@gmail.com (abucci) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:23:04 UT

Dang, one of my sentences jumped to the wrong paragraph. I emailed
Jordan asking if he'd be interested in editing a journal issue on
coev. T Awhile back I'd emailed Marc Schoenauer about having a
special issue of ECJ but he never wrote me back. I assembled a list
of potential contributors and started into writing a CFP, so maybe we

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

abu...@gmail.com (abucci) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:13:13 UT

Personally I'm torn between two aims. One is to broadcast what's been
done; the other is to advance the limits of what is known. I tend to
think that workshops, tutorials, discussion groups, courses, and books
are better venues for disseminating ideas than a special issue of a
journal would be. Journals are where you put research results. A

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:56:23 UT

Sevan's observations are reasonable.
If no one else will agree to help Sevan co-edit a special issue, I
would do so (with similar conditions as Sevan notes); however, it is
spreading myself a bit thin ... so I'll happily yield that honor to
someone else who wants to "step up"?
As to point number three, the ideal would be to attract some

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

se...@eecs.harvard.edu — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:33:25 UT

Hi All,
It hadn't occurred to me to characterize ECJ and TEC as theory and
applications journals, respectively. Looking over their contents in a
cursory way, perhaps this trend does exist somewhat. But, I agree with
Phi that there's plenty to theory published in TEC; let's not forget
that the NFL papers are both published there! And, TEC consistently

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:53:18 UT

I was only joking that there seems to be a small number of people
contributing to the discussion in the Google group. (You are involved
in the discussions so you would be one of the "four" to which I was
referring 8^) ).
Fair enough. I'll give it some thought. Of course, it may in large
part depend on who picks up the baton and pushes for a special issue.

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:25:02 UT

Hm - I don't know whether I count as one of the four! I expect I am
not sufficiently engaged in CoEC research to offer up a quality
contribution, though I'd be interested in working with someone on some
kind of survey paper, perhaps on games, or on multi-objective. I would
hope that others, not necessarily in this group, would have plenty to

Re: [coevolve] Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 03:20:20 UT

I'd be able to submit something to a special issue.
Paul, are you involved with organizing the next FOGA?
Anthony

Re: Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:38:24 UT

It occurred to me that not everyone might know all the acronyms I was
blithely throwing about.
TCSC -- Journal of Theoretical Computer Science, Section C (Natural
Computing)
[Elsevier: [link] ]
ECJ -- Evolutionary Computation Journal
[MIT Press: [link] ]

Discussing the idea of a special issue on CoEC

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:49:40 UT

I am reluctant to take up another service project, as I already have
my hands full with FOGA ... and that's over a year away. But *AM*
interested in discussing the idea of a special issue, even if I am not
willing to edit it. 8^)
Whenever someone mentions the possibility of a special issue, I
immediately think: Do I have anything to submit to such an issue?

Re: [coevolve] Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

philiphings...@gmail.com (Philip Hingston) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:14:03 UT

OK. I'm surprised. Or maybe shocked! I'll have to put that on my list of
things to try. Thanks.
Anyway, in that case, maybe this would be a good idea for a competition. The
rules would need some care.

Re: [coevolve] Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:49:24 UT

If you think tictactoe is easy, then I'd say show me some results.
Replicate Rosin and see if you can do better. :-)
Or:
Don Michie showed training MENACE against minimax did not produce very good
players; he did that work in the 60's? 70's? Susan Epstein's 1994 ideal
trainer article in Machine Learning argues the case more fully, for more

Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:04:29 UT

OK - time to show my ignorance... I've quickly had a look at a few
papers, but I guess I don't get it!
How can tic-tac-toe be any challenge? The game tree is tiny. Not much
opportunity for something hard like,
say, opponent modelling.
Is it something about co-evolution that makes it hard? Would it be

Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

kstan...@cs.ucf.edu (Kenneth Stanley) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 01:54:49 UT

I also think tic-tac-toe is currently an important domain because it
*should* be easy but isn't. However, I think it would be most
informative to separate the genetic encoding from the coevolutionary
algorithm because in tic tac toe the genetic encoding can be a
significant factor in success.
Therefore, what I think would be useful is to agree on a single

Re: [coevolve] Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

abu...@gmail.com (Anthony Bucci) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:31:17 UT

I agree with Philip's comment on the need for coevolutionary approaches to
multi-objective algorithms to take better account of new theory. My own
work has drawn strong ties between coevolution and multi-objective
optimization. More broadly, Pareto coevolution can be seen as a set of
concepts and class of algorithms which make the connection explicit. There

Re: GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:56:20 UT

Hi Paul, everyone
Thanks Paul for this very thoughtful and useful report, and for
organising the meeting at GECCO.
I volunteer to organise a similar meeting at CEC. Perhaps those
interested could reply to me.
One concrete suggestion to make the foundations of coevolutionary
algorithms more widely considered (in particular,

GECCO Discussion on Coevolution Task Force

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:28:52 UT

GECCO REPORT
As readers of this forum know, I attempted to collect a group of
people to discuss some of the issues raised in a recent thread on this
website about the Coevolution Task Force itself. This attempt was
only marginally successful: Despite the post here and on the GECCO
wiki, interest in such a discussion was modest.

