11.22.09

Adaptive cartographic projection?

Posted in General, Ideas at 5:11 pm by Michael

The fundamental dilemma of cartography is attempting to project a 3-dimensional structure (the Earth) onto a 2-dimensional map. This is mathematically impossible to accomplish losslessly, so distortions are invariably introduced. Several standard projections exist, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, but one thing I’ve never seen was a context-aware projection: one which maximizes distortion in the least significant parts of the map (based directly upon the data being mapped) in exchange for minimizing distortion in significant areas. Something like PCA.

11.11.09

Cluster Validity as a Feature in Spam Classification

Posted in Ideas, Research at 1:19 am by Michael

Many spam mails that land in my inbox tend to be thematically similar, though the messages have slight variations (perhaps they’re being sent by the same spammer). Ordinary messages do not cluster so well. Clusters formed on these spam messages should thus be “tighter” than clusters to which ordinary messages belong. Cluster membership and validity may thus be used as a feature in subsequent spam classification.