Here is the text of a letter now winging its way to you via the mails:

Dear Don,

Greetings from the East. Merle and I have adjusted well to life here.
After bracing  for a cultural shock, expecting  the worst, we've been
very  pleasantly  surprised  over  and  over  again  at  how  livable
Pittsburgh is.  (e.g., at the  zoo, one can watch a flock of penguins
swimming about: from the side,  they appear to be normal birds flying
in  slow motion  through the air.   As another  example, the symphony
turned out to be a top-rated one).  The only danger appears to be the
very mixed quality of  restaurants around here. The CMU CS facilities
are enough like home for  me not to grumble too much about adjusting,
and the people in the department are super.

Mike  Shamos  and  I  have  discussed  possible  applications  of  AI
techniques  to computational  geometry.  That  appears to  be non  a
propos , however,  because that  field is  too knowledge-poor.   For
example,  the concepts  it uses  (e.g., "spanning  lines") were those
developed long  ago, for very different  pursuits. There may actually
be  room for a  concept-isolater like AM  to move in  and define some
new, potentially useful concepts.  Do you have any feelings about the
liklihood of that project getting anywhere?


This  year I'm  beginning a large  but loosely  coupled collection of
research efforts, programs which attack various aspects of mechanical
mathematics.  Included  is work on a  theorem-prover which learns (by
teaching,  discovery, and analogy),  a new improved version  of AM, a
 Meta-AM   system which  peers over AM's  shoulder and occasionally
suggests new heuristics for it to use, an analogizer, and a librarian
who  carefully archives  the past experiences  of each  module in the
combined system.  Naturally, my role  on most of these projects is as
adviser or co-researcher only.  Herb Simon is working closely with me
on the  codification of  meta-rules (heuristics  for filling  in  new
heuristics) --  we've  already been  surprised  by the  problem:   it
appears to be tractablle.


Also, I'm splitting the thesis  up into a few papers, which of course
absorbs an uncomfortable amount of time and energy.


I've only had to give a couple lectures this semester; they don't put
new  faculty to work  until second  semester. Even then,  all I'll be
responsible for is the AI Seminar.

All of us in the department are very anxious to have you come out for
a visit  sometime. You can have  carte blanche ,  in all aspects of
your   trip:   who  comes   with  you,  where  you   stay,  how  much
privacy/interaction you have, how  ong you stay, etc.  I'd personally
love to  be able to talk  over my plans for  the next year's research
with you, and Shamos, Kung,  Traub would, too. Bentley will be coming
to  CMU starting next  semester.  Also, don't forget  our math dept.,
which  is oriented along  algorithmic lines (Fix,  Andrews, etc.).  I
hope you'll decide  to come out for a week or two  -- or more -- this
year.

Finally,  let me mention  that our  department has the  means to hire
roughly one new faculty member each year. If any of your students are
graduating, consider reccommending them to us (and vice versa).



Regards,
Doug Lenat