I just finished reading Brain Rules by John Medina. The last page of the book inspired this post, but let me first tell you what the book is about.
The book examines different aspects of our brain and derives from them some principles and suggestions on how to improve better behaviors. None of these suggested behaviors are surprising at all, but Medina (very entertainingly) explains why they are good for us given the brain's structure and describes some research that validates these claims. For example, chapter 1 tells you that doing aerobic exercise actually improves your mental capacities. Another chapter talks about the need for sleep and another on why stress is bad. Two chapters talk about memory (short term and long term), explaining why repetition of new knowledge can greatly improve its recall. Another chapter explains (finally!) that men and women are different (women are apparently much more complex than men, in case you need another shocker), and another stresses that we never stop learning in life (or at least, we have the capacity to).
At the end of every chapter, Medina asks how we can apply these nuggets of knowledge to develop new methods for education. In the last chapter, he explains why the unique aspect of medical schools make for well-trained doctors as well as curious researchers. The point is that in medical school students are learning the theory of medicine at the same time they are practicing it (in increasing doses as they advance in the program). Hence, they are able to apply their knowledge immediately and, after observing patients, ask novel questions that lead to new research and discoveries. Medina suggests that the same principle can be possibly applied in other disciplines.
I think Computer Science education can really benefit from such a model. I obviously don't have all the details worked out here, but imagine that every Computer Science department (or set of departments) had a software company on the side. As students go through the program, they start getting tasks from that company to build software for it, participate in designs, see how product decisions affect engineering processes, and even see some company politics at work. These companies will be real (they'll need to pay for these services) -- they'll generate real software for real customers.
I even have an initial idea of what these companies can do. Given that these companies are likely to have challenges competing in the market, they need to address a niche of customers who are willing to put up with lousy service, mediocre products and delays in software release cycles. I.e., customers who have nowhere else to go!
These customers are called scientists. Scientists are always complaining that they don't have the right software tools to do their science. Real companies typically don't find scientists to be an appealing set of customers because, well, they don't really want to pay up and they often have very specialized needs. There are huge challenges in creating good software tools for scientists, and university-affiliated companies could be an excellent place to develop this software, while preparing the next generation of computer scientists for the real world.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
FOO Camp 2008
I spent the weekend at FOO Camp 2008, an annual event organized by publisher O'Reilly Media (hence the name, Friends Of O'Reilly). The event brought 275 movers and shakers of the tech industry and related industries, and was an incredible experience. It was as if someone injected into my brain the latest and greatest ideas and thoughts with one joyful syringe, accompanied with a few good glasses of wine. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch captures the spirit of FOO Camp in his blog post (and you can even see me standing and looking busy behind Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, in one of his photos).
The conference begins with no set agenda. They put up an empty board with the different time slots and locations of sessions, and as the participants arrive, they fill up the board with sessions. There are about 10 sessions going on in parallel at any given time, most of them looking quite fascinating.
To give you a rough idea, within the span of a few hours, I attended sessions on:
-- aggregating meta-data on the web organized by Esther Dyson (i.e., all the data we create as we use services on the web),
-- the future (or lack thereof) of journalism (organized by several NY Times and SeattlePI reporters),
-- "open education" (tools, policies and politics of),
-- crowd-sourcing vs. curation (i.e., how to balance all the inputs one gets from the bloggers of the world with careful aggregation and analysis of information),
-- how computers can help humanities (e.g., analyzing the Bible, helping archaeologists), organized by Martin Wattenberg, the creator of Many Eyes,
-- educational tools for virtual worlds, and
-- a very well attended session on small things one can do to become happier in life.
There was also a session on "big data", organized by Roger Magoulas, the director of research at O'Reilly. The point I took away from that session is that owners of big data sets are now more confused than ever. They face a much wider array of architectural choices for data management systems than they ever did. These include map-reduce based systems, column stores, real-time warehouses, streaming systems, and various systems built on top of MySQL. Each of these architectures has its advantages and limitations, but it's becoming increasingly harder for application builders to understand the tradeoffs (and it's not like marketing departments are getting rewarded for making the choices clearer). It's no longer the world where you buy your favorite relational database system and you're done (and stuck). I think this situation presents some interesting research challenges for the database community (it's also interesting how some of these architectures get little attention in the community).
The idea of designing the conference program on the spot is very appealing, and I'd like to propose we do a little bit of it in traditional scientific conferences. (There is a concept of birds-of-feather session, but that's usually a grab bag of ideas). We should allot time slots in our conferences where sessions can be organized as the participants come to the conference and stimulate discussions there. That's a much better way of getting up to speed on hot topics and people's current thinking, which is what conferences should be for!
