Design your own Bongard problems!

How about designing your own Bongard problems and mailing them to me? I could then publish them on my index page, and include them in my program's standard input data file as "challenges" to my program's abilities, provided they are unique (here is a complete index of those known to me).

No, I do not seek ways to take advantage of free labor. Recall that while this project was developed I was a Ph.D. student in cognitive science; I am not a profit-seeking organization. I happen to enjoy designing and collecting Bongard problems as much as I suppose you will, if you undertake the task, that's all.

Some readers have asked me what kind of Bongard problems I would prefer to see created: easy ones, hard ones -- what exactly? In my view, which might not coincide with yours, the most esthetically pleasing BP's are not always the hardest ones. Often, those that appeal to my sense of neatness come with an easy-to-see answer, but they are based on a new idea, or a unique combination of ideas. Making a problem hard is easy: just add "noise" to it (features & objects irrelevant to the solution). But beautiful things can't be made a dime a dozen. So, the degree of difficulty is not always a good measure of neatness. The latter is rather an art, which has to be "felt" by the designer. If you like your BP, it's a good one! Send it here!

What you get if you send me a problem:

• An answer back, thanking you for your kind contribution.
• Publication of problem through my index page, along with your name on that page, and on each problem you design.
• Inclusion of your problem in my program's standard input file. If the problem is not unique (if somebody else has come up first with the same idea) it will be placed in an alternative input file, for "additional problems to be examined".
• Each problem includes a note about its designer, (e.g., Bongard, Hofstadter, me, you, etc.) so your name will be made available through the program's interface. If provided, a link to your home page will also appear.
• A notification will be mailed to you for downloading the program, when it becomes available. (Which means, "when the program becomes sufficiently bug-free, and can solve a decent number of BP's".) The program was officially born (was able to solve its first problem) on March 13, 2000. The data file with your problem, and a help file explaining what to expect, will be included with the downloaded package.

How to send me a problem: there are various ways.

• The easiest one: email to me the image as an attachment. It will be best if you allow each of the 12 boxes to be 100x100 pixels. That way I will not have to resize your creation. Resizing often involves some loss of information, implying work on my part to restore it. If you feel 100x100 is too restrictive, don't worry too much about it; but if you do choose to work within a resolution of 100x100, consider dowloading one of my GIFs (you know, those with the binder rings that appear everywhere in my pages, e.g., here) and modify it with your favorite image-editing program.
• Some people prefer to hand-write the images, as this gives them a different kind of freedom on what to draw (and makes qualitatively interesting images). In that case, please scan your hand-made image, or take a picture of it with your camera, etc., so that you can send me a digital image in a reasonably common format (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIFF, PCX, etc.).
• The hardest one for me (and least desirable): Send me the solution in verbal form, trusting that I will find it interesting enough to draw the problem myself. I would prefer to work on the image of your problem though, actually trying to solve it, and thus get an idea of how difficult it is. If you just mail me the solution, the fun part will be spoiled.

What information to include in your email:

• The attachment/URL/solution, as explained above.
• Your full name, so I can include it with the problem's data.
• Your home page URL, if you have one, which is another piece of the problem's data (your e-mail address, of course, is not part of the problem's data).
• If you provide the image of the problem, hide the solution in the email somehow (e.g., by prepending a sufficient number of blank lines).
• If your regular email address is not the same as the sender's, remember to include your regular address, too, so I can answer back to you.

Once again, thank you for your creative donation to the BP databank.

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