Jumbo and Trees

When reading about Hofstadter's program Jumbo there were a few questions that came to my mind in regards to its abilities to solve Jumbles. I looked into my own mind when solving Jumbles and so many things came forward. How I first off don't like to solve Jumbles, secondly, that when I look at a word I just randomly throw letters together when I can't solve a word to hopefully bring forth a coherent word.

It made me think of how Jumbo solved the Jumbles that it was given. Hofstadter clearly states in the assigned reading, from pages 111 to 126, that there is a clear way in which he achieved this. Hofstadter explains that Jumbo uses a "tree" like hierarchical structure to solve the problem at hand. It randomly chooses different paths to add letters and if it does not pan out, Jumbo uses backtracking to randomly select another path to take. I find that Hofstadter's thought process on this is right on the mark. Selecting specific pathways with rules and other things of the like. There are however biases put in so that the Jumbo has gloms that are of higher urgency and also of lower urgency. This can separate out gloms that are not important to Jumbo.

I enjoyed Hofstadter's segment on Jumbo and how he explained how his program really worked. It's a very interesting idea that definitely struck my interest, and I'm excited to see where Hofstadter goes from this point on.