The conference begins with no set agenda. They put up an empty board with the different time slots and locations of sessions, and as the participants arrive, they fill up the board with sessions. There are about 10 sessions going on in parallel at any given time, most of them looking quite fascinating.
To give you a rough idea, within the span of a few hours, I attended sessions on:
-- aggregating meta-data on the web organized by Esther Dyson (i.e., all the data we create as we use services on the web),
-- the future (or lack thereof) of journalism (organized by several NY Times and SeattlePI reporters),
-- "open education" (tools, policies and politics of),
-- crowd-sourcing vs. curation (i.e., how to balance all the inputs one gets from the bloggers of the world with careful aggregation and analysis of information),
-- how computers can help humanities (e.g., analyzing the Bible, helping archaeologists), organized by Martin Wattenberg, the creator of Many Eyes,
-- educational tools for virtual worlds, and
-- a very well attended session on small things one can do to become happier in life.
There was also a session on "big data", organized by Roger Magoulas, the director of research at O'Reilly. The point I took away from that session is that owners of big data sets are now more confused than ever. They face a much wider array of architectural choices for data management systems than they ever did. These include map-reduce based systems, column stores, real-time warehouses, streaming systems, and various systems built on top of MySQL. Each of these architectures has its advantages and limitations, but it's becoming increasingly harder for application builders to understand the tradeoffs (and it's not like marketing departments are getting rewarded for making the choices clearer). It's no longer the world where you buy your favorite relational database system and you're done (and stuck). I think this situation presents some interesting research challenges for the database community (it's also interesting how some of these architectures get little attention in the community).
The idea of designing the conference program on the spot is very appealing, and I'd like to propose we do a little bit of it in traditional scientific conferences. (There is a concept of birds-of-feather session, but that's usually a grab bag of ideas). We should allot time slots in our conferences where sessions can be organized as the participants come to the conference and stimulate discussions there. That's a much better way of getting up to speed on hot topics and people's current thinking, which is what conferences should be for!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Karina helps the earthquake relief effort in Sichuan Province
My (almost 7 y/o) daughter, Karina, was a star at a fund-raising event for the victims of the Sichuan Province earthquake. I'll give a bit of background, and then I'll let the quotes from the press speak for themselves. This event was originally supposed to be a victory party for the newly elected president of Taiwan, and hence highly star-studded.
A few hours before the event (a crowd of 5000+), Karina got a call asking if she would come on stage for a few minutes during the fund-raiser. Nobody told her what was expected of her, but she was happy to participate. She got on stage and was asked a few questions, at the end of which she offered the emcee to share a poem with the crowd. The poem recital apparently moved the crowd greatly and opened up their check books. Her impromptu performance was covered in the Chinese press following the event.
For the readers who do not know Chinese (e.g., me), here are a few snippets from the articles (kindly provided by Oriana). Also note that most of the Chinese press uses her Chinese name -- CunZhong, but I assure you she could have done it perfect Hebrew too.
Notable quotes from the Sing Tao site: (1) "This first-grader was born and raised in the US. Her mother is a Chinese from Beijing, her father Jewish. Standing in the center of the stage, wearing her hairs twisted high into two traditional buns and holding her piggybank, little CunZhong delivered an original poem, entitled "Home", in impeccable native Mandarin Chinese." (2) "Thunderous applause followed her performance." (3) Karina told the reporter: "Television images of the earthquake victims really scared and worried me. I memorized this poem after reading it three times. I want to share it with all the children in the disaster zone, so that they will not be afraid!"
This site carries the original news release with a photo. This site also contains several photos from the concert, including one where the audience responded to the emcee's tribute to "the mom of this courageous little girl." The notable quote from the site is: "Li CunZhong's outstanding and emotion-filled performance deeply touched the hearts of the entire audience, and brought the outpouring of donations to a crescendo."
And finally, here's the YouTube video with the post-interview with sina.com, titled "Karina, the six and a half year old who touched many hearts with her live recitation of the poem". If you're Chinese, the management requests that you go here to see the video and read more background.
A few hours before the event (a crowd of 5000+), Karina got a call asking if she would come on stage for a few minutes during the fund-raiser. Nobody told her what was expected of her, but she was happy to participate. She got on stage and was asked a few questions, at the end of which she offered the emcee to share a poem with the crowd. The poem recital apparently moved the crowd greatly and opened up their check books. Her impromptu performance was covered in the Chinese press following the event.
