Category Archives: News

A Challenge

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In working on my Resources site, I was reminded that there is a large array of constraint programming languages, libraries, and solvers available. Diversity and choice are great, but the array of choices could be rather overwhelming, especially for newcomers. It occurred to me that choosing options for any individual, company, purpose or application is a constraint satisfaction problem! Or more precisely a constraint optimization problem. (It also relates to work on recommender systems and preferences.)

This seems to me to provide a wonderful opportunity for some enterprising folks to build a tool to recommend constraint programming tools. This could be useful to choose constraint programming software, use constraint programming software, and provide an illustration of the use of constraint programming software. A trifecta!

Could be a simple decision tree. Could let people ‘dial in’ priorities or preferences. Could use ‘deep learning’?! 🙂 Could …  

Of course, any such tool might be open to ‘dispute’, or exhibit — unconscious 🙂 bias; but if it generated discussion about what the proper criteria and ‘correct’ decisions should be, that itself could be useful. In fact, it would be great if several groups took up this challenge of producing such a tool, and could then compare results. The results might be written up individually or jointly. Perhaps there could be a presentation and discussion of the results at CP 2021. 

I’ve issued this challenge to the Constraints Google Group. Perhaps you’re interested in taking it on?

A Resource for Resources

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I am building a collection of pointers to 

RESOURCES

related to constraints — books, software, videos, etc., etc.

This collection is a “work in progress” and probably always will be. I am giving my loyal blog readers a first look. 🙂

The collection is built using the Pearltrees curation tool. If you sign up for a free Pearltrees account, it will remove the banner urging you to do so. 

The collection is organized hierarchically, and one can click on items and use the navigation arrows to browse through it. Notice the Zoom option in the lower right corner. 

I welcome feedback and suggestions.

ACP Early Career Research Award

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When I found, to my surprise, that the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence came with a substantial monetary award, I hit upon the idea of using that money to fund a new award for young researchers in the constraints community. I proposed this to the Association for Constraint Programming, who agreed and worked out the details. Today they have published the first call for nominations for an annual ACP Early Career Research Award. The award will come with a $500 prize and free registration for the CP Conference, where the winner will be invited to give a plenary talk. There seems to me to be a nice “symmetry” in an award based on “an entire career” being used to establish an “early career” award.

Constraint Programming and Artificial Intelligence Workshop

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I have organized a Constraint Programming and Artificial Intelligence Workshop for the Constraint Programming conference in Toulouse in September 2016. The schedule and the submissions are online at the above link.

“From their early days, Constraint Programming has played an important role in Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence has played an important role in Constraint Programming. Artificial Intelligence is currently experiencing a great surge of interest, attention and funding. This workshop is intended to encourage efforts to increase the participation and visibility at this time of Constraint Programming in the wider AI community, to the mutual benefit of both. In particular, the Workshop will seek to formulate specific recommendations as to actions that members of the community might undertake, individually, or collectively through the ACP, to further identified objectives. As a start, it is hoped that participants at the Workshop will volunteer to take on specific roles that are deemed useful for achieving these objectives.”