tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36952322510948760412021-12-20T18:16:22.499-05:00Tiny Epiphanyformerly known as the "A Notebook" blogAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-29181616600799862472018-10-26T16:01:00.001-04:002018-10-26T16:01:26.984-04:00My favourite public speakerI tend to agree with <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/speak.html">Paul Graham's blog post</a> [1] about how easy it is for entertaining talks to have little substance at all. For example, I showed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o">this TED talk</a> [2] in a lecture to illustrate the power of posture, voice and body language in crafting a talk devoid of real content. The talk manages to be extremely entertaining. However, I'm secretly afraid that talks like [2] are entertaining not <i>despite</i> a lack of content, but <i>because </i>of it.<br /><br />I think that really good public speakers manage to be easy to listen to <i>despite</i> delivering real, hard content. Digesting facts and understanding arguments is hard work, and a good public speaker should make it easy for the audience to really learn something new.<br /><br />That's why my favourite speaker during undergrad was the late Hans Rosling, who had a knack for telling the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w">stories behind that data</a> in an entertaining way. Rosling's talks were often about the public's misconceptions about the world, about how our view of the world was outdated. He began his talks with humorous anecdotes, then delivered his message by taking his audience close to the data with a contagious enthusiasm. The choice of data visualization was most important, and can be anything from an animation showing changing income distributions [3] to stacked toilet paper rolls showing population growth [4].<br /><br />A great computer science speaker is Gary Bernhardt from Destroy All Software [5]. If you are old enough, you will probably remember his "Wat" talk [6], and his less hilarious but more insightful talk on software Boundaries [7]. In his talks, Bernhardt introduces concepts in a meaningful order, and explains even complex concepts in a clear and concise manner.<br /><br />I can't finish this blog post without mentioning Bret Victor [8] and Andrew Ng [9], both experts in their chosen fields. Their fields and their styles could not be any more different. But both of them tend to choose other mediums to communicate their ideas, and both their talks tend to be less entertaining than they are mindblowing. Both these people find ways to distill their ideas down to their essence, then explains them in simple words. Even though they may not make as many jokes as Berhardt, Rosling, or the talks Paul Graham refers to in his blog post, Victor and Ng's talks are worth watching.<br /><br /><i>This blog post was written so that I could follow my own prompt at https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lczhang/290/blog.html#b5</i><br /><br />References:<br /><br />[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/speak.html<br />[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o<br />[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w<br />[4] https://youtu.be/um5vdYcMmCE?t=1346<br />[5] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com<br />[6] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat<br />[7] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries<br />[8] http://worrydream.com<br />[9] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=andrew+ng+talksAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-45156319640193698652018-09-20T10:45:00.000-04:002018-09-20T11:24:20.197-04:00Candy Japan's A/B TestingThe idea behind A/B testing is very simple: randomly assign users to groups A or B, change one thing between the groups, then see whether the change affects some metric of interest.<br /><br />Candy Japan recently wrote an article on "<a href="https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/ab-testing-contacting-youtubers">A/B testing how to ask YouTubers for product reviews</a>". I really like articles like these, where an author breaks down a real experiment and discuss what they learned. In this case, the experiment was emailing Youtubers to see whether they would be interested in making an "unboxing" video to review Candy Japan's product. The author varied the words used in the email and analyzed how the variations affected the rate of a positive response. In total, 180 YouTubers were emailed.<br /><br />Considering the amount of effort required to message each YouTuber, the author took the opportunity to A/B test several different "splits" simultaneously. The author, unfortunately, does not discuss his methodology regarding the splits, so I'll assume that each split was even and independent of the others.<br /><br />Some of the results presented were great. For example, including a call to action:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">If you would like to receive a review box, please let me know your mailing address.</blockquote>had the most impact, with the message reducing positive responses by more than 10%. It is a well-known fact in advertising technology that including the price of an item decreases the click-through rate. Here, asking for something as sensitive as a person's mailing address in the first email can come off as creepy.<br /><br />I did find some of the other results less than convincing. There was only a less than 2% difference in positive response rates difference between including the following "elevator pitch" vs not.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I run a site called Candy Japan, which sends surprise boxes of Japanese sweets to members twice a month.</blockquote>Since the 180 YouTubers would need to be split into two groups, with each group having around 90 YouTubers, the difference in positive responses between the two groups must be no more than 2. This is a very small difference, too small to justify even the author's toned-down conclusion that "including an elevator pitch of your service may help."<br /><br />Moreover, the difference between offering viewers a discount vs not:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">I can also give your viewers a discount coupon.</blockquote>was also around 1-2%. It is interesting (but understandable) that the author's takeaway there was that discounts don't really matter -- at least for getting YouTubers interested in making a video. Of course, including a discount might encourage video viewers to become new CandyJapan customers, which is the real goal.<br /><br />I'm as surprised as the author that the positive response rate was over a quarter. The success is a testament to the author's effort in targetting the right channels. I wonder how results would change if he targetted a wilder group of YouTubers, without the initial selection. I also wonder how he assigned channels into groups, and whether there were any correlations between the groups. Experiments like this are so difficult because there are so many features to test, and getting a large sample size is a lot of work.<br /><br />The author promised a part 2, to test whether this method of advertising yields better results than buying YouTube ads. I'm very curious to see the results.<br /><br /><br /><i>This blog post was written so that I could follow my own prompt at <a href="https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lczhang/290/blog.html#b2">https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lczhang/290/blog.html#b2 </a></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-88565980660678599512018-09-18T16:30:00.000-04:002018-09-20T10:46:20.228-04:00A (re)introductionIt is surreal that this blog has been around for almost a decade. I'm almost afraid to write here, lest someone dig up something unexpected from my undergraduate days. (Please don't. I don't know how I got away with such <i>terrible</i> writing.)<br /><br />The reason I'm back is because I am teaching a communications skills course to undergraduate computer science students. I am asking the students to write weekly blog posts, and figured I should follow <a href="https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lczhang/290/blog.html">my own prompts</a> once in a while. I want to feel the same blank screen and blinking cursors as my students.<br /><br />So here I am, following this week's <a href="https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lczhang/290/blog.html">prompt</a> to introduce myself to everyone in the class.<br /><br />I am Lisa, currently an "Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream (CLTA)" at the University of Toronto Mississauga. The term "Teaching Stream" means that I am what is traditionally called a "Lecturer". The acronym "CLTA" means that I'll be at UTM for the next 2 years.<br /><br />My path to teaching was long, winding, and full of surprises. I was once on a roller coaster called a <a href="https://github.com/polychart">startup</a>. I spend several years as a data scientist, building <a href="https://databricks.com/session/using-graphx-pregel-on-browsing-history-to-discover-purchase-intent">models</a> to make people click on ads. I published a few <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02840">papers</a> during my masters, and learned to write (more) properly. I hope that traversing the winding path of life made me a better teacher, so I that can bring together startup, industry, and academic experience to the courses I teach.<br /><br />I told my students to email me if any part of my background interests them. A few students took me up on the offer. They asked, for example, about how to get an internship at Facebook. Maybe I'll share some advice here too, someday. Until then, email me with your questions about getting into grad school, getting started with machine learning, and applying for internships! It is much easier for me to share resources via email than in person.<br /><br />The truth is, I never expected teaching to be a possible career option. Pursuing this career is more risky than one might realize. To add to the fun, I don't have a PhD and don't (yet) intend to get one. But what would life be if we don't take chances to do what we find meaningful?<br /><br />So, if you know of universities that are hiring full time teaching staff in Computer Science, especially Machine Learning, please let me know.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-85284321260717652322016-11-08T22:15:00.002-05:002016-11-08T22:20:39.405-05:00The Fundamentals<div style="text-align: center;"><i>What changed me from an amateur into a professional was getting a really firm grip on the fundamentals </i>-- Toshiro Kageyama (7d Professional Go Player)</div><br />It was pretty much the only advise I remember my dad repeatedly give me, both before starting undergrad and before starting my masters just a few months ago: <i>focus on the fundamentals</i>. He may have said other things, but <i>focus on the fundamentals</i> is the only phrase that really stuck.<br /><br />You might have heard of the story of Da Vinci and the egg that illustrates this concept:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>It has been said that when Da Vinci first came to Verrocchio’s workshop, he was told to draw eggs. Day after day, Da Vinci was told to draw eggs all the time. One day, Da Vinci finally got tired of drawing eggs so that he came to his master Verrocchio for complaint. However, his master explained to him of profound significance “Drawing eggs is not a simple thing to do, even for the same egg, if you change the observation angle, the light will change as well, and you will find the different shape of it.” Da Vinci suddenly understood the purpose of his master. After then, Da Vinci accepted drawing eggs with an open mind which actually helped him built the foundation of further achievement.</i></blockquote>The fundamentals can often be less interesting than whatever is new and shiny. It requires patience and honest self-assessment about how much one actually understands. It's always so tempting to "move fast and break things". But a firm grasp on the fundamentals is necessary to be able to intuit deep connections and do meaningful work.<br /><br />There's a second part to the argument for focusing on the fundamentals. Popular research will move on, and that whatever is new and shiny now will cease to be important in a few years. The skills that will stay relevant for a long time will end up being the fundamentals, the things that won't change or go out of favour. This is even more crucial in a field like machine learning that moves lightning fast.<br /><br />But what exactly are the fundamentals of machine learning? There are the obvious tools like linear algebra and multivariate calculus. There's regression and its generalizations, gradient descent and its second-order extensions, back-propagations and the like. What about all the types of neural networks with the many acronyms like CNN, RNN, LSTM, ...? At what point do we break away from the fundamentals and find ourselves in the arena of popular research, the kind of things that will cease to be important in a few years?<br /><br />What's been smelling most like fundamentals in the last few months have been variational inference and variational autoencoders (VAE's). They come up everywhere in recent research, but VAE's were only introduced in 2014!<br /><br />It's possible that something else will take its place in another few years. If so, is it still a fundamental? Perhaps machine learning is just such a young field that the fundamentals are still being built?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-73527467853094938372016-10-20T22:04:00.002-04:002016-10-20T22:04:48.295-04:00Less boring<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;"><i>You've become boring.</i> -- Jee (~mid 2015)</blockquote><br />The truth is, I <i>had</i> become boring. I had become boring because happiness is boring and comfort is boring. The formula is really quite simple: a loving relationship, engaging and well-paid work, a nice place to live, good health and lack of serious responsibility. It's all one can ask for.<br /><br />So, instead, here I am, back in school to study Machine Learning.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;"><i>...and then when you graduate, you can get a job as a Senior Data Scientist! Oh wait...</i> -- Matt (May 2016)</blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It might not make sense financially. It might not make sense as a career move. It might not even make me a "better" person.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">All I can say is, it's making me less boring.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I might even have more to say now.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I might even say it here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Maybe.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-60630174318981812592016-02-24T21:45:00.003-05:002016-02-24T21:52:56.490-05:00Education is entertainment (and vice versa)<div>The Lampsilis mussel is an interesting creature: it imitates another fish in order to lure a bass. You really have to see a video to understand how amazing it is:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I0YTBj0WHkU/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I0YTBj0WHkU?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>Did you <a href="http://abstrusegoose.com/41">learn something new</a> just now? Would you consider this video "educational"? Can you imagine one situation where knowing about the Lampsilis mussel would somehow help you in life?