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This is an issue of the more subtle aspects of English. "To see DeepMind produce a solution for this" does not imply something is solved. I can produce a bad s
by light_hue_1 6y ago
This is an issue of the more subtle aspects of English.
"To see DeepMind produce a solution for this" does not imply something is solved. I can produce a bad solution. I can produce a really good solution. All without solving a problem.
- comicjk 6y agoThis is a really good solution. Of course, there's still room for more research and better methods in the future, but now computational protein structure prediction can compete with experiments actually measuring the structure.
- blt 6y agoLaypersons often use the word "solution" in situations where an academic would say "method" or "approach": we did something useful, but it may not be the best possible way. In pure math, "solution" means determining whether a logical statement is true or false. For example, in (asymptotic, worst-case) analysis of algorithms, the logical statements take the form "there exists an algorithm to compute X with asymptotic complexity O(f(n)), and no algorithm with lower complexity exists." These are crisp notions with no room for debate. In this competition, they defined "solved" as achieving 90% accuracy. This is somewhere in between the two definitions. It's technically a valid problem statement, but it can become obsolete in a weird way. If someone else solves the problem of achieving 95% accuracy, then suddenly the 90% solution doesn't look so good. Compare to e.g. sorting. If we add the requirement of a stable sort, it becomes a new problem. Stable sorting algorithms are not automatically "better" than unstable ones.