Confessions of a researchaholic

2013-06-03

Final year project

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:08 am
Tags:

HKU has this course called final year project (FYP) for undergrad students. As the name implies, it is a two-semester projected oriented class. The offerings change every year. Each class is designed by a CS professor, and matched with potential students.

Out of pure experimentation, I offered ray tracing for FYP. Five students, divided into two teams, took the project.

It appears that I might have underestimated the workload a bit. They all crunched their tails off; one guy told me he wrote 35000 lines of code, and I did not try to ask others.
As a reference, 2000 is about the medium number of lines of code written by undergrad applicants from mainland China to our PhD program.
🙄

Fortunately, one of the ray tracing teams managed to win the champion of the grand competition among all FYP teams. Congratulations to Ng Sui Sang, Lui Ho Kuen, and Pa Tat Ki. I am very proud of you guys, despite the fact that none of you actually finished the whole thing (a fact probably unknown by the judges), I never learned how to pronounce your (Cantonese) names, and I forgot to attend the competition and ceremony. (It is not that you guys are not important to me; I also forgot to attend department meetings.)

Now, about the experimentation part: I wanted to see how well the HK kids can code, compared to other places that I have been to (e.g. SF Bay Area, Seattle, and Beijing). (I could not get the answer from the introductory programming class I taught in HKU because, to avoid student complaints, I have to water-down the programming assignments to be no more than what I could do in junior high.) The FYP results indicated that there are indeed talented young computer scientists in HK. Unfortunately for them, the local economy and job market are geared too much towards rent seeking (e.g. real estate) and moving things around (e.g. finance and business) than innovating (e.g. technology).

It remains interesting to see if technology can eventually fix this. In theory, any individual smart enough can already conquer the world with a laptop and internet connection from a bedroom. Already, I do not need a physical lab in HKU.

2013-05-25

Ideas are not like cakes

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:21 pm
Tags: , ,

I used to dish out ideas like cakes to those who are good all-around but just cannot figure out what they want to do. Recently, I realized this is a mistake.

Ideas are not like cakes that can just be given out. Rather, they are more like dresses that better be tailored individually.

This applies to all kinds of people.

Those who can already create ideas do not need to be told what to do anyway. They just need guidance. This is the best case scenario.

Some have potential to create ideas but cannot do right now due to lack of proper training or motivation. The goal is to kindle their autonomy. Giving cakes is not going to achieve this, and these might not be what they like to eat anyway. The right thing to do is forcing them to think. The process could be frustrating sometimes, but worth the end result.

Those who lack fundamental abilities to create ideas are not suitable for research anyway. Giving them ideas just wastes everyone’s time (and the ideas). They should switch to alternative career paths as early as possible.

A proper timing to share ideas is after someone already figures out a related direction.

2013-05-22

Autonomy

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:51 am
Tags: , , ,

I bumped into this interesting and concise article a few days ago. I encourage you to read it in whole and watch the embedded video.

Basically, it echoes my personal experiences quite well, across product groups, industry labs, and academia. For jobs that require any dose of innovation, the success predominantly depends on individual creativity, perseverance, and autonomy, rather than knowledge, smartness, or even intelligence.

I have a very simple rule of thumb to know, at an early stage, whether a student is suitable for research, or any form of innovative work. It is a bit like push and pull. If I push you a bit (e.g. suggesting you to try an experiment) and you can react back with at least something I did not know a priori (e.g. a surprising result or a better way to do that experiment), you are probably good. Otherwise, you are just a robot that needs to be told exactly what to do. It is a bit better, but not fundamentally different from, say, strawberry pickers or assembly line workers.

Autonomy is the main distinction between jobs in the past 2 millenniums (e.g. agriculture, manufacturing) and this new millennium (the so called knowledge economy). It is also the main reason behind the bifurcation of economic power, social class, and a lot of other things.

On a related note, a recent story deeply touched my heart. A previous unknown, 50+ years old mathematician, with stints in fast food restaurants, recently proved an elusive property of prime numbers that has been one of the longest standing math challenges.
I did not know this guy, but I bet he must have a tremendous amount of passion and perseverance to spend all the time and efforts to pull this off.

2013-05-03

CSIS3330

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 12:00 am
Tags: ,

Dear student:

I am totally cool with skipping all the classes as this is also what I did in school. But at least I never walk up to a professor in the final session and ask: “are you the TA of this class?”

(True event occurred in my mobile computing class today. All students have to show up for their final project demos.)

2013-04-14

Creative collaboration

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:36 pm
Tags: ,

I found the TEDxBow talk by Lloyd Davis on “5 Open Secrets of Creative Collaboration” very interesting, in that it emphasized the importance of physical human connections (and trust) in fostering creative collaboration, which is entirely opposite to my methodology of minimizing physical human contacts.

The natural way to produce good ideas is to have a bunch of smart and creative people work together. This is the main (if not the only) reason for the success of top research institutions, as I have personally witnessed in Stanford and MSR.

The conventional method for collaboration is through physical proximity, implying that to work with top people you have to join them in a top institution.
I am not sure if this is the only or even the best way though. Personally I have not found physical proximity any better than remote collaboration; almost all my ideas were produced either entirely on my own or via collaborations with or inspirations from remote people. The current technology is already good enough for me to be (intellectually) connected to almost anyone I want. (People who shun technology are not likely to be very good anyway, at least in computer science.) Even serendipity, the main advantage of physical proximity, can be managed by remote collaboration; I actually found it more efficient to write down my ideas than rushing to tell people.

