Technology
Maximum likelihood estimation from incomplete data
Biometrics is a scientific journal emphasizing the role of statistics and mathematics in the biological sciences. Its object is to promote and extend the use of mathematical and statistical methods in pure and applied biological sciences by describing developments in these methods and their applications in a form readily assimilable by experimental scientists. JSTOR provides a digital archive of the print version of Biometrics. Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site.
Empirical Explorations with the Logic Theory Machine: A Case Study in Heuristics
This is a case study in problem-solving, representing part of a program of research on complex information-processing systems. We have specifieda system for finding proofs of theorems in elementary symbolic logic, and by programming a computer to these specifications, have obtained empirical data on the problem-solving process in elementary logic. The program is called the Logic Theory Machine (LT); it was devised to learn how it is possible to solve difficult problems such as proving mathematical theorems, discovering scientific laws from data, playing chess, or understanding the meaning of English prose.The research reported here is aimed at understanding the complexp rocesses (heuristics) that are effective in problem-solving. Hence, we are not interested in methods that guarantee solutions, but which require vastamounts of computation. Rather, we wish to understand how a mathematician, for example, is able to prove a theorem even though he does not know when he starts how, or if, he is going to succeed.Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference, 15:218-239. Reprinted in Feigenbaum and Feldman, Computers and Thought (1963).
The Thesaurus in Syntax and Semantics
The recent work of the Unit has been primarily concerned with the employment ofthesauri in machine translation. Limited success has been achieved, in punchedcardtests, in improving the idiomatic quality and so the intelligibility of an initiallyunsatisfactory translation, by word-for-word procedures, from Italian intoEnglish, by using a program which permitted selection of final equivalents from"heads" in Roget's Thesaurus, i.e. lists of synonyms, near-synonyms and associatedwords and phrases, instead of from previously determined lists of alternativetranslations. Mechanical Translation, vol.4, nos.1 and 2, November 1957; pp. 35-43]
Dynamic Programming
The Dawn of Dynamic Programming Richard E. Bellman (1920–1984) is best known for the invention of dynamic programming in the 1950s. During his amazingly prolific career, based primarily at The University of Southern California, he published 39 books (several of which were reprinted by Dover, including Dynamic Programming, 42809-5, 2003) and 619 papers. Despite battling the crippling effects of a brain injury, he still published 100 papers during the last eleven years of his life. He was a frequent informal advisor to Dover during the 1960s and 1970s. Professor Bellman was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1979 "for contributions to decision processes and control system theory, particularly the creation and application of dynamic programming."