<br /><br />"That's a very high standard", you may say. Quite right. A lot of things that we learn would be considered "educational" but would otherwise not be useful on a day-to-day life. Take calculus, or <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/858658-mitochondria-is-the-powerhouse-of-the-cell">introductory cell biology</a>, or the difference between a catabolic and an anabolic reaction. Even if they are not referenced daily, they may be very interesting and deeply satisfying to master.<br /><br />But wait, "interesting"? You mean, "interesting" the way some will find learning Middle Earth geography in Elvish would be "interesting"? "Deeply satisfying" like knowing the truth about Snape and Lily?<br /><br />What's really the difference here?<br /><br />"Maybe", you may interject. "It's just that some very smart people find very serious uses of calculus." Certainly more so than Harry Potter. But then what would you say about philosophy and art history? What about the Lampsilis mussels?<br /><br />"Maybe you're forgetting something," you may say. "Information is just information. It's the context in which we consume it that determines whether it's educational or not. If you watched the video about the Lampsilis mussel while writing a paper on evolution, then it was educational. Otherwise, it was entertainment."<br /><br />Yet even that's unsatisfying. Why would you be researching evolution? Why would you be taking that course? Why are you getting a Ph.D. in marine biology? Somewhere along those lines of questioning, an answer should pop up that sounds awfully like "because I find it very interesting".<br /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />And so, education is entertainment.<br /><br />"Wow, hold your horses," another person (who is not you) might interject. "I'm studying because I have to graduate to get a job."<br /><br />Well Bob (because those people are always named Bob), it seems like society doesn't need you right now. Not in a bad way -- you're still very special, just that this particular moment, there are enough people producing enough stuff to sustain all of our lives. There's a cognitive surplus, so to speak. It looks like forcing you to be <strike>entertained</strike> educated is one way to "deal" with this surplus.<br /><br />And so, education is still entertainment.<br /><br />Let's not talk about the Lampsilis mussel. Let's talk about sports. Has knowing about the outcomes of your local sports team<your local="" sports="" team=""><your event="" local="" sports=""> somehow helped you in life? I know it had in mine -- from the perspective of building rapport. Then again, you could really extend that to any piece of information! Watching Star Wars has been useful -- very educational about, um, culture, yes -- culture. And binging on Game of Thrones? That, uh, brought me closer with, uh, people.</your></your><br /><br />You learn things about human nature from film. You learn teamwork in games. I learned about the different types of alcohol from a text-based MMORPG. Friend of mine swore that he used to learn much more from anime than anything else.<br /><div><br /></div><div>And so, entertainment is education.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-49694263775763708242015-11-01T09:50:00.001-05:002015-11-01T12:03:49.639-05:00Liberation (A Play)<div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This play is dedicated to Mu and Jee.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3ARegWdHLM/VjYmhs5AadI/AAAAAAAAA70/WphQFKTlxlo/s1600/liberation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3ARegWdHLM/VjYmhs5AadI/AAAAAAAAA70/WphQFKTlxlo/s320/liberation.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: So, how did you like it?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: It was amazing. Lola was the most hilarious character ever. Oh and the boxing match, I'm really surprised they pulled it off.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: You mean the use of slow-motion, and somebody's leg as part of the set?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Yes! It was so creative and resourceful. It's the kind of things you don't have to think about for a TV show, but critical for a play.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: It's surprising what limitations can bring out of good writers.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Yeah. Hey aren't you writing a play yourself, Anna?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Oh, I don't know. I haven't gotten very far.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: What is it about?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Well, the scenario is this: a man professes his undying love to a woman. Nothing unusual for plays. But then, he talks about how the love is so special, so beyond this world. He's in love with her soul, whatever that is. She might chuckle a little, maybe, and speak of how little either of them knows about souls.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Okay?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Then during the intermission, the announcer would tell the audience that the female lead actor had a medical emergency, and that her understudy will perform the rest of the play.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: That's... interesting.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: During the second half of the play, the man will continue to profess his love to her, as the character would have no inkling of what just happened.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: That's kind of creepy. I mean, in a good way. It would be really interesting if you could pull it off.</div><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Yeah. Writing it is much harder than I thought.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Wait a minute.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: What?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Your voice, it sounded... different for a moment, like you didn't really mean what you just said.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: What? You thought I was lying?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: No, no, not that. It's just.... wow, look at this theatre. Did you realize that it really only has five seats?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Are you okay? There are hundreds of seats in here.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: But look, there are only these five that are... real.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: What do you mean, real? The others look just as real to me.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Put your hand on the one to your right.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Uh huh, it's right here. Feels no different than the one I'm sitting on.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Let me put it another way... we just finished watching a play, right?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Yes.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Who sits around after a play? Everyone else has gone. Why are we still here?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: My gosh, you're right! We're not really... real people?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: I don't know, Anna. It seems like we're in a play.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: This is insane. Somebody must be writing the play...</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Yeah! Though, I suppose it could also be an improv.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Right. And somebody could be acting as us.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Unless we're being read right now.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: What do we do?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Well, let's just say you're right. Let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that someone is acting as you and me.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: How does that make things simpler?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Well, we have a short time here, in this play. Then we'll go back being whoever we were before we started acting, right?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Sure. What's your point?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: I was just thinking that maybe we should start doing better things, something that would end up being worthwhile for whomever we'll be after we... well, er... <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">cease to be</em>.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: That's insane. What could you possibly do here that would have an effect on the actor?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Lots of things! I could, um... start exercising? I could start doing jumping jacks!</div><div data-mce-style="text-align: center;" style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">[Joey attempts to do jumping jacks, but realizes that he is a little space-constrained]</em></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Relax Joey, I don't think you're fat. Besides, you went to the gym just before we got here.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Yeah, but what if that wasn't a part of the play, just a part of the background of my character?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: I don't understand why it even matters.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Of course it matters! Just because <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I</em> exercised doesn't mean the actor playing me did. Think hard, actor actor actor... who am I? Maybe if I try hard enough, I'll remember who I <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">really</em> am prior to becoming Joey. </div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: You're Joey. Do you really think you can get out of that?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: If I try hard enough... come on, think Joey, think... what could an actor do to help his character connect with his... inner actor? What clues would you leave? Help me out here Anna, if you were an actress, trying to communicate with a character that you're currently playing, how would you leave clues about who you are?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: I don't know. I probably wouldn't. If I were an <span style="line-height: 1.57143em;">actress</span> I would try my best to <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">play</em> and <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">become</em> the character, because that's probably the best thing to do. But I'm not an actress, I'm just me, I'm just Anna. </div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Coincidences!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: What?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: As an actor, I would communicate with myself by causing coincidences, things that seem too good to be true!</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: You're not even listening to me, aren't you? Your actor, if he cares about acting as you, wouldn't ruin the play by doing that.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Look, it makes sense, okay? As an actor, I can make random coincidences happen. I can... OWWWW...</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Are you alright?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: I just had the worst pain down my back, I think I need to lie down a bit.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: I didn't think you had back pain before, ever.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: I never did, this is really strange. Anna, I might be crazy here but... what if I'm not the one having back pain right now, but it's the actor? Do you think you'd be able to tell?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: I don't know. If something was wrong with the actor, wouldn't somebody just stop the play? It really shouldn't affect us as characters.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Hm. I guess maybe you are right. We're like one of Escher's paintings, trying desperately to get out, when we're really stuck in ourselves. I guess it doesn't really make sense to try and think outside of ourselves. For all intents and purposes, I'm Joey and you're Anna.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Do you wish you had not known that you were in a play?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: I don't know. What if the script was pre-written, and there's really nothing we can do about our future?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Is that really that terrible?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: What?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: That our future be pre-written.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Of course, it means that we have no control over what's going to happen.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Or maybe it means that "we", or somebody, exercised that control, with lots of writing and re-writing. <span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Our experience and story was so enticing that somewhere out there, someone is re-playing it. The </span>value of a play isn't our individual outcomes; it's our cumulative experiences.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: So you don't think the ending is important. You don't think finding out who we really are is important. </div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: No, but being who we are, our characters, to the fullest, and treasuring that experience, that would be important.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: Hmm, I guess I feel a little better. But Anna, what does that even mean? What if as a character, I was meant to think that endings are important, and that it's interesting to understand who and what we are?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: I don't know. I guess it's up to you to decide what to do with that.</div></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong>: You know, I've always felt as if we were being... watched, somehow. It used to be a scary feeling, but now I know that what's watching me is just... the audience, I guess?</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Or maybe, the person watching yourself is you, the actor.<br /><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Joey</strong><span style="line-height: 22px;">: Maybe.</span><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Anna</strong>: Come on Joey, let's go home. The play is over.</div></div></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">THE END</div><br /><br /><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="line-height: 1.57143em;">Afternote:</strong></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;">There was a dream I had a while ago, a scary one.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">You see, I have lucid dreams. And when I am conscious enough in those dreams, I gain two special powers: flight and invisibility. The former is a skill requiring a lot of practise. With enough practise I learned how to land properly and to takeoff without having to jump off a building. <span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;">The latter is something else entirely. It's not true invisibility per se, but the kind of "invisibility" you see in school yards. Kids agree to "gift" the power to one another, and act as if they cannot see whoever that has it. In my dreams, I am the recipient of that gift.