These are slides for a talk at MK Geek Night, Thu 7 March 2019. Doug trained a neural network on the official database of placenames in England, then got it to generate its own suggestions. Some were convincing, some were funny, and some even turned out to be real places. Doug will give a bit of an explanation of how he did it, and show some of the best results.
Boost Fertility New Invention Ups Success Rates.pdf
How to get to Runter End: Generating English placenames with a neural network
1. HOW TO GET TO
RUNTER END
GENERATING PLACENAMES
WITH A NEURAL NETWORK
DOUG CLOW
2. • Old Functon, Oxfordshire
• Milly Load, Nottinghamshire
• Mounton in in the Woop,
Bath and North
East Somerset
Photo (CC)-BY Ganbreeder.app https://ganbreeder.app/i?k=0680da128cf010d9680f9639
4. A neural network learns patterns
• it can predict
• it can generate
… you just need enough examples
Photo (CC)-BY Freshwater2006 https://flic.kr/p/6Syq8m
7. A bit of processing (95% of data science)
A bit of neural network training
32,637 names
1h on an old laptop
Photo by Crissy Jarvis on Unsplash
8. Tregounden, County of Herefordshire
Lower’s Common, Staffordshire
West Curwood, Hertfordshire
Kingstworth, Swinghamshire
Marton, Cumbria
Liston, Devon
Lewtin, West Sussex
Rykerook, Somerset
Little Sandy Park, Kent
Great Burton, Rutland
Topworth, North Yorkshire
St Egerperferton, County Durham
Photo (CC)-BY Ray in Manila https://flic.kr/p/zS6uGC
At the moment I’m a senior academic at the OU doing fun things with data, but I’m taking voluntary severance so I’m looking for new fun things to do with data.