Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

In my research, I will look for new ways of discovering knowledge using computers. First and foremost, I will create new ways for computer programs to identify the most interesting conclusions that can be drawn from vast collections of data called databases. A variety of methods have been developed to automatically analyze databases. These methods are typically based on mathematical formulas called measures of interest. Unfortunately, these methods find too many relationships among the data for people to understand easily. Researchers have devised ways by which software can select some of the information, but these ways need to be modified to produce fewer conclusions. As well, they need to be adapted for use in specific fields, tasks, and people. One attractive way of proceeding is to take a group of existing and new measures and analyze their relationships mathematically and experimentally. Secondly, and more specifically, I would like to find ways of keeping computers from reporting obvious information about time and space as newly discovered relationships. People understand relationships involving time and space very well. So, the computer should only report relationships about time and space that are not known to people. My approach will be based on keeping track of what people already know and what they might expect to be true, given knowledge already reported. Then, a new discovery made by software acting on a database will only be reported if it is something that a person might not expect from what was already reported. Thirdly, I will try to make it easier to create animations. Now, it takes hours of painstaking effort to create short animations using software. I will change the software to allow background characters to be animated more easily. Individual non-player characters in current computer games and crowds of background characters in current movies are animated by creating a software agent for every character and having the agent play the animation most suited to the character's current situation. I will extend this idea by allowing the agent to create plans involving many steps and then execute these plans while playing suitable animations.