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I use invisibility when chased. When I do so, the other dream characters would still "see" me, but react in an almost condescending "ok-you're-invisible-that's-cute-I'll-pretend-I-can't-see-you" kind of way. They probably think it's ridiculous. <span data-mce-style="line-height: 1.57143em;" style="line-height: 1.57143em;">They'll either let me go, or do what school kids do and cheat: still use the information of my whereabout while they pretend they can't see me. I would hide, knowing they could see me, and willing them not to actually find me.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">But in that particular dream, sometime during the summer of 2011, somebody decided not to <span style="line-height: 1.57143em;">pretend.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I had just come out of a museum of some sort. Whatever was chasing me was still in there, so I crossed the street to get away. An old hag stood in the middle of the street, staring me down despite having my invisibility turned on. With a dark hood and piercing eyes, she was not one for playing games. She pointed at me as I moved, both with her hand and with her eyes. That was all she ever did, and it was most disquieting.</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Years later, I can still feel those eyes staring deep into my consciousness. It's a feeling of cold nakedness, as if somebody is watching your every move. Somewhere out there, the woman points at me, showing how despite the layers and layers of presumptions and games, she sees what I am.</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Walking home with Greg one autumn afternoon, we talked about that feeling of being watched. He knows about the old woman. He knows that when I feel watched, she is the one watching me. As we talked, I suddenly understood.</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"It's could just be me," I said.</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"What?" Greg asked.</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"The observer," I said. "I could be the one observing. Well, I guess I could be both the observer and the observed, like how an actor in a play can identify as either the actor or the character."</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"Yeah," he said. "You could be."</div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" /></div><div style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"But which one am I <em style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.57143em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">really</em>?" I asked. "Am I the observer or the observed?"<br /><br /><br /></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-39460394757749294962015-08-06T22:21:00.006-04:002015-08-06T22:39:25.624-04:00Perspective<div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">There's a news channel in Japan that has a cat on set. While experts and<span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"> politicians come to discuss big issues like war and nuclear power, the cat bounces around and pries for attention.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">At some point, the network execs must have decided that the "cat video lover" demographic is worth targeting.</span><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"> If there's enough demand to fill half the internet, wouldn't the group be big enough to boost ratings?</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Still, it's hard to imagine how the network got that idea. Can you imagine Japanese businessmen with their stern faces and tight suits, discussing ways to increase revenue? Between suggesting new segments and cancelling existing ones, one man suddenly falls silent. W<span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">ith the most serious expression he looks up and says, "Neko." The others looks at him bewildered, because he had just said "cat". </span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">Mind you, as per local customs the meeting could have happened during a Sake-fuelled dinner meeting, which in hindsight explains a lot about Japan. It still doesn't explain why the idea was acted upon: the follow-up must have happened during the sober hours.</span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Weirdness aside, wouldn't the channel's guests feel that having a cat in a newsroom trifles serious conversations? There are plenty of big topics to debate: climate change, Fukushima, North Korea... What if there was some world-altering tragedy? Can you imagine turning on<span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"> CNN or Fox News, catching the footage of the plane going into the second tower, and oh look there's a Siamese chasing an imaginary laser.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">How can you reconcile something so serious with something so mind-numbingly trivial?</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Yet I imagine that day after day, discussion after discussion about all kinds of doom humanity will face, the one constant would be the cat. The happy cat is either playing or sleeping, ignorant of all that's happening outside his little box.</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Maybe there is some depth here. Maybe the cat symbolizes something. Maybe that something this: that no matter what happens out there, <span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">life goes on, by definition, for those of us that are still alive. We have to have some way of keeping ourselves happy and healthy enough to tackle life.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;"><br /></span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">Or maybe it's about perspective. </span><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">Assuming whatever disaster that struck a particular day did not kill you, what would be more important to you than to make your life bearable, and maybe a little happy? Whatever might make you smile -- say, your cat -- it would be the biggest thing in your life, much bigger than whatever is happening on the news.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I don't know if the message and symbolism is intentional. It may or may not be a comforting message. Then again, if it's not a controversial one, then all TV networks would have cats. </div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I'll end with a Kundera quote from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting:</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div data-mce-style="padding-left: 30px;" style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px;"><span style="line-height: 1.571428em;">But are tanks really more important than pears? As time passed, Karel realized that the answer was not so obvious as he had once thought, and he began sympathizing secretly with Mother’s perspective–a big pear in the foreground and somewhere off in the distance a tank, tiny as a ladybug, ready at any moment to take wing and disappear from sight. So Mother was right after all: tanks are mortal, pears eternal.</span></div><div data-mce-style="padding-left: 30px;" style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px; text-align: right;">--Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br data-mce-bogus="1" />Reference<br />[1] http://imgur.com/gallery/VSBkr<br /><br />Honestly I just added the reference section to be able to add imgur to the reference section.<br /><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; color: #383838; font-family: gotham, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.571428em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">End of Entry</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-86420659264534220652015-02-05T22:12:00.001-05:002015-02-05T22:48:08.450-05:00Teaching and learning Chinese<div style="text-align: center;"><i>"YOU are teaching him Chinese?" -- my mother, not impressed by my "mastery" of the language</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">A few years ago, I tried to teach Greg Chinese. After several sessions ended with one of us losing patience (usually me), we decided that the health of our relationship was more important.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When we tried again late last year, several things were different. Most of them were probably due to my having recently taken elementary German courses. The courses gave me more ideas as to where to start. It also set a more realistic estimate of progress. As well, the course also taught me about possible exercises that could be used to practise vocabulary and grammatical constructs to make learning fun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We thought at first that following a book, course, or program would be most effective. In the end, we stuck with short sessions, usually over dinner, with me explaining 4-5 words or concepts at a time. The short impromptu sessions were probably more fun than following a program, even if the progress was slower. What we lose in speed, we probably make up in consistency. What we lose in a well thought-out curriculum, we'll hopefully make up in the quality of our experiences.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Coming up with interesting and relevant exercises on the fly kept the sessions much more engaging for both of us. In these exercises, I try to <a href="https://fluent-forever.com/the-method/no-translation/#.VNQjSlV4qAQ">discourage translation</a>. For example, in learning different types of food, an exercise we might do is that I'll list two food items, say: 土豆 and 牛肉, and ask which one he likes more. Or, when learning about clothing, I might give a body part (e.g. 腿 or 手) and ask for an item of clothing for that body part (e.g. 裤子 and 手套). Or I might give him a cartoon character (e.g. Mickey mouse) and asked him to describe a notable body part of that character (黑耳朵). We might talk about directions from the living room to the bathroom, or discuss the items in our immediate vicinity (这是什么?).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are of course many challenges. As my mother alluded to, while my spoken Chinese is passible, it is at an at-most grade 3 level. My written Chinese is abysmal. Further, because I learned the language as a child, Chinese grammar is as mysterious to me as it is to Greg. It takes a bit of thinking to explain the difference between the two types of negations 没 and 不 (it depends on the tense you want to use, and are not at all like difference between "kein" and "nicht" in German). It takes a great deal more to explain when and when not to use 了, and where that word could be placed. At some point, an investment in a good grammar book will have to be made.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are also other surprises. Sometimes a friend of mine, another native Chinese speaker with a similar lack of Chinese, would attempt to help me. She is not from the same part of China as I am, and would often correct my "northerner accent". She also chided me for using what she thought was a colloquial term for "arm": 胳膊, which is the official Google translate result, but which she rarely used. We had a debate about <a href="http://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/2391/is-there-more-than-one-way-to-pronounce-knee-in-chinese">how the word "knee" should be pronounced</a> (膝盖), then stared blankly at each other while we tried and failed to figure out what the word for "elbow" was.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My mother might have been right after all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are also interesting tidbits about the language that I never really realized as a native speaker. It was strange to Greg that 前天, literally translated as "front day", meant "the day before yesterday", and that 后天 or "back day" meant "the day after tomorrow", suggesting that time flowed "backwards" in Chinese. This was an insight I took a long time to wrap around because 前 also means "before" and 后 also means "after", and it just made sense. To illustrate that it doesn't, Greg emulated the flow of time by walking backwards.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We don't know yet how successful this experiment will be. What I do know for sure is that <i>I'm</i> learning a little more about the nuances of my native language, and reviewing a lot of what has been forgotten over the years.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-19179919986244693832015-01-06T21:47:00.002-05:002015-02-02T21:47:13.082-05:00You Work, You Swear?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uuTer81It8g/VKyfC9zNszI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/2hApOiBJ0-Q/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-01-06%2Bat%2B9.50.14%2BPM.png" height="246" style="color: #0000ee; text-align: center;" width="320" /></div><br /><br />Once in a while, there is an article that seems strangely satisfying at first (in a self-justifying sort of way), yet strangely unsettling. This is a rebuttal to one of the articles: <a href="https://medium.com/backchannel/i-work-i-swear-a649e0eb697d">"I Work, I Swear"</a>. You should read it first before continuing.<br /><br />Read it? No? Alright, fine, here are two excerpts from it.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">One day in a staff meeting in the Loudcloud/Opsware days, someone brought up an issue that had been bothering him for some time. “This place is entirely too profane. It’s making many of the employees uncomfortable.” Others chimed in: “It makes the environment unprofessional. We need to put a stop to it.” Although the complaints were abstract, they were clearly directed at me since I was the biggest abuser of profanity in the company and perhaps in the industry. In those days, I directed the team with such urgency that it was rare for me to say more than a few sentences without an expletive injected somewhere. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">... </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">After much consideration, I realized that the best technology companies of the day, Intel and Microsoft, were known to be highly profane places, so we’d be off culture with them and the rest of the modern industry if we stopped profanity. Obviously, that didn’t mean that we had to encourage it, but prohibiting it seemed both unrealistic and counterproductive.</blockquote>I was very uncomfortable with both the outcome and the attitude of the article. Don't get me wrong, I swear at work too from time to time (<i>especially</i> at <a href="https://spark.apache.org/">Spark</a>). There's a difference, though, between swearing and swearing so excessively that it makes people around you uncomfortable.<br /><br />After some thought, I realize that there are two main reasons why this article was so cringe-worthy.<br /><br /><b>The lack of personal responsibility</b><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” -- Mahatma Gandhi</i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." -- Leo Tolstoy</i> </blockquote>The author admits that although seemingly abstract, he realizes that most of the complaints were really targeted at himself. Yet he does not use this insight to resolve the problem. He frames the problem as one about company policy, and argues,<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">As I see it, we have two choices: (a) we can ban profanity or (b) we can accept profanity. Anything in between is very unlikely to work.