Archive for chatbots

a journal of the chaos (en cuisine) year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2025 by xi'an

 Read La Fille du Grand Hiver (The Daughter of the Great Winter) by Isabelle Autissier (also a sailor who was the first woman to complete a solo world race in 1991). This is a novelised version of the story of Arnarulunguaq, who accompanied Knud Rasmussen on the Fifth Thule Expedition over several years, all the way to the Bering Strait. She died of tuberculosis the year after. (And will appear on a Dane banknote soon.) The novel is told from Arnarulunguaq‘s perspective, as she opens to wider possibilities, cultural diversity, and traces back her Inuit lineage along Knud Rasmussen. It is a beautiful travel story (and then some more), in the fascinating Far North, which further reminded me of a catholic missionary visiting our primary school in the mid  1960’s and giving a conference on the Inuits and their culture. I pressed my parents until they bought his book and read it over and over, probably the seed of my fascination for the Far North!

Mis-made both a vat of rice pudding—presumably by first grinding the rice grains as the whey did not get absorbed—and a vat of chocolate mousse!—by not melting the chocolate long enough—and another of vegan mousse—by failing to notice the chickpea water was salted and that my MIL’s egg-beater was broken (but I salvaged it into a decent mole, if not with 49 ingredients)! I also grilled panned hot chilis I had found on a local market, but they were so hot they made me cough and open all windows; they are now resting in an olive oil jar, to be soon tested!!! Rhubarb is back in the stalls of my local market, providing me with my breakfast spread for the coming weeks. I again enjoyed Toukoul’s dora wat on the night of the privaCI workshopt—a workshop that focussed almost entirely on contextual integrity, if with very little overlap with the BIRS workshop in Kelowna. And harvested as many cherries as possible from our fruitful (!) cherry tree (#1) before the local birds are them all.

Watched Black Doves, with (Bend it Like Beckham) Keira Knightley as the only recognisable actress in the set, a very cartoony spies series taking place in London at Xmas time, with funny dialogues and too good vibes that should restrict a viewer to watching the show on 24 December and no other day.

Nature snapshots [10 Aug 2023]

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2023 by xi'an

Many gems in the 10 Aug issue I found home back from Western Canada. Starting with the cover theme related to the fascinating paper Solid-body trajectoids shaped to roll along desired pathways by Sobolev et al. which shows that there exist 3D objects corresponding to any infinitely periodic trajectory and furthermore that such objects can be printed to this effect (watch the great videos!). Although they are more likely to be of a period larger than 1, i.e. producing several copies of the trajectory basis before returning to their original contact point. Amazingly, self-intersecting trajectories may also be produced.

Plenty of AI entries, like Artificial-intelligence search engines wrangle academic literature (as an advanced Google Scholar) and Publishing companies (like Elsevier) developing ChatGPT-like search engines. (While trying to stay clear from fake references!). Plus a long enquiry on Rules to keep AI in check: nations carve different paths for tech regulation about the different approaches envisioned by the EU, the USA, and China, with little practical advance so far for the first two. (While the UK plans its own AI safety summit in Bletchley Park this Fall.)

And an article on how Chinese students are starting to feel less inclined to study abroad. And not only in connection with the COVID pandemic. Or the US growing restrictions on student visas. But mainly because of the quickly growing attractivity of mainland China and Hong Kong universities. (The article states that “For every 1,000 PhDs that have been denied [visa] by the US government, US institutions will lose nearly US$1 billion in tuition fees”, but this does not sound highly relevant since most PhD tuitions are paid from supervisors’ grants, while students from other country may substitute for those denied visa.)

nAIture

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2023 by xi'an

Plenty of AI related entries in Nature this week (8 June 2023):

stack overflow on strike

Posted in Linux, University life with tags , , , on June 7, 2023 by xi'an

more [grass]hope

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics with tags , , , , on May 16, 2023 by xi'an

Following my earlier post on the terrible performances of ChatGPT for a grasshopping riddle, Bob Carpenter sent me his interaction with GPT4, using the same entry. Here is the outcome he obtained. The answer is correct, but the reasoning is wrong.

GPT4: This is a classic problem of infinite series and expected values in probability theory.

Given the nature of the grasshopper’s random walk, at each jump, it has an equal probability (1/2) of hopping to the left or to the right. Thus, we expect that, on average, it won’t be moving away from the origin (0) because the positive and negative jumps should cancel out.

However, you are asking for the expected absolute distance from the origin, which can’t be negative by definition. The key to solving this problem is to recognize that the expected value of the absolute value of a random variable is not the same as the absolute value of its expected value.

Since the absolute value function is not linear, we cannot pull the expected value inside of it. Instead, we need to directly compute the expected value of the absolute distance from the origin, which is a sum of an infinite series.

The nth jump’s absolute distance is 1/(2^n), and it has a probability of 1/2 to go either left or right. Therefore, the expected absolute distance from the origin after the nth jump is (1/2) * 1/(2^n).

Adding up these expected distances for all jumps gives us the total expected absolute distance from the origin:

E = (1/2) * (1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + …)

The sum inside the parentheses is a geometric series with a = 1/2 and r = 1/2. The sum of an infinite geometric series is a / (1 – r), so the sum of this series is (1/2) / (1 – 1/2) = 1.

Therefore, E = (1/2) * 1 = 1/2

So on average, the grasshopper is expected to be 1/2 unit away from the origin after infinitely many jumps. The expected distance it travels to return to the origin is thus 1/2 unit.