A short questionnaire:
1. Do you ever find yourself navigating unfamiliar territory in search of areas that return some value?
2. Are you a bacterium?
If your answers were (no, no) or (yes, yes) feel free to stop reading now.
I was listening to a podcast, The Biology of Freedom, from the BBC’s Discovery programme this week. Towards the end they talk about how cells move around seeking food using a kind of targeted random walk.
It’s called chemotaxis:
[a bacterium’s] movement will look like … relatively straight swims interrupted by random tumbles that reorient [it] … By repeatedly evaluating their course … bacteria can direct their motion to find favorable locations with high concentrations of attractants
1. Would you be interested in a heuristic that might help guide your exploration?
2. Are you a tester?
If your answers are (yes, yes) there might be the germ of an idea for you here.
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