Abstract

The talk focuses on insightful problem solving and on scientific discovery as the most sophisticated form of insight. I will review several classical insight problems and will offer a conjecture that symmetry of the representation is what is common to all of them. Next, I will describe two phenomena from visual perception, 3D shape reconstruction and figure-ground organization, which also critically depend on symmetry of visual representation. This way, 3D vision can be considered the most elementary, but at the same time, ubiquitous form of insightful problem solving. In the third part of the talk, I will discuss the fundamental role symmetry plays in mathematics and physics including formulation of the Natural Laws. If time allows, I will conclude by describing how humans solve combinatorial optimization problems .

Bio

Professor Pizlo received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the Institute of Electron Technology, in Poland in 1982, and another PhD in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1991. He was a Professor of Psychology at Purdue University from 1991 to 2017 and is now a Professor of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine. He published 3 books on visual perception of shapes and space and his new book on problem solving will come out this Summer. His research on vision combines projective geometry and symmetry with inverse problems and regularization methods to solve them. His work on problem solving focuses on combinatorial optimization problems. 

Location:

In person

Swearingen Engineering Center in Room 2A31

Virtual MS Teams

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MTY5ODJjOTgtOTZhYi00OTJmLTljYTgtNjlkYzMxZjI5NjVk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%224b2a4b19-d135-420e-8bb2-b1cd238998cc%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22c678cf91-85c0-4c2d-82a0-cce6903f3963%22%7d

Time

2:20-3:10pm