Category: academics

  • Donoho’s “Greater Data Science’, part 0

    “50 years of Data Science”. Donoho, David.  2015. [link to downloadable versions] Donoho’s got a manifesto that ain’t foolin’ around.  I have a lot of thoughts about it, but I’m going to write them up as an open-ended series of marginalia on this remarkable essay. Data science is a thing after all I’ve said elsewhere (probably…

  • “Grad school” is a collaboration anti-pattern

    To quote Wikipedia: an anti-pattern is: a pattern used in social or business operations or software engineering that may be commonly used but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in practice. [emphasis mine] I’ve been exploring patterns for actually working on software — not for designing it — and I realized that I myself spent a lot of time…

  • Dolphins are nifty — but not magical

    I saw this, and thought others would find it interesting too. … said one of the phoneticians at my alma mater. It’s a collection of rather fantastic claims about “dolphin language”, mixed with breathless praise for their affirming-the-consequent “Aqua Thought Foundation” (slogan might as well be “we already know dolphins are better than us”) and…

  • Mostly harmless

    I got to go out with three computationally-sharp alums of my linguistics department last night. I’m proud to be friends with all of them, and it’s nice to know there are reasons we all have the same “ancestry” — we have, at the very least, quite compatible senses of humor. Bill and I have a running…

  • on moving from academics to startups

    An old labmate asked me for my thoughts on interviewing (she just graduated with a PhD, and wanted my perspective on interviewing at a startup). I don’t feel like I’m an expert, but I’ve been through the PhD wars and I’ve successfully interviewed at more than one startup in Silicon Valley. I’ve included what I…