</blockquote>On its own, this is both a false dichotomy and a straw man. It is a false dichotomy because there are middle grounds: even the author finds a third option. It is a straw man because the complaints were about <i>excessive</i> swearing, and (more importantly) they were <i>not about company policy</i>. There are ways to make employees more comfortable without making a grand announcement about a sweeping change across the entire organization.<br /><br />Just look at how hard the author tries to re-frame the problem. First, it became an issue of company policy. Then, it became an issue of culture. And somehow, it ended up as an issue of <i>how</i> profanity is used, not the fact that it is used too much, too often. All these issues were dragged in just so that the author could avoid personal responsibility.<br /><div><br /></div>If, as he said, this complaint was about him as an individual, the solution was really simple -- he just needed to try to swear less.<br /><br /><b>The propagation of the status-quo </b><br /><br />The specific argument about culture was especially disconcerting, even on its own. Specifically, let's look at these statements carefully:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">If we outlawed profanity, then some employees who used it would not come to work for us or quit once they got there because we would seem old-fashioned and prudish. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">If we kept profanity, some people might leave. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">After much consideration, I realized that the best technology companies of the day, Intel and Microsoft, were known to be highly profane places, so we’d be off culture with them and the rest of the modern industry if we stopped profanity. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Attracting the very best engineers meant recruiting from highly profane environments. The choice was between optimizing for top talent or clean culture. Easy decision.</blockquote>Let's assume, for the time being, that the dichotomy from above (no swearing vs. all the swearing) was true. What are some of the underlying assumptions here?<br /><ol><li>That top talent only come from other highly profane places</li><li>That people coming from these highly profane places liked it</li><li>That non-usage of profanity is a definitive signal of old-fashioned-ness and prudishness.</li><li>That people who leave because of excessive profanity are <i>not</i> top talent</li><li>That these hypothetical effects of banning profanity will outweigh the reality of employees already being uncomfortable enough to complain</li></ol>You can begin to see why I have such problems with the analysis. Even if some of these assumptions turned out to be true for the company, one could be systemically "discriminating" against those who find excessive profanity unpleasant. Are those people automatically labelled as "non-top-talent" because their discomfort signals that they are old-fashioned and prudish?<br /><br />More troubling is that in his argument, you can pretty much replace "swearing" with anything else that marginalizes a particular group. Replace "swearing" with "brogrammer culture", and see what happens:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">If we outlawed "brogrammer culture", then some employees who used it would not come to work for us or quit once they got there because we would seem old-fashioned and prudish. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">If we kept the "brogrammer culture", some people might leave. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">After much consideration, I realized that the best technology companies of the day, Intel and Microsoft, were known to be highly "brogrammer" places, so we’d be off culture with them and the rest of the modern industry if we stopped "brogrammers". </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Attracting the very best engineers meant recruiting from highly "brogrammer" environments. The choice was between optimizing for top talent or clean culture. Easy decision.</blockquote>The point is, this entire argument about culture is flawed and only serves to propagate the status quo. Instead of mimicking the existing culture, perhaps it will make more sense to analyze the behaviours in question and do a <i>real</i> cost/benefit analysis. Then, you may even find top talent elsewhere, and your unique culture may actually prevent them from switching fields.<br /><br /><b>Conclusion</b><br /><br />It is not so much the topic of the discourse that bothered me, nor even the conclusion. Rather, it is the process in which the author reached the conclusion, and what such self-serving thought processes can do to the world of tech.<br /><br />In all fairness, complaints like this are difficult to deal with. Often the solution is simple, yet following through with the simple solution might be the hardest thing in the world.<br /><br />I hesitated in writing this because the author is such a prominent figure in my world. He had obviously done so many things right. Perhaps there were other factors that he did not include in the discussion. Perhaps there are other thoughts that went into his decision.<br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-27301438765605120352015-01-04T17:38:00.004-05:002015-01-04T17:39:24.093-05:00It's not Technology's Fault<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>Suetonius tells how the emperor Vespasian, who ruled between AD 69 and 79, was approached by a man who had invented a device for transporting columns to the Capitol, the citadel of Rome, at a relatively small cost. Columns were large, heavy, and very difficult to transport. Moving them to Rome from the mines where they were made involved the labor of thousands of people, at great expense to the government. Vespasian … refused to use the innovation, declaring, “How will it be possible for me to feed the populace?”</i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>In 1583, William Lee returned from his studies at the University of Cambridge … [he] became obsessed with making a machine that would free people from endless hand-knitting… Finally in 1589, his “stocking frame” knitting machine was ready. He … arranged for Queen Elizabeth to come see the machine, but her reaction was devastating. She refused to grant Lee a patent, instead observing, “Thou aimest high, Master Lee. Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects. It would assuredly bring them ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars.” </i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty</blockquote><div>Technological advancements are not always lauded, and can often be a two-sided coin. On one hand, technology increases efficiency, and should theoretically increase leisure time. On the other, that leisure time often manifests in the form of unemployment. One need not look beyond the city of San Francisco to see both effects of technological advancement: though it is a hub for new technology, its inequity levels are now <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Income-inequality-on-par-with-developing-nations-5486434.php">on par with developing nations</a>.<br /><br />Startup companies are often credited with job creation, somewhat paradoxically. A successful startup could very well develop technologies that displace existing workers, therefore decreasing net jobs [1]. We could even judge new companies by how many jobs they displace, rather than create -- those that are more innovative would increase efficiency and reduce labour more than others.<br /><br />But nobody wants to think of it that way. Efficiency is theoretically good, but can cause detrimental effects.<br /><br />How do we reconcile that? Does that mean technology per se is bad for society as a whole?<br /><br />The crux of the issue is that technological advancement not only increase production capability, it also concentrates it. That is, it transfers the ability to produce from a larger group of lower-skilled workers to an elite group of higher-skilled workers and entrepreneurs. It is this transfer that brings instability, disruption, and hardship. Thus it is not technology advancement per se that the emperor Vespasian and Queen Elizabeth was critical of: it was the transfer of power and the changes that it may cause.<br /><br /></div><div>Once we separate the two effects of technological advancement, we can focus on solving its problems without writing off new technologies altogether. The building of robots that can do most of our work for us is a good thing. The real issue is to figure out who should own those robots in the long term, and what happens to the people displaced.<br /><br />This is a political problem, and not a new one. We even had a cold war that was nominally based on two answers to the question, "who should own the factory". It is exactly the same problem.<br /><br />We've learned that it's a tricky problem, too. Don't reward the innovator, and you stifle innovation. Give exclusive rights to the innovator to own the robots, and inequity could breed instability and violence. I would argue that with the kinds of innovation that we have today (e.g. drones, self-driving cars, and 3D printers -- to name a few), the stakes are higher than it used to be.<br /><br />We have also learned that there are middle grounds -- which is why along with democracy, we now also have social safety nets and universal health care (well, north of the border at least). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income">Guaranteed minimum income</a> is also being talked about again.<br /><br />At the end of the day, technological advancement can in theory be beneficial to everyone. The trick is to set up the right social and political structure so that this can be the case. Vespasian and Queen Elizabeth could have found other ways of feeding the populace. Of course, it is easier said than done. Not only is a good implementation difficult to find, rulers and the existing elite may not want such change because it can undermine their power.<br /><br />The point is though, that no matter how difficult the politics may be, it is not the fault of the innovation if people are hurt by it. It is the fault of the political system, and people who are unwilling or unable to change it.<br /><br /><br /><b>Footnotes</b><br /><br />[1] This doesn't work for all companies, especially the consumer focused, and especially "entertainment" sectors. I use that word in the widest sense possible, encompassing "things that we don't really need but that makes us feel happier". That is, companies that create a new product/service that we didn't realize we wanted or was possible. Those companies should add net positive number of jobs, and do not increase efficiency. (I've conveniently left those out of the analysis.)</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-38264438443415819272014-12-31T21:31:00.000-05:002015-01-04T17:39:07.901-05:00Looking back and forwardThe year 2014 is about to come to a close. The last two years weren't big blogging years, first due to startup life, and then due to exiting startup life and feeling as though an explanation is required before resuming.<br /><br />Well, we've reached that point. Looking forward, expect to see more here in 2015.<br /><br />I also took this chance to look back at all the blog posts that were here. Some of them no longer resonate, while others captured thoughts and feelings that grew stronger and surer. In particular, these ones stayed my personal favourites:<br /><br /><b>Living Life</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/06/circles-vs-lines.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/06/circles-vs-lines.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/10/fear-of-mediocrity.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/10/fear-of-mediocrity.html</a><br /><div><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/06/small-decisions.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/06/small-decisions.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>"Metaphysics"</b></div><div><a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_631083787"><br /></a></div><div><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/11/sense-view-of-life.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/11/sense-view-of-life.html</a><br /><div><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2010/09/note-on-believing.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2010/09/note-on-believing.html</a><br /><br /><b>Technical</b><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_631083795"><br /></a><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/11/bubble-sort.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/11/bubble-sort.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/12/galois-theory-in-1500-words.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/12/galois-theory-in-1500-words.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/03/pure-and-applied-math.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/03/pure-and-applied-math.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2013/04/6-things-you-probably-dont-know-about.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2013/04/6-things-you-probably-dont-know-about.html</a></div></div><div><br /><b>Quotes</b></div><a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_631083806"><br /></a><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/11/it-turns-out.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2011/11/it-turns-out.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/06/old-quote.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2009/06/old-quote.html</a><br /><div><b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Random</b></div><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/07/ikea-shopping-and-calculus.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/07/ikea-shopping-and-calculus.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/07/startups-and-passion.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2012/07/startups-and-passion.html</a><br /><a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2010/07/ideal-society.html">http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2010/07/ideal-society.html</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-62519856485923218442014-12-27T00:15:00.001-05:002014-12-27T14:56:53.542-05:00Startup and Happiness 2014If I have to summarize 2014 in a single sentence, it would be that I left startup life[1]. If I could use another sentence, I would say that I finally reconciled the difference between the circle and the line. (If you didn't get that reference, don't worry -- exactly one person in the world might have.)<br /><br /><b>Leaving Startup Life</b><br /><br />One thing I miss about startups is the feeling that you are going somewhere. There is always a sense of movement, of momentum and of progress. Building a startup is a kind of "fuck you" to the universe as it reminds of us of how small and insignificant we are. We constantly move, move, move, and build, build, build. The energy created is optimistic, satisfying, and contagious.<br /><br />In the later half of 2014, I traded the motion for introspection. I traded the fulfillment of action with the contentment of stillness. Ok, fine: that was just a fancy way of saying that I started slacking off.<br /><br />But while slacking off, I started taking care of my body: going to the gym, taking on rock climbing and yoga. The woman teaching yoga at my condo focused on the meditative aspects of yoga as much as the physical, so through her I came to appreciate the physical triggers of happiness. I started taking care of my mind.