, 1 min read
Andre points us to Quintura, yet another search engine to help us find related terms to drill-down on the result set. I only propagate this here because I think it is fun to play with and because I can embed their search engine in my blog post!
, 2 min read
There is a growing body of work pointing out to the fact that one of the key difference between top performers and the rest of us, is their belief that they can improve themselves, that somehow, they are the result of their hard work more than the result of their genes. This has fascinating…
, 3 min read
According to the latest CRA Bulletin, the number of new science Ph.D.s is increasing steadily in the USA. It is now at its highest level since 1997, with 30,000 new science Ph.D.s a year. Meanwhile, the number non-science Ph.D.s is holding steady at 15,000 a year. What is fascinating is their…
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Research productivity: what matters?
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I stumbled upon this nice paper Social-Organizational Characteristics of Work and Publication Productivity among Academic Scientists in Doctoral-Granting Departments (Journal of Higher Education, 2007). I skimmed it and here are some sketchy conclusions: Being a man and having lots of male…
, 2 min read
I often read that good research papers should tell a story. There should be a continuous flow. We should care about the story, we should be eager to learn about what will happen in the next section. I do not know about you, but I do not come across many such research papers. Mathemagenic points us…
, 1 min read
Web search engines such as Google look at which page links to which page to determine what are the authoritative Web pages. A good algorithm in this context is one that is hard to fool: if you and your friends decide to mutually add link to each others, it should be hard to make much of a…
, 1 min read
I have stated before that researchers should focus on new problems or on providing solutions that are at least an order of magnitude better than previous solutions. There is a catch to this statement: it says that if you are within an order of magnitude of the ultimate answer, then you should stop,…
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Véronis discovered something very interesting. About a third of the time, Google’s results include the Wikipedia link as the first link. His explanation is insightful: How can this sudden interest in Wikipedia by both engines be explained? It is undoubtedly connected with the increasing…
, 2 min read
It does seem like coffee makes you smarter, even in small doses. There are several methodological issues however. The main problem is that if you are a coffee user, your brain without caffeine might be negatively impacted due to a withdrawal effect, hence giving you the illusion that caffeine…
, 2 min read
It is easy to think that the big deal these days has to do with multimedia (YouTube) or social networks (Facebook), but the written word is changing too! As someone who writes for a living, I am fascinated by how writing has changed drastically in recent years. Of course, the Web has changed the…
, 3 min read
Work on projects you love doing, even if only part of the time. You can only be as smart as you are motivated. I will never be a smart electrician. Reading and learning are important, but people learn by doing, by tinkering. Carry a notebook or an iPad, and use it to record ideas as they come to…
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Having scientific meetings with brilliant people… in your kitchen?
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I had two important meetings today. One of them was with my good friend Harold Boley (of RuleML fame) and another well know professor. The other meeting was with an infamous professor who shall remain nameless. What is most amazing about these meetings is that they happened in my kitchen, using…
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Matlab code and efficient algorithms for BIG tensors
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There is a nice article in Forbes which basically says that directed research is pretty much useless. Directed research is what happens when you tell researchers what they must work on, because you predict that it is what is important. The article is based on a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The…
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Peter released a technical report (available from arxiv) on the computation of the Tucker decomposition on large tensors: the Tucker decomposition is just a multidimensional generalization of the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The report includes a new algorithm designed by Peter which is more…
, 4 min read
One thing you never read about is how people do research in their mind. People do describe how to write papers, how to get an academic job, but somehow, I cannot recall anyone describing their thought process. Mine is simple enough. It includes both theoretical and experimental work. So here it…
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UC Berkeley holding tribute for Jim Gray
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I wish I could realistically attend this. They are holding a tribute to Jim Gray, the famous database researcher. Jim has been lost at sea. We cannot conclude he is dead, though it becomes increasingly difficult to find an explanation for his disappearance. Mike Stonebraker, of Postgresql fame,…