ICGG2014 paper

The 16th International Conference on Geometry and Graphics has come and gone. I had a lot of fun, it was certainly very different from the usual software gigs I attend. This was a congregation of mathematicians and educators from all over the world (though mostly Central and Eastern Europe and the Far East) where most attendees were also presenting a paper or poster. The conferences I usually attend have at least a 1:20 ratio of speakers to audience. That hierarchy was entirely absent at ICGG, which was probably at least in part responsible for extreme levels of conviviality. At the conference dinner a lot of national groups sang songs from the homeland, and we even had the pleasure of hearing the Russian and Ukrainian delegates perform Moscow Nights together.

As promised and agreed with the conference organisers, I’m now making my paper available for download here. The paper is much more technical than the plenary lecture, dealing with the mathematical and algorithmic characteristics of generic solvers and fitness landscapes. During the talk I focused mostly on the graphical aspect of landscapes and how specific problem definitions result in specific landscape geometries/topologies. The Prezi for the lecture is of course also available, as are the files I used for the live demonstrations.