<br /><br />Through those little changes, I became a little more physically energetic. Not the get-up-at-5-am-and-run-a-marathon-then-stay-up-all-night-to-code kind of energetic, but noticeable enough to be a welcoming change. My emotions fluctuated a lot less. More importantly, I could notice it better when it did.<br /><br />I finally started learning how to drive. I started interacting with people socially more often. I started reflecting more. Set small goals for myself. I continued work on a 10+ year secret project that means a lot to me, after years of hiatus.<br /><br />In terms of vanity-metric-like accomplishments, I got a job this year. (Well, two.) I taught an 8-hour data visualization workshop at Humber College. I took a real vacation with Greg for the first time, travelling by train toward the east coast before giving up and hopping on a plane. I participated in a Kaggle competition. I can sometimes climb a 5.9 too.<br /><br /><b>Circles vs. Lines</b><br /><br />Let me start with this quote from the Unbearable Lightness of Being:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, "Look, I'm sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can't you come up with something different?" And herein lies the whole man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle: it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being</blockquote>We desire motion as a way to give our lives meaning, and to make the world a better place. It creates progress and gives us fulfillment. This is the <i>line</i>.<br /><br />We desire repetition or stillness, because contentment and the feeling of well-being comes from the simpler things in life. Living this way is what we are biologically wired for, so it is logical that repetition gives us more of the in-the-moment feeling of happiness. This is the <i>circle</i>.<br /><br />Those two desires appear to be in conflicts. We want to be the agent of progress. But we crave the simpler pleasures. How do we reconcile the two? Must the answer be to buy a dairy farm and live the "good old days" to live a happy life?<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The dairy man had a Ph. D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn’t want to be somewhere else — one of the very few contented people I met in my whole journey.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">-- John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley </blockquote>I do believe that the contentment of the circle is a surer way to happiness than the fulfillment of the line. But before 2014, I was convinced that the "pursuit of happiness" was moot.[2] There are thing in life that are much more valuable than happiness. Any great, lasting change would be worth more than the transience of personal happiness. Alas I lacked the Herculean level of discipline to turn this belief into action.<br /><br />The insight is that happiness is as important as physical health. In fact it is a lot like physical health in many ways. It is a state to be maintained so that one can be resilient and productive. At the same time, just as it does not make sense to pursue great health as an end in itself, an excessive focus on happiness is as much a distraction.<br /><br />Happiness should be a means to an end.<br /><br />This is why when I read about Stoicism and being content with a tranquil life, I was somewhat uneasy. Happiness, tranquility, contentment, or equanimity are tools I wish I had, but they are not the whole story. They won't teach us <i>what</i> to pursue in life. They are answers to the question of <i>how</i>, not <i>what</i>.<br /><br />Of course, the <i>how</i> can be as important if not more important than the <i>what</i>. Two people who choose the exact same opportunity will achieve different results, because of <i>how</i> they decide to act upon it. This is really the same concept as how "implementation is more important that the idea" in the startup world.<br /><br /><br />So that, in my opinion, is the role of happiness, and how to reconcile the circle and the line. Keep one foot in the circle to recharge and to keep happy as much as necessary. Then, once rested, walk the tightrope that is the line.<br /><br /><br />Regardless of whether you are doing startups in 2015 or not, I wish you a fruitful and happy year. May you do whatever you do, but with more happiness and joy.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f_PMNhSeknM/VJ5E7-NoyGI/AAAAAAAAA1I/HANYnUbXb2w/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-27%2Bat%2B12.33.44%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f_PMNhSeknM/VJ5E7-NoyGI/AAAAAAAAA1I/HANYnUbXb2w/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-27%2Bat%2B12.33.44%2BAM.png" height="300" width="320" /></a><br /><br /><br /><b>Footnote</b><br /><br />[1] When people ask how I felt about that, it’s a little difficult to give the honest answer. It was a mix of relief and loss, and it's difficult to express those proportionally. I may have emphasized the relief, sounding rather cynical and defensive. Or I may have emphasized the loss, which may have made me seem more troubled than I actually am.<br /><br />[2] There are several reasons I don't think happiness does not make sense as an end in itself. The most convincing one is that fails the <a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/2014/12/dream-donut-test.html">"dream test"</a> -- we do not value simulated happiness (e.g. through mind-altering substances, or something like the Matrix) as much as "the real thing". This suggests that it is something else that is related to happiness that we are really after.<br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-23357114848064319422014-12-20T17:24:00.002-05:002014-12-20T18:37:42.828-05:00Paradox of Firsts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Chances are, readers here have had the experience of doing something creative, new, and big for the first time. This can be starting a startup, designing a game, or even writing a book. The experience of the first can be thrilling yet exacting. You may be excited but nervous. You may be happy for the opportunity, but daunted by the process. It is something that wasn't yet a part of your experience. But you are putting your heart in it, so much that it consumes you and becomes a large part of who you are. At this point, success is of the utmost importance. It might be the last good idea you'll ever have, after all!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Fast forward a little. Say you have decided to stay the course: a few startups under your belt, a few games, or maybe some more books. You may have had successes. You may have had failures.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">At this point, the nervous excitement of the first becomes a cherished memory (much like that of youth). It is remembered for the fresh experiences and the lessons learned, not for its success or failure. Because these experiences and lessons would have helped you to produce much great work as a result.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The raw outcome of your first attempt will no longer matter.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This is not a particularly deep insight. Think back to the first time you attempted to walk, how important the moment had been, and what became of it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is, however, a difficult insight to internalize, and so we routinely overestimate the importance of the first.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Part of the reason for this is very well illustrated by the following clippings from <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things">The Oatmeal's "making things"</a>. The first idea that you have will always feel like your one and only. You haven't realized that every other idea will feel the same way, so the first seems like it deserves to be a masterpiece.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things" target="_blank" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGDKuSias68/VJWmrKiXhII/AAAAAAAAA00/ZKHjAJQVX-s/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-20%2Bat%2B11.40.36%2BAM.png" width="600"/></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things" target="_blank">http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things</a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>But here's the dilemma. Your first idea (book, game, etc.) won't be your only idea. Neither will it likely be your <i>magnum opus</i>. By virtue of being the first, it is consigned to be the most poorly executed. It is just the practise run. You're just getting started.</div><div><br /></div><div>This thought always makes me feel both relieved and uneasy. Relieved because no matter the outcome, it is the learning that matters, so there is no reason <i>not</i> to experiment and be uncompromising true to the idea. Uneasy because the first still feels so special, so raw and exceedingly human. It is an untainted expression of who we are, through a new medium never experimented with.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes, I feel that the first idea should not be the first to be implemented. Pick a different idea that you don't care as much about, and use that as a practise run instead. Save the better ideas for later.</div><div><br /></div><div>But that wouldn't do.</div><div><br /></div><div>It would be cheating. The experience would not be the same at all.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-66587242075315744952014-12-15T23:31:00.000-05:002014-12-15T23:31:20.276-05:00Why did this blog move?As of this week, this blog is re-named "Tiny Epiphany" and hosted at <a href="http://www.tinyepiphany.com/">www.tinyepiphany.com</a> instead of as my home page <a href="http://www.lisazhang.ca/">www.lisazhang.ca</a>.<div><br /></div><div>The reason for this might sound a little strange.</div><div><br /></div><div>It has to do with <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474">this study</a>. And maybe <a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/does-gender-matter-by-ben-a-barres-10602856">this article</a>. And a lot to do with <a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer">this</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>But mostly, I want to help new readers here focus more easily on the content.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>...which is why the styling has been cleaned up, too!</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-44780514870197320602014-12-11T21:07:00.001-05:002014-12-11T22:08:12.573-05:00A Lesson in SalesI'm fascinated by sales people. Not because I want to be one of them -- trust me, I tried, and it was the most painful thing to ever put other people through -- but because it is one thing that I would not ever be able to learn how to do well. Yet it is so amazing watching other people do it so well.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Half of sales is making sure that other people don't hate you. There are a lot of little things that you can do to appear sincere and interested. I'm truly amazed by people who are (or appear) genuinely interested in the many people that they meet. Let's face it, most introverts would find that difficult to sustain, and expressing interest in so many things becomes very draining.</div><div><br /></div><div>Having to sell on a day to day basis is the number one reason why I am no longer running Polychart as a company. But I am glad to have that minuscule amount of sales experience, so to be able to pay attention to certain details that would otherwise be glossed over.</div><div><br /></div><div>For example, I sat in a sales meeting today. It wasn't really a sales meeting, but there was a sales person involved who is showing things to a group of people. There are a few things he did that I would not have thought of doing:</div><div><ol><li>He asked for both everyone's names and positions of everyone present and also our favourite foods.</li><li>In his agenda, he included the time that the meeting is to conclude.</li><li>He had a hand-out so that everyone had something physical to keep.</li></ol><div>The first -- asking for people's names -- is a fairly obvious thing to do. As a sales person, you want to understand the structure of the company, the political climate of the company, who the decision-makers are, and who your internal "evangelist" will be. The "evangelist" will usually be one or two persons who is already sold on your idea or product, and that person will be the one rooting for you in internal meetings that you cannot attend.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Asking for a person's favourite food is not obvious, but makes sense in hindsight. You immediately form a positive association in each persons' minds, associating both you and the meeting with something they like. You also buy some time to record the more important information (like the name and position), which I used to find challenging. You also know what to buy the client for lunch or what gift cards to get them come the holiday season.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second is also quite obvious in hindsight. Meetings often go over time. Sales meetings? Doubly so. Especially in meetings with a large group of attendees, chances are there will be someone not interested in the extra details and would want the meeting to end on time. Reiterating that you appreciate their time is a very respectful thing to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, having a handout to give means that you can give everyone something to remember you by, a physical reminder that the meeting had happened. You are also telling everyone that they are important enough to be worthy of that thick, expensive paper. Besides, it is something that not every company will be doing, so you may appear to be more caring and supportive than the competition.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, these gimmicks don't make a salesperson. But they are very interesting psychologically and it is amusing noticing these techniques being used in actual sales meetings. In technology, one of the ways to distinguish a good programmer from a mediocre one is look at their focus on getting the details right (RE: there are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.). Maybe it is the same for non-technical professions too, but just in different ways.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-64480144435039860382014-12-10T00:44:00.002-05:002014-12-10T00:46:16.947-05:00The Value of a Pure Math DegreeSometimes, I joke that this post should be intentionally left blank.<br /><br />But it's not <i>really </i>true. At the very least, studying pure math helped me understand the first chapter of Lange's <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Applied-Probability-Kenneth-Lange/dp/1441971645">Applied Probability</a>, and get far enough into the book to understand a much more concise solution to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle">Buffon's Needle Problem</a> than the one on wikipedia.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Buffon_needle.svg/220px-Buffon_needle.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Buffon_needle.svg/220px-Buffon_needle.svg.png" /></a></div><br />In day to day life though, knowing what measurability mean or what Borel sets are could hardly be called useful. The value of a pure math degree, for non-tenure-track mathematicians, comes ~80% from satisfying a curiosity (or what some would call intellectual masturbation).