This week was
slightly less crazy! Yea! I was dealing with the frustrating problem
of figuring out why the nodes didn't naturally gravitate to the
cluster centers. We're using a force-directed layout using embedded
springs, which is a model based on physics. So I took a look at
the code for the springs, for the layout and for quite a few other
elements. And I realized, this would have been a good reason to
take physics in high school.
I concentrated
on the springs, decided that there was absolutely no
reason for the settings not to work, so I turned to other elements.
That word that defined my problem also defined my solution: gravitate.
The springs were working fine. They were doing their best to be
the appropriate length, but they were being defeated by something
stronger than a spring, they were being defeated by gravity and
attraction. I switched the settings on the masses of the cluster
centers and things work much better now.
I then ran
a few tests on a small file, using the Adjusted Rand Index that
Qianjun Xu implemented in Weka, and kind of freaked out when I
realized that it was coming back with perfect results the first
time we ran PCKMeans. I thought that that couldn't possibly be
right. So I created a small xml file, a subset of the iris data
and ran that. I can't say how relieved I was to see something
come back as .58! There's not much point in user guided layout
if no real user guidance is needed.
I spent the
rest of the week implementing simulated user experiments for our
trials. I'm looked into using the java.awt.Robot class, which
I hope to try out for other projects, but it looks as though it
might be a bit of a hassle for this, especially since we are using
a different type of display. We should be able to start running
tests on Monday!
In Other News:
I finally sent the A.L.I.A.S. dvds back to their rightful owner...*sniff*
because I had watched the whole first season twice! I'm back to
watching my old dvds. I'm hoping to start shipping things out
at the beginning of next week...my comforter, shoes, etc... I
don't really fancy packing all of this in my suitcase.
Oh! And my
mechanical experience for the week! The printer started wrinkling
and smearing paper, and it didn't stop with the change of a cartridge.
So Blazej, Priyang and I took apart the printer! It was so cool.
Turns out the part that was broken didn't really require us unscrewing
anything, but it was fun anyway. Apparently the toner fuser was
falling apart. But I felt all mechanical with toner on my hands.
That was one of the highlights of my week.
