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Volunteer Thinking with Bossa

David P. Anderson Space Sciences Laboratory University of California, Berkeley. Volunteer Thinking with Bossa. Scientific workflows. define goals. Herr Professor. theorize. post-docs. design experiments. grad students. write papers. lab assistants. volunteers?. perform experiments.

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Volunteer Thinking with Bossa

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  1. David P. Anderson Space Sciences Laboratory University of California, Berkeley Volunteer Thinkingwith Bossa

  2. Scientific workflows define goals Herr Professor theorize post-docs design experiments grad students write papers lab assistants volunteers? perform experiments clean data computers analyze data

  3. Volunteer thinking • Tasks that can be divided into lots of self-contained “jobs” • Jobs can be performed over the Internet • Jobs can be done by a significant fraction of the general public (possibly with training) • Currently ~10 projects, 50K participants

  4. Example • The Stardust mission • Where’s the dust? • Stardust@home • 23K volunteers • 43M viewings • 64 tracks found

  5. Lessons learned • Motivation • Volunteers will do boring tasks; no need to play games • scientific goals • community, competition • keep volunteers informed • Quantifiably high accuracy is possible • calibration jobs • replication

  6. Fold It!

  7. Space of applications • 2D vision • pattern recognition (Stardust@home, GalaxyZoo, Clickworkers) • image analysis (ESP game) • 3D manipulation (Fold It!) • Natural language • Real-world knowledge • What else?

  8. Middleware middleware identity accounting queuing assignment validation people or computers jobs

  9. What’s different? • People vary • Jobs may not be well-defined training aptitude

  10. Bossa • Reduces the amount of programming and DB design needed to deploy a volunteer thinking project • Policies • Bossa doesn’t provide them • but it provides mechanisms that make it easy to implement a range of policies

  11. Bossa abstractions Project Application Application User User User Job Job Job Instance Instance Instance

  12. The structure of Bossa Application Bossa callback functions job_show()‏ job_issued()‏ job_finished()‏ job_timed_out()‏ bossa_show_job.php bossa_job_finished.php DB Bossa API

  13. Job and result representation • Job parameters, results stored in “opaque” PHP structures • Callback function to display a job: job_show($job, $inst) • Types of jobs • single web page • sequence of pages • offline app

  14. Job distribution policy Jobs Instances • Project A: few jobs, lots of volunteers • do all jobs once, then twice, etc. • Project B: many jobs, limited volunteers • do first job N times, then 2nd job, etc. • Bossa: each job has “priority” • adjusted by callback functions

  15. Volunteer assessment • How to assess? • training course • calibration tasks • correctness as determined by replication • Representation • may be multidimensional • may change during session • Bossa mechanisms • opaque data for user • calibration jobs • Bolt course prerequisite

  16. Replication policy • Examples • fixed replication • adaptive replication • Bossa mechanism • job_finished() decides whether more instances are needed, sets priority

  17. Use of “experts” • Alternatives • experts do the same job, but better • experts do different jobs • Bossa mechanisms • users are assigned a “level” (0, 1, ...) • jobs have priority P(i) for each level i • Example • experts resolve ambiguous jobs • job_finished(): if ambiguous, raise P(1)

  18. Bossa integration • Current: • Soon: Drupal BOINC volunteer computing Bossa volunteer thinking Bolt teaching, training BOINC Basics accounts, groups, credit, communication

  19. Projects in development • Hominids@home (fossils, Ethiopia) • Africa satellite image analysis (UC Berkeley) • Mars satellite image analysis (U of Hawaii)

  20. Conclusion • Bossa: middleware for volunteer thinking • You provide: • job representation and display • job distribution and replication policies • volunteer assessment • Future directions • thinking/computing workflows • group jobs • jobs as multiplayer online games

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