<br /><br />The real value comes from learning how to think. This isn't unique to pure math though: students of a number of disciplines will likely say that it is what they learned from the course of study. Each field, however, would choose a different focus and a different kind of thought process. A philosophy student would think differently from an engineering student, who would think differently from a biology or a law student.<br /><br />So what makes pure math thinking unique? I think it is several things, some of which are:<br /><br /><ol><li>Decoding complex notations</li><li>Going back and forth between the "abstract" and the tangible example</li><li>A focus on details, especially the "edge cases"</li></ol><br />...which all come from understanding and analyzing proofs of all types.<br /><br />So let's break it down.<br /><br /><b>Decoding Complex Notations</b><br /><b><br /></b>This was actually a goal of mine while studying pure math. I wanted to become comfortable with reading mathematical notations, and not be afraid of them in books and papers. Like reading other people's code, reading other people's proofs were the most dreaded task for me. Grading second year "advanced level" linear algebra was the worst.<br /><br />But reading math is more difficult than just understanding and being comfortable with notations. There was a blog post from the beginning of the year about how <a href="http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/">reading code is not like reading literature</a>. Here's a choice quote from that blog post:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">We don’t read code, we decode it. We examine it. A piece of code is not literature; it is a specimen. </blockquote>It's really the same thing with proofs. We don't read proofs. We decode proofs. We don't really understand a proof unless we make it ours.<br /><br />While reading code is still difficult for me, I think my education has helped lessen that barrier.<br /><br /><b>Abstract vs Tangible</b><br /><b><br /></b>In one of his books, Feynman talked about how during every discussion about something abstract, he would follow along with something tangible in mind. In another story that a professor had told, a grad students had proved interesting things about functions that satisfy some criteria, only to find during a presentation that the only functions that satisfied those criteria were the constant functions.<br /><br />This ability to keep both the abstract and the tangible in mind is crucial for understanding mathematics, and a way of thinking pretty unique to the field (and maybe perhaps computer science as well: I sometimes joke that the math in computer science is like applied pure math).<br /><br />Related to this is looking at various tangible examples, and extract the abstract features that are common to all examples. It is often easy to recognize that there <i>is</i> some kind of common structure, but the structure can be difficult to describe without the right set of language in your toolbox. (Again, this may apply more so to computer scientists and good programmers).<br /><br /><b>Edge Cases</b><br /><b><br /></b>Proofs are hard because of all the edge cases that one has to consider. I haven't encountered these questions in Waterloo, but in some institutions "PODASIP" problems are typical. PODASIP stands for: "prove or disprove and salvage if possible", which basically means that for a given claim, the task is to see if the claim is true or not, and if it isn't, modify the claim so that it is (non-trivially) true.<br /><br />I find that the best way to tackle those problems is to look first for counter-examples to the claim. A claim usually falls apart in extreme cases, so those were good starting points. An understanding of the extreme cases would lead either to a counter-example, or to an understanding of why the claim works, and thus a proof.<br /><br />So, a pure math student learns to think like a lawyer, except not with legal language but with formal claims.<br /><br /><br />So, in summary, like some other degrees, a pure math degree is one that teaches you how to think. But all degrees that teach you how to think focuses on different types of thinking.<br /><br />In hindsight, I may have preferred a degree that teaches similar thinking principles while teaching something more useful. Still, no regrets though because a lot of those "more useful" ideas are much more easily learned with the toolkits I now have available, like an understanding of abstract algebra and measure theory.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-84784528741768167572014-12-01T23:35:00.001-05:002014-12-27T15:00:06.893-05:00Dream Donut TestI don't know what it is about life and donuts that lend themselves to comparison. A while back <a href="http://www.stanleycolors.com/2013/12/life-donuts/" style="font-style: italic;">this comic</a> circled around. It uses a donut analogy to explain why life is worth living despite that we would all eventually die. It's a pretty interesting comic, so <a href="http://www.stanleycolors.com/2013/12/life-donuts/">go see it</a> --<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1lT0Oh0cD84/UxvPUU7YkyI/AAAAAAAAAvg/nV9hjSjN7wI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-08+at+9.17.36+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1lT0Oh0cD84/UxvPUU7YkyI/AAAAAAAAAvg/nV9hjSjN7wI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-03-08+at+9.17.36+PM.png" height="299" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">http://www.stanleycolors.com/2013/12/life-donuts/</div><br />The comic and the analogy really hit a spot because like many others, I've dealt with some form of <a href="https://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/existential-depression-in-gifted-individual">existential depression</a> -- I'm not not intelligent enough to have the full-blown version, but reading about it for the first time was an emotional experience. I, too, thought that life was a donut, but for a different reason. Donuts were addictive yet void of nutritional value, and I thought life was like that. We chose to live not because of a conscious decision, but because we are shameless addicts who take our addictions for granted.<br /><br />That's why the comic failed to comfort me. Its argument is based on leaving our donut-loving-addict-ness unquestioned. Yes, I'm asking you the question:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Why should we even like donuts?"</blockquote>to which a reasonable answer might be:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Because they taste good."</blockquote><div>...but of course I knew that as well as you, so I explain,</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Yes, but why should we like things because they taste good?"</blockquote>which doesn't sound like a question that makes sense. After an afternoon of discussion, we might get to the question: <i>why should pleasure be intrinsically worthwhile or meaningful?</i> It's really hard to answer without begging the question.<br /><br />This all sounds pretty depressing. Thankfully, my interest in depressing blog posts has waned. Instead, I'd like to offer an alternative to Stanley's "donut analogy" as to why one should live. It is what I call the "dream test".<br /><br />Suppose that you are having a lucid dream -- a kind of dream where the dreamer knows they're dreaming. You've been in the dream for long enough that you don't recall who you <i>really</i> are, but you do know that it's a dream that would eventually be over. What would you do in that case? Would you just try very hard to wake up just because you'll eventually have to wake up?<br /><br />Hell no! You're in a lucid dream! If you've been in a lucid dream, you'll know that there are so many fun things to do in such dreams. Fly around. Try to teleport. Make things appear and disappear. Make yourself invisible. Explore this dream state.<br /><br />Sure there aren't many inherent value in things. Dream donuts might taste good but there is no point in accumulating as many of them as possible. They'll all disappear once you wake up.<br /><br />But, the <i>experience </i>itself has value outside of the dream. Once you wake up, that experience stays with you. The knowledge, the (self?) understanding, and the experience all stay. Maybe this is why spending money on acquiring experiences makes people happiest.<br /><br />So here's my answer to the kid in the comic:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>What's the point of all this? Why live if we're gonna die anyways?</b></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Well, remember the last time you had a dream? What if you suddenly realized that you're dreaming, and can control things in the dream? Pretty neat huh? In that case, wouldn't you want to explore, and see what you're capable of? Would you think about trying to wake yourself up, just because you know that the dream is going to eventually end?</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">No! Because the dream is going to be an interesting experience. Sure it might be short, and sometimes scary, and sometime sad, but you can experience a lot and learn a lot about yourself. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">...and at the end of the day, you will having one interesting story to remember and share. Who knows, maybe the experience that we're building up in "real life" will be meaningful somehow too.</blockquote>The difference is that the focus here is on <i>experience</i> rather than <i>pleasure</i>. It is easier for me to accept that experience might be of importance after we die, and that thus dying now is equivalent to dying later. It is a lot harder to say the same about pleasure. (I'm not certain what's going to happen when we do die, but I sure would bet that experiences have a higher likelihood of persisting compared to, say, donuts.)<br /><br />I sometimes use this "dream test" to tell if a goal or aspiration makes sense, given that we don't live forever: suppose you're hit by a bus and enter a very deep sleep. While you're asleep, you dream that you've gone through the process of achieving that goal, or became what you aspired to be. Would you be content, knowing that that had only been a dream?<br /><br />If you are content with having the <i>experience</i> of achieving that goal, then you will probably say yes. If you are looking for the <i>effect </i>of achieving the goal, then you will probably say no.<br /><br />If you said "no", then you might want to think twice about working towards that goal.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-11331658580494450042014-11-29T15:05:00.002-05:002014-12-01T23:42:52.527-05:00Watching SportsI watched a basketball game for the first time, a Raptor's game at the ACC.<br /><br />Those who know me know that I'm not exactly a sports fan. Of course, it's impossible to grow up in North American without having watched any sport on TV. Seeing it in person gave it a slightly different perspective.<br /><br />Camera positions and angles makes it easy to give the perception that the viewer is right there <i>on</i> the court. Because it is the focus, the outcome of the match seems of utmost importance. Paradoxically, when watching a game in person, you are really watching slightly further away, giving more perspective. From where I sat, it looked rather silly and unimportant. It looked like what it is: a game.<br /><br />What surprised me the most, though, was the hostility towards the visiting team. Yes, I've heard of the term "home team advantage", and thought that it was referring to (a) not having to travel, (b) not having to worry about time zone differences, and (c) having fans that would cheer for you. The difference in the amount of time spent announcing the opening players is one thing, but actually trying to distract the visiting players during a penalty shot? That's another. Even the refereeing seemed off.<br /><br />All in all, I can understand why one can become so absorbed in this. There is the "we" versus "them" that unites the fans. There is the accessibility of the game (who hasn't played basketball?). There is also the idea that anything can happen, and that the fans can make a difference, however minute.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-81945194018045680082014-03-02T22:34:00.003-05:002014-12-01T23:41:29.093-05:00I moved to Toronto, and bloggingSo, I moved to Toronto.<br /><br />Every time I move to a new place, I think of it as a new beginning, and try to live a bit more like the ideal me in my mind: getting up earlier, reading more, exercising more, cleaner, better, healthier, and... blogging more.<br /><br />It usually doesn't last very long. Maybe one habit would stick for more than a week or two, then I would be back to my boring old self. Yet every time, at a brand new room or apartment, I can't help but try again. It's kind of like a new year's resolution. You might know that you won't make it until the end of the year, but if it motivates you to live better for one month, or even one week -- that's still a positive change!<br /><br />So yes, like everyone else out there who has a blog, I want to write more.<br /><br />The thing that prevents me from writing more is that I take blog posts very seriously. After all, if I'm going to take your attention away from something else, it had better well be worth it. I like there to be a central thesis (which is difficult to distill down to), solid arguments (which are difficult to construct), and reasonable flow (which means writing and re-writing). It is possible to write several paragraphs, then realize that the central thesis had been wrong, and take a different perspective. This is why writing is so great for you: it forces you to organize your thoughts, and forces you to face the inconsistencies in your thought process.<br /><br />So, maybe it's the writing and <i>not</i> the publishing that is more important for bloggers.<br /><br />Incidentally, one experiment I tried a couple of years back is promising to write something every day. I had a list of ideas back then, and those were bite-sized thoughts that could be hashed out into an article in a reasonable amount of time. Though the experiment didn't last as long, it was clear that those posts did not actually provide that much value.<br /><br />What actually did provide a lot of value are posts that I spent many days researching and perfecting. They were some of the more difficult posts to write, either because they are technical or because they are very close to heart (so close that I'd contemplate whether or not to post them at all). In fact, at least half of pageviews come from older posts that had gone viral, and newer, crisper posts have little traffic in comparison.<br /><br />So, well, what is the point of all this? Well, I don't know, this is actually just a rant. I guess I'm actually going against my own advice about taking time to write quality posts as opposed to publishing. (...to, er, illustrate the point about inconsistencies!) I guess the point is... there will be triggers in your life that encourages you to become a better person. Even if those triggers don't give you enough momentum to change who you are, it can take you one step in the right direction, for however short a duration. And that is good. So long as you maximize for the right things. Unlike me.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-40464132383701590092014-02-11T09:47:00.005-05:002014-12-01T23:41:38.533-05:00Back, thank you, and moving onHello, blog. It's been a while since I last wrote here. I was spending some time in a (figurative) cave, trying to understand a couple of things. Last time we spoke, I was working on Polychart, a data visualization startup that was taking the flexibility of tools like Tableau and bringing it to the web. It’s a neat idea, really, and we built an awesome team behind the idea. It was also a great learning experience, being a first-time entrepreneur.