Sigma Club

Is there a role for computers in the formulation of scientific concepts? Scientific discovery can take various forms: direct observational discovery, finding empirical rules, and discovery of theories. I will begin by considering the roots of scientific discovery and the basic nature of (human) discovery processes. I will then survey methods and associated applications in computational scientific discovery, covering: massive systematic search within a defined space; rule-based reasoning systems; classification, machine vision and related techniques; data mining; finding networks; evolutionary computation; and automation of scientific experiments. I conclude with a discussion of the future of computational scientific discovery.