Another benefit for remote collaboration is that it provides more flexibility to fit people with different levels of intelligence and experience. Not everyone is smart enough to have productive face-to-face brainstorming, and when that happens, I usually find it a great waste of time. I would rather give them more time (and grace) to think through stuff remotely and communicate with me asynchronously.

But I do wonder if I can be more effective by mixing a bit physical collaboration with suitable folks. Will experiment and report.

2013-03-25

Inertia

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:18 pm
Tags: , ,

People tend to work on things which they have prior experiences with.

This is good for coherence; few have the talents to jump between completely unrelated things. But it can also be bad for creativity; we tend to lose the prospective after sticking around something for too long. Achieving the right balance is not easy, at least for me.

But it can become a bit easier with the presence of stern warning signs. It is time for me to move on, before it kills me.

Self: time to code the next new thing. Do not slack off. People are watching.

2013-03-15

Burnout

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:22 pm
Tags: , , ,

A recent PhD graduate whom I know well, who has been doing quite well in graphics research, just took a non-research job in a non-graphics position, among several postdoc offers from top research institutions.

The reasons he cited are numerous, but the 2 main ones are:

. He likes graphics research, but he is getting bored and tired of the SIGGRAPH game, including deadline crunch and dealing with reviewers.

. He would like to learn something new and try a different life style.

In a nutshell, I think he is burned out. I hope I have done my best to help him achieve work-life balance (I did that quite well myself, even when I was a grad student), but I guess it is just too hard for normal people to be much disciplined.

Then I realized that I probably also had some kind of burnout around my graduation. I took a non-research position as the first job, even though it was in a graphics company (NVIDIA). I also wanted to try learning new things (hardware architecture) and living a different style (engineer).

So I guess it is probably OK. People are not meant to be doing the same thing all the time. This is also why I like to try different job sectors and geographical locations.

There are two things to watch out, though, all based on my personal experiences: passion, and rust.

Passion

I have a very simple rule to choose jobs: do what you really like, and be very good at it.

Sometimes, when people get burned out, they might temporarily settle for something that they neither really like nor really be good at. But eventually, you will know if the job is not for you. I did not realize how much I like doing research until after I was not been able to spend enough time on it for about 3.5 years after my graduation.

The important thing is to get out there as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you will eventually become one of these people who are not really happy or good at their jobs but also cannot quit.

Rust

People tend to get rusty for skills that they have not practiced for a while. This is particularly so for advanced skills, like research.

So, make sure you do whatever you can to be active in research during your non-research job. Otherwise, you might not be able to come back, even if you want.

I have been trying my best to be engaged in research during my NVIDIA days. I even managed to publish a single authored graphics hardware paper. But it still took me about 2 to 3 years to get back in shape for SIGGRAPH after joining MSR. The difference between SIGGRAPH and other graphics venue is like the difference between playing professional sports and working out in a gym.
I guess SIGGRAPH is probably an extreme case, but I hope you get what I mean.

2013-03-07

Being a prof in HK versus US

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:47 pm
Tags: ,

During my faculty job hunting I have interviewed with and got offers from schools in both US and Hong Kong. Below are my personal opinions about the tradeoffs.

Disclaimer: I have not worked as a professor in a US school. My opinions below are based on experiences as a Stanford grad student who has seen how top profs operate, a MSR researcher with frequent university collaborations, and a faculty candidate who has heard a lot during the interview trips.
People who have worked in both places could likely provide more accurate opinions. (Feel free to comment if you are one of these people.)

Q: How to choose between a top school in HK and a top school in the US

By default most people will pick the latter. But it is not that simple.

If you prefer to spend a lot of time getting money while having smart students doing most of the research, go to a top US school.
If you prefer to spend time doing hands-on research1 instead of writing grant proposals and you do not mind slightly less talented students2, go to a top HK school.

1I enjoy deep involvement in every project and student, and (sometimes) publishing single authored papers. I do not really find grant proposals very interesting.

2Most top students still want to go to the US, but there are always those who prefer to stay in Asia due to personal reasons. And they usually come to HK as it is the most westernized place in Asia with the best schools.

Q: How to choose between a top school in HK and a non-top school in the US?

Only go to a top university in a local maximum sense. This is how you attract the best of everything (funding, students, prestige, etc.). Due to financial issues (e.g. funding and student loan) and technology shifts (e.g. all these MOOC), I predict non-top US schools will have a much harder time in the future.
Contrast this with the rising Asia, and the fact that that they treat education very seriously.

2013-03-05

How to position yourself to get the jobs you want

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:00 pm
Tags: ,

Good programmers and computer scientists are in high demand. So if you have enough qualifications, you should have no problem finding a job in your desired sector and geographic location.

The key is your qualifications. Being who I am, I have never failed to help anyone who can shine regardless of the constraints (e.g. where you come from, the visa issue of your destination, etc.). If you cannot, there is little I can do. And to be brutally honest, I am not interested in helping mediocre people.

My answer is as simple as this. There are no more tricks or hints, at least for the top jobs I know of.

Thus, if you are a student working with me, you are already halfway into the door. The other half depends on your productivity. For example:

. If you are looking for research/academic slots, you need high quality publications to demonstrate your research skills. Do not be a graphics/HCI PhD student who cannot get any SIGGRAPH/CHI/UIST papers before graduation.

. If you are looking for industry jobs, you need good projects to demonstrate your coding and teamwork abilities. Do not be an undergrad student who cannot perform well in my project classes.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Theme: Rubric. Get a free blog at WordPress.com