4 ms·
I totally agree, but I thought it was funny that you invoked the concept of local minima - I have only ever heard that concept in terms of local maxima, ie loca
by sho 8y ago
I totally agree, but I thought it was funny that you invoked the concept of local minima - I have only ever heard that concept in terms of local maxima, ie locally-but-perhaps-not-globally maximal productivity, comfort zone, etc. I assume you are referring to a locally/globally minimal resistance, time taken, or some such?
Anyway I just thought it interesting that you might make valid reference to a very useful concept I've heard and used many times, and yet in your expression the "polarity", as such, is totally inverted! And yet I understood you anyway. A computer would be totally confused.
- adrianN 8y agoLocal minima come from optimization problems as you encounter for example in Machine Learning. You usually want to minimize some error function (e.g. misclassified objects). Unless you take great care these functions are riddled with local minima where naive optimization gets stuck.
- sho 8y agoAh I see - of course. Should have thought of that. For comparison, I believe my usage arises from evolutionary fitness, where one might discuss local maxima on a fitness landscape. The challenge is perhaps much the same as in ML, with one strategy being to introduce random mutations in order to escape the same kind of trap.
- zmmmmm 8y agoHeh, it is interesting how people can have inverted mental models of the same thing. Actually, my preference for minima vs maxima is because minima translate readily to the natural world where you can imagine balls rolling down surfaces or water running down hills and getting stuck in local "minima" even though there is a lower energy state available to them. It makes a much easier mental model for me than thinking about maxima.