Biography
Josh Tenenbaum is a Professor at MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
He is known for contributions to mathematical psychology and Bayesian cognitive science. Tenenbaum previously taught at Stanford University, where he was the Wasow Visiting Fellow from October 2010 to January 2011.[2]
“I study the computational basis of human learning and inference. Through a combination of mathematical modeling, computer simulation, and behavioral experiments, I try to uncover the logic behind our everyday inductive leaps: constructing perceptual representations, separating “style” and “content” in perception, learning concepts and words, judging similarity or representativeness, inferring causal connections, noticing coincidences, predicting the future. I approach these topics with a range of empirical methods — primarily, behavioral testing of adults, children, and machines — and formal tools — drawn chiefly from Bayesian statistics and probability theory, but also from geometry, graph theory, and linear algebra. My work is driven by the complementary goals of trying to achieve a better understanding of human learning in computational terms and trying to build computational systems that come closer to the capacities of human learners.