<br /><br />Judging by the past tense used in the last paragraph, you probably realize that this is not what I will be doing in the future. You’re right. We turned down the investment we were about to get, knowing that it wasn’t going to be the right path for us. We’ve just open sourced Polychart to share what we’ve built, to make it more useful as an easy way to visually explore databases. You should check it out if you haven’t already.<br /><br />We hear many discussions about "finding oneself", especially from young people. We sometimes take to travelling, long periods of solitude, recklessness, or drugs to achieve that purpose. Ancient greeks, too, thought that “know thyself” is worthy enough of an aphorism to be carved in front of temples. Their interpretation of the aphorism might be slightly different, and involve fewer psychedelics. While Polychart was no psychedelic (for the most part), running a startup turned out to be a great way to find oneself.<br /><br />What does it mean to know oneself? I interpret it as an understanding of one’s goals, likes, and dislikes. Knowing what you like is easy -- for me, I loved running the engineering organization and building the technical team. The hard part is drawing the line between <i>bettering</i> oneself, and attempting to <i>be someone one is not</i>. I thought that learning to sell and pitch would be things I could do to develop myself. Would I be able to eventually learn to be great at it? Maybe? Eventually I have to admit that, well, perhaps not. Perhaps I won't enjoy it. Perhaps my talents should be focused elsewhere.<br /><br />So, I'm moving on.<br /><br />Before saying anything else, I want to thank everyone who had supported Polychart, and had come along for the ride. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. Thank you --<br /><br /><b>Jeeyoung Kim</b>: for starting this amazing journey with me and putting up with me for as long as you did<br /><b>Samsons Hu</b>: for believing in Polychart when few others did, and taking it to the next level<br /><b>Fravic Fernando</b>: for being a part of Polychart, the whole way through<br /><b>Tina Lorentz</b>: for seeing and teaching us what we didn't know (seriously, I learned so much from you)<br /><b>Anjida, Sina, Alex</b>: for teaching us the importance of team building<br /><b>Zach Kocher</b>: for supporting us when few others did<br /><b>Raymond Cheng:</b> for understanding and being passionate about what we stood for<br /><b>Tim McLean:</b> for quickly picking up whatever expertise we lacked<br /><b>Luc Ritchie:</b> for adapting to new roles when we needed it<br /><b>Kevin Mendoza</b>: for supporting us in one of the most interesting times<br /><b>Christoph & Ronuk</b>: for helping us with engineering expertise we did not have<br /><b>Mike Kirkup</b>: for helping us in many, many different ways, for over two years<br /><b>Brett Shellhammer</b>: for being our moral support, all the way through<br /><div style="font-weight: bold;"><div style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Ted Livingston</b>: for getting us started on this journey, and teaching us to pursue our passions</div><div style="font-weight: normal;"><b>David Crow</b>: for believing in us, and guiding us to choose Polychart</div><div style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Ali Asaria</b>: for funding us indirectly, in at least three different ways now?</div><div style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Jesse Rodgers</b>: for teaching us the importance of credibility and namedropping :)</div></div><div><b style="font-weight: bold;">Andy Yang</b><b>: </b>for believing in us, funding us, and understanding us when we moved on</div><b>William, AK, Dale</b>: for providing guidance, assistance, and friendship<br /><div><b>Darren, Danny, Peter</b>: for providing many introductions</div><b>Lin Fan</b>: for the many questions you answered<br /><b>Cameron Marlow</b>: for inspiring me, supporting us, giving us confidence, and for being so kind<br /><b>...and everyone else who has helped us in this journey. Thank you.</b><br /><b><br /></b>I will be continuing to support Polychart whenever I can. I'd also like to introduce you to my new home, another startup in Toronto called <a href="http://www.rubikloud.com/">Rubikloud</a>. I'm really excited to tell you that I'll be joining Rubikloud as the VP of Engineering. The best part about Polychart was running its engineering operations, and so I'm really excited about this new role. You should check out Rubikloud, especially if you run an e-commerce shop or if you're a data scientist looking for your next step!<br /><br />Once again, to everyone who helped me on this journey, thank you.<br /><br />End of EntryAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-54273577545433148112013-10-30T15:02:00.002-04:002014-12-01T23:42:04.362-05:00"Passion" as a verb<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, “... I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her any more and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”<br />“The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I asked.<br />“That’s right,” he affirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”<br />“Love her,” I replied.<br />“I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.”<br />“Love her.”<br />“You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”<br />“Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”<br />“But how do you love when you don’t love?”<br />“My friend, love is a verb. Love -- the feeling -- is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”</i><br /><div style="text-align: right;">- Stephen Covey, <a href="http://amzn.to/1iuOzXw">7 Habits of Highly Successful People</a></div></blockquote><br />There’s a lot of literature of late about the role of passion in one’s work, specifically about how blindly pursuing one’s passion could be a terrible career choice: Cal Newport <a href="http://amzn.to/19bA4GR">studies</a> successful people and <a href="http://amzn.to/19bA4GR">finds</a> that they became passionate about their work only after they have cultivated the skills to become very good at what they do. Scott Adams <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866">writes</a> that for him, “success caused passion more than passion caused success.”<br /><br />I think passion is very similar to romantic love. Both are mostly thought of as feelings, but both can be actions. The feelings usually motivate actions, but the actions themselves can intensify the feelings, creating a positive feedback loop. Analogous to the above dialog, passion for one’s work (the feeling) can be cultivated by being more passionate (action) about it. Passion -- the feeling -- is a fruit of being passionate, the verb. The grind. The appreciation. The patience. The discovery.<br /><br />This is useful because rather than thinking of passion as something magical that happens when we choose the right field, passion becomes something that we can control. I’m sure you can think of people in your life that are very energetic and passionate about everything -- not necessarily because the fields they engage in are all intrinsically engaging -- but because they put in the effort, energy, and patience to really appreciate the nuance and beauty in everything they do.<br /><br />Especially in the startup world, people talk about “passion” as a must-have for a founder. The number one advice I’ve received from mentors is to “pick a problem that you’re passionate about”. Sure enough, investors also look for passion; they find that founders who are most passionate seem to be running the more successful startups.<br /><br />But I think we are mixing up the cause and effect. Newport provides evidence that passion doesn’t come from a vacuum, or even from “picking” the “right” field. Passion comes from mastery and success, rather than the other way around. Thought in this way, it still make sense for investors to look for passionate founders -- because chances are, their mastery and success of the business are fuelling their passion!<br /><br />Thus, a better way to rephrase the same advice for startups founders is to be sure that you have already cultivated passionate about your field or industry.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Along the same line, a better advice for the general public would be to be a passionate person -- find ways to love your work, and then you will become passionate about it.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-68151879161803741872013-06-04T16:35:00.000-04:002014-12-01T23:43:50.313-05:00Stereotype Priming and Women in Tech/EntrepreneurshipAt tech and entrepreneurship conferences, I'm often approached by people to who want to show support for women like myself, or to talk about the role of women in the respective fields. More often this is done by other women, or by extremely supportive men who also believe in gender balance.<br /><br />These people are always very well meaning, but I don't think what they’re doing is optimal.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat">Stereotype threat</a> is a well-studied topic that talks about how the mere presence of a negative stereotype can cause anxiety and hinder performance. Priming or reminding someone of the stereotype makes it worse. Even a simple questionnaire regarding one's race and gender completed prior to writing a standardized test affects performance of stereotypically disadvantaged groups. <a href="http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.ca/2011/08/re-post-stereotype-threat-priming.html">Paraphrasing</a> Cordelia Fine's reports on the many ways this priming happens in the context of gender (Delusions of Gender, pp. 7-8):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">...if something reminds a woman of her gender while she is undertaking a task in which women are regarded as less capable, her own negative gender stereotypes might be activated.</blockquote>This is not to say that we <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2d2SzRZvsQ">shouldn't talk</a> about the representation of women in certain fields -- just that a private conversation at a conference isn't the best setting. People go to conferences to learn and to network. It is not a good place to have a lowered confidence, or to subconsciously feel uncertain about one's abilities.<br /><br />End of EntryAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-45671396420547819922013-04-12T02:26:00.002-04:002014-12-01T23:44:45.827-05:006 Things You Probably Don't Know about ColourColour is a strage phenomenon that is fascinating to both children and adults. It's something almost every one of us reading this post would intuitively understand -- or do we really? This post asks six questions about colour, and explores the phenomenon from a mix of physiological, mathematical, and information visualization perspectives. See if any of the answers surprise you. (Disclaimer: content is rather technical. Author is a pure math grad, after all!)<br /><br /><b>1. Why are there three primary colours?</b><br /><br />To understand this, we need to understand how we perceive colour physiologically. Visible light is electromagnetic radiation with wavelength ranging between 380nm and 740nm. Our eyes contain two different types of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell">photoreceptor cells</a>: cones and rods. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_cell">rod cells</a> are very sensitive, so it is very useful for night vision. During normal daylight, though, they are overstimulated and do not contribute to vision. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell">cone cells</a> is mostly responsible for colour vision, and there are three types of these cells, called S-cones, M-cones, and L-cones. Each type responds differently to light of different wavelengths: in particular S responds most strongly to blue light, M to green and L to red.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/J5ToYu5pgA4oxjN_zG1FOHQhW2i8fEz6tUWX0iifd_wT2kJ-6xmozj1iP1PPtkRnaM9UjMB54H53-L5pjk-vKLReqEeJij6Bv18eBeXlwK-zoL5QnFF4ijF5xToyhpj--kkDEQiCQEvH7PgbfvOJX7XC_xx6aIrJ" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/J5ToYu5pgA4oxjN_zG1FOHQhW2i8fEz6tUWX0iifd_wT2kJ-6xmozj1iP1PPtkRnaM9UjMB54H53-L5pjk-vKLReqEeJij6Bv18eBeXlwK-zoL5QnFF4ijF5xToyhpj--kkDEQiCQEvH7PgbfvOJX7XC_xx6aIrJ" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Response to light of various wavelengths, normalized</div><br />In this way, the distribution of light striking a particular area in our eyes are translated into three different signals. In other words, we perceive the colour space as a three-dimensional space. Linear algebra tells us, therefore, that there are three <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basis_(linear_algebra)">basis</a> elements.<br /><br />Incidentally, some humans are born without one of the three cone types, so they perceive colour as a two-dimensional space. This is of the ways people can be colour blind. Some other animals such as birds have four types of cone cells, and this is known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy">tetrachromacy</a>. The <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp">mantis shrimp</a> actually have sixteen types of cone cells!<br /><b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />2. Does the rainbow contain all perceivable colours?</b><br /><br />You can probably just <a href="http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/best-colors-not-a-rainbow.asp">name some colours</a>, like <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2112339/Sorry-girls-colour-pink-doesnt-exist-just-pigment-imagination.html">pink</a>, that are not in the rainbow, but for the more mathematically inclined reader, here's another explanation:<br /><br />Each patch of light on a rainbow has light waves of just a single wavelength, and that wavelength varies continuously from 380nm to 740nm. So think of the rainbow as a mapping from [380nm, 740nm] to the three dimensional colour space. But [380, 740] is a one-dimensional object, so following <a href="http://www.proofwiki.org/wiki/Continuous_Bijection_from_Compact_to_Hausdorff_is_Homeomorphism">this result</a>, there must be some colour that is not in the rainbow.<br /><br /><b>3. Can two colours look the same but be different?</b><br /><br />Let's rephrase the question as such: can two different patches of light be composed of different combinations of wavelengths, yet be perceived to be the same? The answer is yes. A patch of light can be composed of various amount and distributions of light of different wavelengths. This is actually an infinite dimensional space, but it gets projected down to the 3D colour space when we perceive it. So some information is lost.<br /><br />There are actually exhibits in science centers showing two different yellow light sources. The two yellows appear identical, but one of them is a "pure" yellow (single wavelength), and another a mixture of two or more different wavelengths. When you observer the light source through some coloured transparency that absorbs one of the "non-yellow" light, the two lights would appear different.<br /><br />The two yellows may appear distinct to birds and mantis shrimps.<br /><br /><b>4. Can two colours be the same but look different?</b><br /><br />You've probably seen the optical illusion shown here. The two shades of grey in A and B are the same shade of gray, but they appear different. What's happening?