One of the main aims in phylogenetics is the estimation of ancestral sequences based on present-day data like, for instance, DNA alignments. One way to estimate the data of the last common ancestor of a given set of species is to first reconstruct a phylogenetic tree with some tree inference method and then to use some method of ancestral state inference based on that tree. One of the best-know...

MOTIVATION Despite trends towards maximum likelihood and Bayesian criteria, maximum parsimony (MP) remains an important criterion for evaluating phylogenetic trees. Because exact MP search is NP-complete, the computational effort needed to find provably optimal trees skyrockets with increasing numbers of taxa, limiting analyses to around 25-30 taxa. This is, in part, because currently available...

The reconstruction of evolutionary trees (phylogenies) from DNA sequence data is a central problem in biology. We describe simple sufficient conditions for two tree reconstruction methods (maximum parsimony and maximum compatibility) to correctly reconstruct a tree when applied to sufficiently many sequence sites generated under a simple stochastic model.

The phonotactics of a language describes the ways in which the sounds of the language combine to form possible morphemes and words. Humans can learn phonotactic patterns at the level of abstract classes, generalizing across sounds (e.g., “words can end in a voiced stop”). Moreover, they rapidly acquire these generalizations, even before they acquire soundspecific patterns. We present a probabil...

We extend existing models and methods for the informational treatment of the perception-action loop to the case of goaloriented behaviour and introduce the notion of relevant goal information as the amount of information an agent necessarily has to maintain about its goal. Starting from the hypothesis that organisms use information economically, we study the structure of this information and ho...

Learning with Parsimony for Large Scale Object Detection and Discovery

This paper discusses the quality criteria that are used in design and science to evaluate the value of the produced knowledge and artifacts. The scientific criteria discussed are: generizability, falsifiability, truth, novelty, parsimony, precision, accuracy and efficiency. Their design counterparts are also discussed. This comparison may help to guide the design method into a more scientific d...

The principle of Maximum Parsimony involves the identification of a combinatorial structure that requires the smallest number of evolutionary changes. This is an application of Ockham’s razor, according to which the best hypothesis is the one requiring the smallest number of assumptions. It means that among all possible structures we search one which satisfy only one, namely the condition of le...