For the readers who do not know Chinese (e.g., me), here are a few snippets from the articles (kindly provided by Oriana). Also note that most of the Chinese press uses her Chinese name -- CunZhong, but I assure you she could have done it perfect Hebrew too.
Notable quotes from the Sing Tao site: (1) "This first-grader was born and raised in the US. Her mother is a Chinese from Beijing, her father Jewish. Standing in the center of the stage, wearing her hairs twisted high into two traditional buns and holding her piggybank, little CunZhong delivered an original poem, entitled "Home", in impeccable native Mandarin Chinese." (2) "Thunderous applause followed her performance." (3) Karina told the reporter: "Television images of the earthquake victims really scared and worried me. I memorized this poem after reading it three times. I want to share it with all the children in the disaster zone, so that they will not be afraid!"
This site carries the original news release with a photo. This site also contains several photos from the concert, including one where the audience responded to the emcee's tribute to "the mom of this courageous little girl." The notable quote from the site is: "Li CunZhong's outstanding and emotion-filled performance deeply touched the hearts of the entire audience, and brought the outpouring of donations to a crescendo."
And finally, here's the YouTube video with the post-interview with sina.com, titled "Karina, the six and a half year old who touched many hearts with her live recitation of the poem". If you're Chinese, the management requests that you go here to see the video and read more background.
The Macchiatone
Do you often feel like your cappuccino has too much milk? And then the macchiato is a bit too dainty? A conundrum I'm sure many people face on a daily basis.
This morning I went for my usual sunday coffee at Cafe Del Doge in Palo Alto, and I had the chutzpah to point out that their cappuccinos have too much milk. After a short discussion, the barista pointed out to me that I should try the macchiatone. It's basically a cappuccino, but with less milk. I've been making macchiatones for several years now and I didn't know it!
Something tells me that the Starbucks barista course does not cover this material, but feel free to spread the word (note: a macchiatone is NOT a dry cappuccino; very different concepts!)
This morning I went for my usual sunday coffee at Cafe Del Doge in Palo Alto, and I had the chutzpah to point out that their cappuccinos have too much milk. After a short discussion, the barista pointed out to me that I should try the macchiatone. It's basically a cappuccino, but with less milk. I've been making macchiatones for several years now and I didn't know it!
Something tells me that the Starbucks barista course does not cover this material, but feel free to spread the word (note: a macchiatone is NOT a dry cappuccino; very different concepts!)
The Remote Agent
I just returned from the 5-year Database Self-assessment workshop (will post something about this soon), where some of the discussion naturally focused on identifying high-impact ambitious projects for the community.
When I returned, I found Pandu's blog post, describing the Remote Agent Project at NASA that he was involved in about 10 years ago. Now that was a very inspiring project that received a lot of attention in the AI community at the time (including a Best Paper Award in AAAI 1997), and really demonstrates the amazing things that can happen when an incredible group of people get inspired.
I wonder if the database community can come up with something as inspiring.
When I returned, I found Pandu's blog post, describing the Remote Agent Project at NASA that he was involved in about 10 years ago. Now that was a very inspiring project that received a lot of attention in the AI community at the time (including a Best Paper Award in AAAI 1997), and really demonstrates the amazing things that can happen when an incredible group of people get inspired.
I wonder if the database community can come up with something as inspiring.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Israel at 60!
Last year I blogged about Israel's Memorial Day. This year I'll focus on the second (and happier) part of this two-day national event -- Independence Day, that immediately follows Memorial Day. And quite a day it is this time -- Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday!
I will not go into all of Israel's achievements in its first 60 years, but you can find a few listed here. Instead, I picked up the phone (ok, Skype) and had a chat with a member of Israel's founding generation/team -- my dad. Here are a few of his comments.
First, I wanted to know what he felt on the day that Ben Gurion declared independence?
Turns out he only heard about it two days later. He was in the middle of a battle in Jerusalem, and two days after the declaration, he was injured by a bullet and was taken to a medic for treatment. The woman in charge of the medic (who later became Israel's first lady) came by and told them it had happened. Not a big surprise -- they were actually expecting it to happen sooner or later.
Second, I wanted to know what they were thinking those days.
Not much. They wanted to stay alive and make it through another day. Not surprising -- they were constantly being shot at. Interestingly, they believed that once the war is over, the conflict will be done and there will be peace. They certainly did not anticipate having to fight wars 60 years later.
