, 3 min read
Back when I was a consultant, I had a client who was convinced that Microsoft Windows was free software. So, he insisted that all applications ran on Microsoft’s web server. To him, the Apache server was an expensive proposition. Yet Microsoft is not at all in the business of free software, but…
, 1 min read
As an undergraduate student, I hated the 3-hour exams. But I knew how to do well on them. The secret? Get your hands on all exams from the last ten years for this class. Sit down for a couple of days and grind through all questions. It works because a 3-hour exam is a very specific context. But…
, 1 min read
In 2003, I predicted that it would take decades before videoconferencing became cheap enough for home users. I do not know my own telephone number or postal code, though I have lived for many years in the same house (and we own it). I do not know my office number. I do not know my social insurance…
, 2 min read
Scientists, businessman and even spies are supposed to analyze data collaboratively. Are they? If you are a scientist, you are familiar with the following type of research collaboration: a lowly student collects the data, crunches the numbers and plots the data. Other collaborators—such as…
, 1 min read
William Meehan—president of the Jacksonville State University—got his Ph.D. by copying largely word-for-word the dissertation of another student. He did not even copy an obscur thesis published in some remote country. In fact, he copied the thesis of a fellow University of Alabama…
, 1 min read
Many researchers advocate the use of metadata to help find or recommend content automatically. Metadata is certainly useful when aggregating content for human beings: I first read the titles of research papers before reading them. However, machines do better when they access at least some of…
, 1 min read
Claus Metzner asked us how often we read research papers carefully. He reads fully less than 1% of all research papers he comes across. This must be true of nearly everyone. We read a few titles, fewer abstracts, even fewer introductions, we skim a few papers, but we rarely read entire papers…
, 1 min read
I love gardening. I get good results too. However, my wife is very critical of my techniques. While I work hard, my work is often obtuse. Who grows his perennials from seeds these days? The result matters less to me than what I learn in the process. I do not care for uniformity, I prefer…
, 1 min read
At least in North America, professors are usually first hired at the rank of assistant professor. Your salary is poor and you have little job security. Once you get tenure, you become associate professor. However, if you can convince a set of your peers—including professors from other…
, 3 min read
Yesterday, John stressed that education is about helping people discover their passion. I have many brilliant students, but few passionate students. Success is more a matter of hard work than talent. We need to humble our students with difficult problems and long assignments. However, we should…
, 1 min read
How did I come to Computer Science? Through geophysics! I was once given data sets spanning several CD-ROMs. Back then, this was a lot of data! To this day, my research is still inspired by this short gig in geophysics. I keep trying to bridge mathematics and software implementations. This warped…
, 1 min read
Malicious authors know how to get past peer review without effort: Pretend to have run extensive experiments supporting your theories. When the experiments contradict you or are merely difficult to explain, clean them out conveniently. Nobody will try to reproduce your experiments on the short…
, 1 min read
Mark C. Taylor is quickly becoming famous for his New York Times piece End the University as We Know It. The paper makes some good points: Universities rely on graduate students as cheap labor. Graduate students accept their fate on the illusion that they will become professors. Unfortunately,…
, 1 min read
Hu et al. just posted An efficient quantum search engine on unsorted database. They refer to an older paper by Patel (2001), Quantum database search can do without sorting. Apparently without any data structure or preprocessing, logarithmic-time search queries are possible in quantum…
, 1 min read
How to initiate collaboration in science… with anyone!
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You have read someone’s work and you have ideas about how to extend their work. You are also interested in working with them on your ideas? Or maybe you just want a copy of their latest work? Or some other favor? How do you go about it? The old way was to get introduced by a colleague, or to go…
, 1 min read
Social networking tools such as blogs, microblogs (Twitter), and Facebook, extend your communication abilities. The immediate benefits are threefold: Increased broadcast capacity: you can now reach 200, 500 or 1000 people daily at a minimal cost. Why give a talk in front of 45 peers, when you can…
, 1 min read
For a prospective Ph.D. student, I prepared a list of the 4 people I follow in e-Learning. (This list is not meant to represent the most important people. It is just my personal list. It is in no particular order.) David Wiley blog: http://opencontent.org/blog/ Best e-Learning slides ever Erik…
, 1 min read
Its official: the standard programming language for multidimensional databases is MDX
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Julian Hyde just announced that Oracle will support MDX: they were the last vendor to resist this Microsoft technology. MDX is to multidimensional databases what SQL is to relational database. I am disappointed that MDX is the best we could come up with. I don’t find MDX enjoyable. Further…