Changes between Version 11 and Version 12 of BossaOverview

Timestamp:

Jul 25, 2008, 10:56:09 AM (16 years ago)

Author:

davea

Comment:

--

BossaOverview

@@ -22 +22 @@
 == The diverse requirements of distributed thinking ==
 
-Distributed thinking projects may have widely varying
-properties and requirements.
-
-First, they may require different orders of job distribution.
+Distributed thinking projects have widely varying properties
+and hence different requirements.
+First, they may require different ''distribution policies'',
+i.e. different orders in which jobs are distributed.
 Consider the two cases:
 
@@ -31 +31 @@
  * Project B has an unbounded stream of jobs and a limited set of volunteers.
 
-Project A will want to have each job performed about the same number of times.
-It will want to issues all jobs once,
+In project A the goal is to perform all jobs about the same number of times.
+Hence its best distribution policy is to issue all jobs once,
 then issue them all a second time, and so on.
-In constrast, project B will want to issue the first job to a quorum of volunteers,
-then issue the second job to a quorum, and so on.
+The longer the project runs, the more accurate the results become.
+
+In constrast, project B has a predetermined "accuracy threshold".
+Its best distribution policy is to issue the first job to a set of volunteers
+sufficient to meet the accuracy threshold,
+then issue the second job to another set, and so on.
+The longer the project runs, the more jobs are finished.
 
 Second, projects may want to assess the ability of each volunteer,
@@ -42 +47 @@
 
  * The volunteer's performance on a training course.
- * The volunteer's performance on a stream of "calibration jobs" (with known answers) intermixed with the job stream.
- * The fraction of time a volunteer's response to a job agrees with the "correct" response, as determined by replication.
+ * The volunteer's performance on a stream of '''calibration jobs''' (with known answers) intermixed with the job stream.
+ * The fraction of jobs for which the volunteer's response agrees with the "correct" response, as determined by replication.
 
 In addition, the way in which ability is described may vary.
-In simple cases it might be a single number, e.g. and error rate.
-For tasks that involve feature detection we might want to track
-the rates of false positives and false negatives separately.
-For more complex tasks there could be arbitrarily many dimensions.
+ * In simple cases it might be a single number, e.g. an error rate.
+ * For tasks that involve feature detection we might want to track the rates of false positives and false negatives separately.
+ * For more complex tasks, ability could have arbitrarily many dimensions.
 
 Third, there are various way in which "experts" might be used.
@@ -75 +79 @@
  * Users can be assigned integer '''levels''', in which case each job has a vector of priorities, one per level.
 
-This framework enables all of the examples listed above
-(and others not yet conceived)
+This framework enables all of the examples listed above (and others not yet conceived of)
 to be implemented with a small amount of PHP programming.