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As a comment to my previous post, Steven wrote: Any advice for someone that thought a Ph.D. in Computer Science was a good idea in 2004 that plan to graduate in 2010? A fair question. I currently supervise two Ph.D. students in Computer Science. Hence, I have thought about the problem. My…
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Seb Paquet resumed blogging. Why should you go subscribe to his new blog? At some point, he was one of the most read bloggers in the world. He is one of the first Computer Scientists to write a Ph.D. thesis on the Social Web. His Internet Topic Exchange was a precursor to modern folksonomies.
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I have had some experience reviewing scholarship requests from graduate students. Here are a few pointers: For God’s sake! Know why you are going to graduate school! Boring reasons include: learning more about your favorite field, wanting to become a professor one day, finding your topic…
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Andre Vellino pointed me to this article: Will the recession affect higher education? Short answer: yes. Interesting bites: If you think education has historically had a hard time competing for public dollars with health care, you ain’t seen nothing yet. (…) institutions will need to find ways…
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In “my research process“, I explain how I proceed to produce research papers. As a comment to my most recent post, Peter Turney wrote: I don’t usually start writing until all the research is done. It sounds like you write and research in parallel. From what I understand, Peter proceeds like…
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My Write good papers paper gives a fairly reliable recipe to write good papers. I think it is difficult to good wrong if you follow this recipe. How is it, then, that I can still write bad papers? My experience is as follows: while I begin with a noble goal, the ideas become murkier over time. I…
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I have written much about intellectual productivity on this blog. If we were machines running mechanical tasks, our productivity would be high. Alas we are human beings who get depressed or anxious. Even being excited about a new result can deprive you from productivity momentarily. I am bad with…
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General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—three of the most powerful companies in the world when I was a kid—are nearly bankrupted. We should learn a lesson from this experience. Challengers may have weaknesses, but they can work around them: If you are inexperienced, work on new topics,…
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Every few years, the database research community prepares a report listing the most promising research directions. The previous one was called the Lowell report, and I was inspired by it. The latest one is called the Claremont report. Some bits I found interesting: There is a call to exploit…
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On December 10th 2008, Denis G. Rancourt, a full professor in Physics at the University of Ottawa was banned from his campus. Why? Because he refused to grade students: Problems between university brass and Rancourt began eight months ago when he gave every student in his physics class an A+ after…
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I want to be locked out of Google Mail if I spent more than X hours in a given day on email. Anyhow knows how to do it? Right now, I spend about two to three hours (as measured by rescuetime) on mail.google.com. Of course, not all of it is random chatting: I mark student assignments in…
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8809 = 6 7111 = 0 2172 = 0 6666 = 4 1111 = 0 3213 = 0 7662 = 2 9312 = 1 0000 = 4 2222 = 0 3333 = 0 5555 = 0 8193 = 3 8096 = 5 7777 = 0 9999 = 4 7756 = 1 6855 = 3 9881 = 5 5531 = 0 2581 = ? Hint: My wife found it immediately. Me, with my Ph.D. in Mathematics, I could not find it. Source: Misha…
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Michael Nielsen has an excellent post today: Three myths about scientific peer review. The myths are: Scientists have always used peer review: it seems it became widespread only during the second half of the XXth century. Peer review is reliable. In fact, we know litte about the reliability of the…
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In my post We never invent anything new, yet progress is made!, I argued that innovation is incremental and social. I derived two recommendations for innovators: be good at communicating your ideas and be networked. Indeed, while you cannot create radically new ideas, you may contribute…
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Research ideas come through writing. Thinking deep thoughts while you stare at the wall is not productive. So, researchers write a lot. Some of it is incorrect or uninteresting. Just like movie studios are filled with deleted scenes, my drawers are full of deleted sections. I write about 5 research…
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Favorite posts for 2008
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I wrote about 300 blog posts this year. Here are some of my favorites: Do you think because you write, or write because you think? Good research: invent new problems or explain mysteries How to solve hard problems To improve your indexes: sort your tables! The secret to intellectual productivity
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Why can we predict tastes? There are several possible explanations: Intrinsically, individuals have predictable tastes. To test this theory, we would need to isolate each individual. Collect their opinions. Then attempt to make predictions. (You also need to prevent the recommender system from…
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This blog is also a podcast. Few people notice. I have not posted any audio in months. (If you have never listened to me: I am better at writing English than at speaking it.) Where are the good academic/research podcasts? What I found so far fitted in these categories: Promotional material for…
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Daniel Tunkelang has been writing on the attention economy (here and here for example): everyone is fighting to have your attention, and you only have so much to offer. Attention is easy to measure: You can record the number of people subscribing to your blog. You can count the number of people…