Then I asked my dad whether he's happy with the result 60 years later.
There were two parts to his response. He claimed that he and his cohort did not imagine Israel would have so many achievements and grow to be the strong country that it is. Their expectations were exceeded by far. On the other hand, he claims his 1948 cohort were a bunch of 20 year/old idealists. They thought their idealism would pervade all walks of life in the country they created. But today there is too much "business/politics as usual" in the country. All aspects of human nature are represented, and perhaps that's inevitable.
Finally, I turned to my mom and asked her what was she thinking when she emigrated from the US to a 7 year-old state (she emigrated after marrying my dad in 1955). She answered, and I quote: "I've never met anyone so passionate about his country (like my dad). It was a great adventure to come here. So what if they didn't have toilet paper".
I will not go into all of Israel's achievements in its first 60 years, but you can find a few listed here. Instead, I picked up the phone (ok, Skype) and had a chat with a member of Israel's founding generation/team -- my dad. Here are a few of his comments.
First, I wanted to know what he felt on the day that Ben Gurion declared independence?
Turns out he only heard about it two days later. He was in the middle of a battle in Jerusalem, and two days after the declaration, he was injured by a bullet and was taken to a medic for treatment. The woman in charge of the medic (who later became Israel's first lady) came by and told them it had happened. Not a big surprise -- they were actually expecting it to happen sooner or later.
Second, I wanted to know what they were thinking those days.
Not much. They wanted to stay alive and make it through another day. Not surprising -- they were constantly being shot at. Interestingly, they believed that once the war is over, the conflict will be done and there will be peace. They certainly did not anticipate having to fight wars 60 years later.
Then I asked my dad whether he's happy with the result 60 years later.
There were two parts to his response. He claimed that he and his cohort did not imagine Israel would have so many achievements and grow to be the strong country that it is. Their expectations were exceeded by far. On the other hand, he claims his 1948 cohort were a bunch of 20 year/old idealists. They thought their idealism would pervade all walks of life in the country they created. But today there is too much "business/politics as usual" in the country. All aspects of human nature are represented, and perhaps that's inevitable.
Finally, I turned to my mom and asked her what was she thinking when she emigrated from the US to a 7 year-old state (she emigrated after marrying my dad in 1955). She answered, and I quote: "I've never met anyone so passionate about his country (like my dad). It was a great adventure to come here. So what if they didn't have toilet paper".
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Hair-Care Records
There has been much talk recently about electronic health-care records. Imagine that whenever you go to a health-care provider, your health-care record is available to them, thereby enabling them to give you better care. There is a lot of controversy about the implementation and the privacy concerns and policies surrounding such records, but ultimately this will happen.
I'd like to propose a simpler and much less controversial idea. Last time I went to get a haircut, I realized my hair dresser had no idea about my hair history. She didn't know when I had it cut last, how short and what style I asked for then, and whether I liked the result or not. And being a busy guy, I couldn't recall all the details myself either.
So why not create electronic hair-care records? Every time you go for a haircut, you get before and after pictures, with a time stamp, and a few comments attached from the hair dresser. Now you can take this record with you wherever you like and next time you come in the discussion can focus on more important issues.
There are more benefits. You can highlight a particularly good haircut and always ask the provider to mimic that. If your hair is especially challenging (in a good way), you can auction your haircut to a hair dresser who wants to boost their resume. If you're anywhere in the world, say, Patagonia, and you feel the urge for a haircut, simply whip up your record and no words are needed. After all, hair is a universal language.
Technologically, building these records is simple. We just need someone with the right entrepreneurial spirit.
I'd like to propose a simpler and much less controversial idea. Last time I went to get a haircut, I realized my hair dresser had no idea about my hair history. She didn't know when I had it cut last, how short and what style I asked for then, and whether I liked the result or not. And being a busy guy, I couldn't recall all the details myself either.
So why not create electronic hair-care records? Every time you go for a haircut, you get before and after pictures, with a time stamp, and a few comments attached from the hair dresser. Now you can take this record with you wherever you like and next time you come in the discussion can focus on more important issues.
There are more benefits. You can highlight a particularly good haircut and always ask the provider to mimic that. If your hair is especially challenging (in a good way), you can auction your haircut to a hair dresser who wants to boost their resume. If you're anywhere in the world, say, Patagonia, and you feel the urge for a haircut, simply whip up your record and no words are needed. After all, hair is a universal language.
Technologically, building these records is simple. We just need someone with the right entrepreneurial spirit.
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