Confessions of a researchaholic

2012-12-27

Massive open online courses

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:40 am
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Finally, technology is turning its head towards one of the most important and yet archaic aspects of our civilization: education. I have been trying out these MOOC (e.g. Udacity and Coursera), and found them fascinating. I can understand why Sebastian Thrun decided to quit his tenured Stanford faculty job to startup Udacity.

This is going to totally shake the entire education sector. Schools not on the efficient frontier, especially those primarily focusing on teaching rather than research, are in the real danger of extinction.
Pretty soon, students will start to ponder between getting course certificates from Stanford versus getting real degrees from lesser schools.

The technology is no longer the issue. Stanford, if it wants, can already dish out an infinite number CS master degrees annually. The real question is prestige; Stanford is valued precisely because it is a scarce resource. How MOOC and prestige will play out remains an interesting event to watch for.



My efficient frontier theory

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:35 am
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(Look up the term “efficient frontier” if you need, even though I am going to abuse it because I could not figure out a better alternative; “local-maximum” comes close, but it does not catch the multi-dimensional aspect.)

\paragraph{Why}
The world is becoming increasingly fair and competitive; fair in the sense that people now have more equal opportunities than ever to succeed due to technological shifts; competitive in the sense that it is also more likely than ever for the winners to take all.

\paragraph{What}
Position yourself on the efficient frontier for whatever you care, such as school, job, skill set, etc. Otherwise, someone else who can dominate you nearer the frontier will have you for lunch.

\paragraph{How}
It is not going to be easy. Everybody wants to rule the world. But do what you love + strike for the best is probably your best bet. In contrast, trend following will only put you into a crowded competition.

2012-10-17

Party like a panda

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:21 am
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(Realization after a lunch part today at the University Lodge, aka the president’s office)

I am one who attends parties like a panda: eats (all the good food while available), shoots (some really bad and cold jokes), and leaves (before people realize I am a jerk).

2012-07-31

The blindness of post

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:02 pm
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Today I realized an analogy between academic peer review and social post.

The usual academic peer review processes are either single- or double-blind, depending on whether the reviewers know the author identities.
(The reviewer identities are almost always blind to the authors.)

Social posts can also be classified as being either none- or single-blind, depending on whether the authors know the (potential) identities of the readers. For example, blogs are single-blind because they are usually public and readers do not have to reveal their identities, whereas twitter and Facebook are none-blind because authors explicit know (and can even control through privacy policy) the readership.

The blindness policy has great influence on both peer review and social post.

For example, studies on peer review have shown that knowing the author identities can increase potential biases (e.g. favoring well known authors) but also increase courtesy (e.g. being more polite in the reviews).

Given the multiple venues of social posting, I am pretty sure authors also behave differently for different venues, and conversely, choose the proper venue for the intended behavior.
In my personal case, I usually use twitter and Facebook for quick and fun thoughts that I really want to share, and blog for materials that are longer, more controversial, with narrower appeal, or those that I just feel like writing down without really caring who and if anyone will actually read (like this post).
🙂

2012-03-29

Details

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 7:33 pm
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God is in the details
Devil is in the details
So which one will be there
When we look into the details

2012-03-23

Smoke

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 7:03 pm
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Dear Chinese government:

According to the following statistics, 50% of Chinese men smoke, consuming one-third of the world’s cigarettes.

As you can imagine, this is a significant drag-down of the Chinese national power, given the well known facts about health hazards caused by smoking.

Please put your authoritarian power in good use and ban smoking outright. No, not just in public places, but illegalize cigarettes all together.
Unlike the dysfunctional democracies like America who have to listen to tobacco lobbyists, you have no such baggage. And I am pretty sure no Chinese tobacco kingpin is more powerful than Bo Xilai, whom you sacked with such ease and grace just last week.

You can easily bankrupt the world’s tobacco industry by eliminating one-third of their revenues. This will go down as one of the major achievements in human history.

The last dynasty, Qing, in a much weaker state, had the gut to ban opium. I am pretty sure China is strong enough now to win a second opium war even if some foreign imperial power is stupid enough to start one.

Sincerely yours.

2012-03-20

Death

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 8:45 pm
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Humans seem to have so much trouble accepting the nature of death that they need to come up with all kinds of alternatives like after-life and reincarnation.

“Hell is a place where nothing connects to nothing” – T.S. Elliot

2012-03-03

Reading week

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:09 pm
Tags:

So the university has this *reading week* in the middle of the semester that has all classes suspended. The official documentation says this is for students to catch up on their course readings.

I was wondering why the students need an entire frigging week for this; aren’t they supposed to be doing the reading and course works all the time?

Eventually, a senior professor told me, in a whispering tone: “the reading week is just an excuse for professors to take a spring break”.

Hush, hush
😀

Ageism

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:31 am
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Recently I read two good articles about ageism in innovation and entrepreneurship.


The first one, from San Francisco magazine titled “Dark side of the boom”, is really about the dark side of the youth entrepreneurship myth in the valley.


The second one, from The Economist, is about the fact that statistically older people are no less innovative or enterprising than the young.

It is actually not just about the valley or the entrepreneurship. Our cultures, especially the American one, seem to have this mysterious but unfortunate tendency to encourage early success. It is as though success at a young age is a certificate of life long achievement. Child prodigy can be a sign of true genius, but can also be a simple consequence of precocity, a premature biological cycle. Perhaps the most harmful situation is when unnatural forces are applied to fake a genius out of an ordinary individual.

Take your time; it is true that life is short and should not be wasted, but a lot of things simply need time to mature and cannot be rushed, no matter how smart you are.

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