Lend me your navigator...

just to make some research

By Víctor M. Rivas Santos

(vrivas@vrivas.es)

English Course B.2.1 / CEALM - UJA

May, 2015

Sumarizing

• Web navigators used to make complicated calculations
• Many navigators can yield good results: cooperation
• Index
  • Data+Algorithm+Language+Computer
  • Javascript
  • Our experiments
  • The future

The basis

• Researching in CS ~~ "building and running" programs
• Building:
  • Algorithm
  • Language
• Running
  • Data
  • Computer(s)

Data+Algorithm  vs

Language+Computers

• The good news:
  • Data: can be local (files) or available from one server (URL)
  • Algorithm: is an abstract concept
• The bad news:
  • Language: needs a translator
  • Computers: resources controlled by an Operating System
    • Linux, MacOS, Windows
    • Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Tizen
  • Frequently, a program only runs in a given platform
    

Unity makes strength

• So... how many computers do we really need?
  • Option 1: A single, big, fantastic, expensive and, probably, very soon outdated one
  • Option 2: As many as you can... no matter their specific characteristics 
• But then... how can we make a program that can be easily translated and run in many different computers?
  • Option 1: Convincing a huge amount of people of installing a given translator
  • Option 2: Choosing a translator already installed by a huge amount of people

And the winner is...

• So, we need:
  • A program...
  • ...that is already installed by people in their computers...
  • ... and that is able to translate and run programs
• Does it exist?
  • Definitely (and fortunately) yes!
  • In fact, there exist many of them
  • They are called web navigators
    • Firefox
    • Chrome
    • Opera
    • some times, even Internet Explorer :)

So... my navigator is a code translator?

• First navigators couldn't translate any but HTML code
  • Describing a document's layout and content
  • No operations can be done

<h1>Unity makes strength</h1>
<ul>
    <li>First thinng you need</li>
    <li>Secong thing you need</li>
</ul>

• Current navigators can translate and execute Javascript

<script>
  var birthYear = prompt( "Enter the year you were born" )*1;
  var age = (new Date()).getFullYear() - birthYear;
  alert( "You are " + age + " years old" );
</script>

Ver

Most web pages use Javascript

• Web pages that wouldn't exist without Javascript:
  • Everything concerning Google: drive, gmail, the searcher, maps...
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Newspapers: El Mundo, El País, ABC, BBC, CNN...
  • My web page, http://vrivas.es
  • This presentation
  • ... almost everything related to the web!!!

How can we use Javascript to do research?

• We collect some data ( traffic? blood donors?)
   
• We create a model (Neural Nets, Genetic Algorithms, ... )
   
• We try to forecast future values

First experiment...

• We created the jsEO program
• We left it http://vrivas.es/jseo
• We asked people in Facebook and Twitter to access that page, and waited...
  
  Would people lend us their navigators to do some research?

...and its results

• 270 visitors in 24 hours, about 360 executions
• Many different operating systems and navigators
• The poster can be seen at:
  
  http://es.slideshare.net/victorrivassantos/poster-js-eo300dpi
   

The future

• Enhancing the program to deal with time-series forecasting problems
• Making it run in "background" mode
• Building user-friendly applications
• Publishing papers

Thanks!

Lend me your navigator... just to do some research!

By Víctor Manuel Rivas Santos

(vrivas@vrivas.es)

English Course B.2.1 - CEALM - UJA