Re: TF report

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:22:27 UT

Hi Paul
Thanks for this info - it is helpful. The Games track at CEC is an
activity of another IEEE CIS entity - the TC on Games.
I also hope that this TF may be able to help connect IEEE and ACM
communities, despite the political barriers.
Incidentally - I meant to respond to your post in another thread. I

Re: TF report

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:37:54 UT

Phi,
Unfortunately, I don't think I can be of much help to you. There has
been a lot of activity over the last few years with respect to
coevolution (examples shown below); however, very little of what I
know about has been done under the auspices or with the resources of
the coevolution task force. Even the TEC special issue mentioned was

TF report

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:53:10 UT

Dear Colleagues
I have been asked by Ali Zalzala of ECTC for this
"It is now the time when I ask you to provide me with your TF
activities for the last six months. Please make sure you include the
list given in items 1-4 of my email dates 3 June 2007 (no worries, a
copy is attached herewith!)
I do appreciate you must be very busy this time of year, but please

RE: [coevolve] Re: More on Task Forces

p.hings...@ecu.edu.au (Philip HINGSTON) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:45:18 UT

Hi Paul
That would be great.
I'd like to be able to answer your questions, but I think you probably
know more of the histroy than I do!
As you know, I took over the working group from Graham, basically
because he asked me and I have an interest
in co-evolution.
Actually, I've just been asked to provide an annual report on our

Re: More on Task Forces

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:49:40 UT

Philip,
I'm glad you initiated this discussion; we had a couple of useful
conversations at GECCO about these matters. I will compose a report
of these soon; however -- in the spriit of "taking a step back" and
before I do so -- I wonder if you might help provide some historical
context for this group. I admit to being fairly ignorant on these

More on Task Forces

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 01:38:53 UT

I thought I would pass on this advice about task forces, FYI
"The purpose of task force (TF) is to build an active and healthy
infrastructure to promote specific well-focused topical areas within
EC to ensure continuing growth and vitality of the CIS. The Chair of
each TF is recruited by the Chair of ECTC and serves for one-year

RE: [coevolve] Re: We are now a task force

p.hings...@ecu.edu.au (Philip HINGSTON) — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:30:23 UT

Hi Paul
Thank you very much for volunteering to organise this! It would be great
if you could post up a report after GECCO. Wish I was going - it looks
like it's going to be an interesting conference this year.
cheers, phi
Associate Professor Philip Hingston
School of Computer and Information Science

Re: We are now a task force

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:17:59 UT

Perhaps it makes sense to have a "task force meeting" at one or both.
I wont be at CEC, but I will be at GECCO. We could always synchronize
after the fact, etc. I'll volunteer to coordinate at GECCO, if we
like.
To wit: If you will be attending GECCO and you want to be involved in
a high-level goals-oriented discussion about the IEEE Taskforce on

Re: We are now a task force

philiphings...@gmail.com (phi) — Tue, 22 May 2007 00:13:45 UT

To take up Paul's point, I am definitely a USER rather than a STUDIER
at this point. I'm also aware that my knowledge of CoEC theory is
practically non-existent - one reason I'm pleased to be involved with
this task force. I guess I'm one of those who is 10 year behind!
Hence I like Paul and Anthony's talk along the lines of making CoEC

Re: We are now a task force

abu...@gmail.com (abucci) — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:27:32 UT

Paul makes so many good points I feel a little silly replying and
reiterating those. However, I need to keep up the alarmingly
successful procrastination streak I've maintained all morning.
I guess the big question is: to what task would our collective force
most intelligently be applied? I don't know the answer to this

Re: We are now a task force

p...@tesseract.org (R. Paul Wiegand) — Mon, 21 May 2007 13:24:05 UT

This is a good topic; I hope it generates some discussion.
I like the idea of fostering community, and I do not oppose your
suggestions; however, I wonder what the role of this Google Group is,
can be, or should be. Perhaps a broader scope-and-goal oriented
conversation would be useful.
One might argue that the kind of community you mention is arising