Exploratory Tumbling

A short questionnaire:

1. Do you ever find yourself navigating unfamiliar territory in search of areas that return some value?
2. Are you a bacterium?

If your answers were (no, no) or (yes, yes) feel free to stop reading now.

I was listening to a podcast, The Biology of Freedom, from the BBC's Discovery programme this week. Towards the end they talk about how cells move around seeking food using a kind of targeted random walk.

It's called chemotaxis:

[a bacterium's] movement will look like ... relatively straight swims interrupted by random tumbles that reorient [it] ... By repeatedly evaluating their course ... bacteria can direct their motion to find favorable locations with high concentrations of attractants

A short questionnaire:

1. Would you be interested in a heuristic that might help guide your exploration?
2. Are you a tester?

If your answers are (yes, yes) there might be the germ of an idea for you here.

Image: https://flic.kr/p/5oeqni

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