Bee Conjuring and Swarm Orchestration Optimizing Collaborative Innovation

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Bee Conjuring andSwarm OrchestrationOptimizing
Collaborative Innovation
April 12, 2006Ned GulleyThe MathWorks, Inc.
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1. Conjuring a crowd
2. Keeping them busy
3. Social issues
4. Future directions

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1. Conjuring a crowd
2. Keeping them busy
3. Social issues
4. Future directions

Problem design Micro-rewards War stories Next big
thing
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Contest features

• Entries are automatically scored, ranked, and
  displayed immediately
• Code, author, and score are visible at all times
• Anyone can modify anyone else's code and resubmit
  it as their own

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How it works
rules
standings
view entry
1 karim 2 carol 3 eric
karim. fcn f(x) ...
standings
ned. fcn f(x) ...
1 ned 2 karim 3 carol 4 eric
new entry
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What makes a good problem?

• Low cost of admission
• Plenty of headroom

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Blockbuster
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What to reward?

• A good answer
• Gotten quickly

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Better
Wednesday
Monday
Time
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Better
Better Answer
Faster Result
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1000!
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Social issues

• hacking
• tweaking
• obfuscation
• acknowledgment
• scoring inequities
• tweak bombs
• clone bombs

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Obfuscation
function A domove(A,mv) N() false
findNeighbors(mv(1),mv(2),A(mv(1),mv(2))) anyN
any(N) for j 1size(A,2) if anyN(j)
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Obfuscation
zzz1018zzz1018zzz1032for zzz10692zzz1014 if
zzz1048(zzz1018),zzz1041(zzz1018)zzz1018 zzz1053
zzz1018-zzz1032 if zzz1048(zzz1053)zzz1048(zzz
1018) zzz1041(zzz1053)zzz1018end
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Alan Chalker says

• Two can play at this game. It's sad that this has
  sunk to this level. Can't we return to the spirit
  of the contest?

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Dr. Seuss says

• "spirit of collaboration" vs "spirit of
  competition"?! This is a competition right?
  Otherwise, anyone up for a round of cum-ba-ya?

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Stijn Helsen says

• It is a competition, but with certain rules and
  goals. One of the goals is collaboration and
  improving other codes. The darkness and twilight
  zones are added to give people time to develop
  their own algorithms without being tempted too
  much for just tweaking others codes.

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Titles as conversation
Scrambled Eggs Rotten Eggs I didn't start
the fire don't get obfuscated ... follow the
light You Call This Collaboration? Give Me A
Break
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Titles as conversation
Tweak Tweak Tweak tweakfest
tweak-o-rama slippery ground (tweak
me) Seems like everyone's just tweaking I
said to myself not to do this kind of
things.... Poopdeck Pappy gives in to peer
pressure
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Titles as conversation
I wish I knew how this works
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Player types

• Spectators, Lurkers
• Drop-ins, Visitors
• Tweakers, Top-grazers
• Algorithm Artists
• Churners, Integrators
• Warriors, Obfuscators

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Player types
1. 2. 3. 4.

• Tweaker (many)

Churner (few)
Drop-in (many)
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First use of conv
First leader with conv
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Features weve added

• Leaderboard
• Lots of realtime stats
• Mini-contests
• Mid-contest analysis
• Darkness and twilight
• Newsgroup discussion
• Contest blog
• File differencing

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Future directions

• Whats the goal?
• Fun Optimizing innovation.
• How do we optimize?
• Modulate diffusion
• Modulate testing
• Listen to the contestants!

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Putting the bees to work

• Contest to create shipping code
• Rent-a-swarm
• Create your own contest

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The Big Lesson Focus on the small

• Approachable problem
• Low start-up cost
• Acknowledge effort with micro-rewards
• Many small prizes

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Similarity Distance
Contest Evolution
Virus Evolution
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