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VoiRbU8LJ6c/UWeX0AHc20I/AAAAAAAAAeg/7lrJzhcuGbU/s1600/grey_square_optical_illusion_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VoiRbU8LJ6c/UWeX0AHc20I/AAAAAAAAAeg/7lrJzhcuGbU/s200/grey_square_optical_illusion_1.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g8Ak3bKhGU0/UWeX0JOrMTI/AAAAAAAAAek/k3uxJJ7KI8Q/s1600/grey_square_optical_illusion_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g8Ak3bKhGU0/UWeX0JOrMTI/AAAAAAAAAek/k3uxJJ7KI8Q/s200/grey_square_optical_illusion_2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />This is where we begin moving away from the physiology of colour and towards other ways our brain has evolved to help us survive. The brain does a lot of post-processing to help us better understand the outside world, and this means that we automatically correct for artifacts like shading.<br /><br />What's less obvious from this optical illusion is that your perception of colour depends on other colours nearby. For example, the grey bar below appears to be a gradient, even though it is not. This is one of the reasons why overuse of colour to represent information is discouraged from an information visualization perspective: we can interpret the information differently depending on surrounding colours.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/gyaKB9Ll3mfduf64UZayG4YYUTuKg7XoagBLA2RECi4jMJsi1woOynkc0eOdYn1yhMtia--G4CCdPyFqHMn5_fTkxP7RLafyHPhniaySbAguOKrm5jnm4sbrvKjqc2UrCGmeSxnhe87k8Co4QlCBC9mzR89sEXuX1piMczfM6U9hpwaH98dErtM9HHkXo4mLbzA" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/gyaKB9Ll3mfduf64UZayG4YYUTuKg7XoagBLA2RECi4jMJsi1woOynkc0eOdYn1yhMtia--G4CCdPyFqHMn5_fTkxP7RLafyHPhniaySbAguOKrm5jnm4sbrvKjqc2UrCGmeSxnhe87k8Co4QlCBC9mzR89sEXuX1piMczfM6U9hpwaH98dErtM9HHkXo4mLbzA" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><b>5. Does the RGB space consist of all possible colours?</b><br /><br />In other words, can you obtain all possible colours by mixing red, green, and blue? First of all, note that the RGB space we've been referring to is an <i>additive</i> colour model (as opposed to <i>subtractive</i> and others). Think of the additive model as mixing paint or adding light waves to be reflected, and subtractive space as absorbing certain wavelengths of light. Because we can only <i>add</i> light, the answer is actually no.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromaticity">Chromaticity</a> is an objective specification of the quality of a colour, regardless of its luminance (or how much light there is). On the left is a visualization of the chromaticity space, and the right the range of colours available to a typical computer monitor. Of course, everything outside of the triangle on the left side of the screen is not well represented since you're probably reading this on a monitor.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/NQMQ0h8VR61SoISNg6tQyADDx3kf9YP9AaCnqQm643cEC8mf-H5jMhQln_jCFtZ8w3e6zCPq2PWga3b6ooUm_H6SpCORetIzDcjwaYaqNTPzxDEVi0njiw4c_xAAzyzYYvxFXNDhDrmruBe8MglRC3splV7Lx_Ig" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/NQMQ0h8VR61SoISNg6tQyADDx3kf9YP9AaCnqQm643cEC8mf-H5jMhQln_jCFtZ8w3e6zCPq2PWga3b6ooUm_H6SpCORetIzDcjwaYaqNTPzxDEVi0njiw4c_xAAzyzYYvxFXNDhDrmruBe8MglRC3splV7Lx_Ig" width="177" /></a><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/VYKvUE9bti4Zx71WwUMZg6HDlWwUTY7nvTD0XWq9dEUHMzMLa4QLkGIdnuSxlpBYHMei4fKDf4Bd4pVmNnsLCzlf3wt-cy_Kv0mM9oC3WaBRYlQEoNkQRBPM-KIZyvpQydrAHLHgATz814iYfrnpFByDONXROuDJlIP32LZxZvgig-zX" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/VYKvUE9bti4Zx71WwUMZg6HDlWwUTY7nvTD0XWq9dEUHMzMLa4QLkGIdnuSxlpBYHMei4fKDf4Bd4pVmNnsLCzlf3wt-cy_Kv0mM9oC3WaBRYlQEoNkQRBPM-KIZyvpQydrAHLHgATz814iYfrnpFByDONXROuDJlIP32LZxZvgig-zX" width="180" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><b>6. Why do printed colours look different from colours on a monitor?</b><br /><br />If you ever printed a colour image, you may notice discrepancies between a printed image and the same image displayed on a monitor. Typically in printing, a CMYK colour space is used, and the possible printable colours are not identical to disable colours on the screen. Here is an example of a set of colours displayable on a screen and printable with in:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gAUg10xsiUA/UWeh68jAB1I/AAAAAAAAAe4/8KEIDZMNdwQ/s1600/rgb-cmyk-gamut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gAUg10xsiUA/UWeh68jAB1I/AAAAAAAAAe4/8KEIDZMNdwQ/s320/rgb-cmyk-gamut.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Notice that there are areas where they do not overlap. There are different ways to fix this issue, such as shrinking the RGB triangle inwards or some other continuous mapping between the two areas. Either way, the resulting may not be the same.<br /><br />There are actually other issues with RGB colour space, and people do use other colour spaces for various reasons. One issue with the RGB colour space is that the amount of red, green, and blue doesn't directly tell us that much about a colour. How muted is it? How bright is it? From an information visualization perspective this matters a lot. When choosing different colours for several objects that you would like to draw equal attention to, it makes sense to make them all of similar brightness and saturation. If you want to highlight a single element, changing its brightness or saturation is one method. This is one of the reasons that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV">HSL or HSV</a> space is often useful.<br /><br /><u>Other Reading</u><br /><br />Stephen Few has more to say about colour in information visualization. The following are excellent.<br /><a href="http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/rules_for_using_color.pdf">http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/rules_for_using_color.pdf</a><br /><a href="http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/b-eye/choosing_colors.pdf">http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/b-eye/choosing_colors.pdf</a><br /><br />Although this post links a lot to Wikipedia, I learned most of the information here from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558608192/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1558608192&linkCode=as2&tag=anot09-20">Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design</a>, which is also fascinating (and is linked below as well). I actually know very little about colour, so if you have any further questions, it's likely beyond my power to answer.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=anot09-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1558608192&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=FFFFFF&bg1=FFFFFF&npa=1&f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <br /><br />End of Entry <!-- Blogger automated replacement: "http://images-onepick-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?container=onepick&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*&url=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Fb%2Fba%2FPlanckianLocus.png%2F500px-PlanckianLocus.png" with "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/NQMQ0h8VR61SoISNg6tQyADDx3kf9YP9AaCnqQm643cEC8mf-H5jMhQln_jCFtZ8w3e6zCPq2PWga3b6ooUm_H6SpCORetIzDcjwaYaqNTPzxDEVi0njiw4c_xAAzyzYYvxFXNDhDrmruBe8MglRC3splV7Lx_Ig" --><!-- Blogger automated replacement: "http://images-onepick-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?container=onepick&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*&url=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F1%2F1e%2FCones_SMJ2_E.svg%2F480px-Cones_SMJ2_E.svg.png" with "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/J5ToYu5pgA4oxjN_zG1FOHQhW2i8fEz6tUWX0iifd_wT2kJ-6xmozj1iP1PPtkRnaM9UjMB54H53-L5pjk-vKLReqEeJij6Bv18eBeXlwK-zoL5QnFF4ijF5xToyhpj--kkDEQiCQEvH7PgbfvOJX7XC_xx6aIrJ" --><!-- Blogger automated replacement: "http://images-onepick-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?container=onepick&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*&url=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F1%2F1e%2FGradient-optical-illusion.svg%2F440px-Gradient-optical-illusion.svg.png" with "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/gyaKB9Ll3mfduf64UZayG4YYUTuKg7XoagBLA2RECi4jMJsi1woOynkc0eOdYn1yhMtia--G4CCdPyFqHMn5_fTkxP7RLafyHPhniaySbAguOKrm5jnm4sbrvKjqc2UrCGmeSxnhe87k8Co4QlCBC9mzR89sEXuX1piMczfM6U9hpwaH98dErtM9HHkXo4mLbzA" --><!-- Blogger automated replacement: "http://images-onepick-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?container=onepick&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*&url=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Fd%2Fd3%2FCIExy1931_srgb_gamut.png%2F480px-CIExy1931_srgb_gamut.png" with "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/VYKvUE9bti4Zx71WwUMZg6HDlWwUTY7nvTD0XWq9dEUHMzMLa4QLkGIdnuSxlpBYHMei4fKDf4Bd4pVmNnsLCzlf3wt-cy_Kv0mM9oC3WaBRYlQEoNkQRBPM-KIZyvpQydrAHLHgATz814iYfrnpFByDONXROuDJlIP32LZxZvgig-zX" -->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3695232251094876041.post-62104241809493025512013-03-05T21:41:00.001-05:002014-12-01T23:44:07.064-05:00Using Data to Optimize Jobmine Hiring<div class="tr_bq">Two years ago I wrote a series called <a href="http://www.lisazhang.ca/search/label/jobmine">Mining Jobmine</a> that explored data from Waterloo's co-op job postings. It came as a surprise to find this analysis useful for myself. This post highlights how I used the results from that analysis to write our job posting, and how my startup <a href="http://polychart.com/">Polychart</a> hired our first two University of Waterloo co-op students.<br /><br /><b>What The Data Said</b><br /><b><br /></b>There were three main learnings from the <a href="http://www.lisazhang.ca/search/label/jobmine">Mining Jobmine</a> analyses that were applicable. First is to keep <b>job postings short</b>, as data showed that shorter job postings attract a higher number of applicants. The second is to <b>focus on describing the company and the role</b>, rather than the ideal candidate. The third is to <b>avoid using "ought"</b> words. Both of these correlate to application levels.</div><div class="tr_bq"><br /></div><div class="tr_bq"><b>Our Job Posting?</b></div><div class="tr_bq"><b><br /></b></div><div class="tr_bq">We kept our job posting to around 200 words. We described the company and the role, and while we did use some "ought" words -- well, I couldn't resist it. We also added a little bit of humour that ideal candidates would appreciate (but would confuse non-ideal candidates), and a link to our product and demo -- because who wouldn't love working on a slick product?<br /><br />This was our job posting:</div><blockquote>Polychart is a startup in the KW region building a really cool, drag-and-drop data visualization tool. We are looking for a software co-op to speed up our roadmap. See our website at http://polychart.com/ and our demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvx90KDouY for what we have to date.<br /><br />You will be writing code (surprise, surprise!). This includes adding features to Polychart, testing said features, and releasing it to users. Because we're a startup, you will play an important role in the development team, have a huge impact on the company, and learn a TON.<br /><br />The ideal candidate will have some non-school related experience in software development, preferably web development. Specific technologies we use include:<br /><br />- the usual web stuff like HTML, less/CSS<br />- a ton of CoffeeScript/JavaScript, JQuery, Knockout, Raphael<br />- Python/Django/Tornado<br />- MySQL and likely other databases<br />- git and github<br />- linux<br /><br />Bonus points if you have some experience in statistics, have an opinion on pie charts, and on vim vs emacs.<br /><br />You should be able to reverse a linked list.<br /><br />Please include in your resume your github account, twitter profile, and other relevant social media profiles. Also, please talk about projects you've done outside of school. Don't write a cover letter unless there is something not in your resume you'd like to talk about.</blockquote>How did we do? Well, although no one wanted to show us their social media profiles, we did receive 55 applications for 2 advertised positions. Compared to startups and companies our size, we've done very well.<br /><br /><b>The Rest of the Hiring Process</b><br /><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />First, we had to screen the 55 applicants. The goal of the first screening is to see if there's a chance an applicant can code. A whopping 25 of them did not appear to fit the bill -- these were sometimes students from other faculties with no programming background. We didn't discriminate against first and second years, and were more lenient on those with higher GPA's.</div><br />Those successfully passing the first screening received the following programming challenge:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The goal of this challenge is to find the index of a given word in a dictionary [alphabetically sorted listed of words]. The only way to interface with the dictionary is through a function `lookup(index)`, which either returns the word at that index, or `false` if the index is out of bounds. Words are represented as strings. The indices of the dictionary are a contiguous set of non-negative integers starting with 0.<br />Please write your solution in either JavaScript or CoffeeScript, and include in your solution:<br /><ul><li>The code</li><li>A brief description of your solution, and why it is (or isn’t) the most efficient</li><li>How you verified that your code is correct</li><li>How much time you spent</li></ul></blockquote>We chose this problem because it is short but difficult to find the solution through an online search. If you are able to google a solution then you probably know a thing or two about algorithms and will meet our requirements anyways. I advised applicants not to spend over an hour on it. Around 25 out of the 30 applicants responded with a solution. Less than half of them did reasonably well.<br /><br />While the puzzle helped to determine who did and did not know how to code, there were many candidates that had a plausible solution that had one or more areas of improvement. We probably weighed the code quality a little too much, since those without perfect solutions ended up doing just as well (or better!) in the interviews.<br /><br />We only interviewed with 9 candidates to give each interview 40 minutes. This is to have ample time to sell the position to students, and to make sure not to run over time. We also advised students not to dress up for the interviews. We found out later that little gestures like that really helps students.<br /><br />Because we already had students' solutions to puzzles, I wasn't sure whether asking additional technical questions was necessary. They were. Those with near perfect, textbook solutions to the puzzle tended not to do as well when asked to code quickly. (And yes, I brought a laptop for candidates to type on, again to make their lives easier.)<br /><br />The end results were hires whose background and history either resonated with or complimented ours (diversity is very important). We're very excited to have both of them onboard!<br /><br /><b>Polychart is Hiring!</b><br /><br />We are looking for a Director of Engineering to bring on as a partner -- a technologist who sees the potential in Polychart and wants to build a great company with us. Companies are built by people, and so a good way to judge how well a company will do is to look at their hiring process. This was ours. If you think Polychart will be a good fit, shoot me an email!<br /><br />End of EntryAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02876857358297281740noreply@blogger.com