Better late than never:
I am now a contributor for Biocodershub!
Here is my first piece: http://www.biocodershub.net/community/a-great-place-to-work/
Enjoy!
Friday, December 21, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
now everyone can go ivy
Recently thanks to a friend of mine @cmykgirl I recently discovered coursera.org. The site allows you to take courses at top universities that have become popular. Recently I have been taking the machine learning course at Stanford. This course is taught by the very talented Dr. Andrew Ng. You can see his website here
http://ai.stanford.edu/~ang/
His class is extremely engaging and really makes a very difficult subject matter accessible. Arguably he is one the best machine learning practitioners on the planet. You can either watch the lectures for your own academic interest, or do the work and receive a certificate for your work (to boost your resume). Machine learning is only the tip of the iceberg. There is cryptography, genomic science, statistics; the list goes on.
Now I'm not on the payroll for coursera, or if I am they aren't sending me paychecks. But this service as well as the top tier universities that provide the courses raise a very natural question: what is the future of education.
Most of us left high school, we have done something for a year or two, but then we went to college. We may have lived at home or near/on campus, we took courses, we partied, and we eventually graduated. The reason we do this is twofold: we don't know any better, and the numbers we are quoted make it seem that we will have more interesting careers as well as make more money if we go to college. However, with the rising cost of school and tuition, the education path of the average person will be changing. These courses offer a way to enrich the lives of students by gaining knowledge from the greatest minds in their fields.
Here is the point though: Why would you take courses from some University when you can have ivy name attached to your person and be learning from the best? When I was at LSU I had conversations with a lot of my fellow graduate students on job prospects: something that graduate students are rather poor at thinking about. I raised the issue that Universities and colleges around the country were making budget cuts, cutting instructors and taking fewer grad students, stopped hiring, and just getting all current staff to teach more courses. When the budget cuts and hiring freezes are lifted, the Universities will realize they need no more faculty.
What is the point of all this? I'll tell you what the point is anonymous question asker. The point is that people in graduate school will have a harder time finding work then in generations before. Hard times finding jobs for recent grads? This isn't something new. Its also not bad when you have been in school for four years and may have to redesign yourself. However, when you have been in school for eleven years this may be hard to swallow. With the innovation of free education from top tier Universities offering courses, we may see a shrinking of smaller colleges and universities and their offerings.
As someone who uses and benefits from free courses, I celebrate. All I can say is I am glad I have left academia and my paychecks aren't derived from them.
http://ai.stanford.edu/~ang/
His class is extremely engaging and really makes a very difficult subject matter accessible. Arguably he is one the best machine learning practitioners on the planet. You can either watch the lectures for your own academic interest, or do the work and receive a certificate for your work (to boost your resume). Machine learning is only the tip of the iceberg. There is cryptography, genomic science, statistics; the list goes on.
Now I'm not on the payroll for coursera, or if I am they aren't sending me paychecks. But this service as well as the top tier universities that provide the courses raise a very natural question: what is the future of education.
Most of us left high school, we have done something for a year or two, but then we went to college. We may have lived at home or near/on campus, we took courses, we partied, and we eventually graduated. The reason we do this is twofold: we don't know any better, and the numbers we are quoted make it seem that we will have more interesting careers as well as make more money if we go to college. However, with the rising cost of school and tuition, the education path of the average person will be changing. These courses offer a way to enrich the lives of students by gaining knowledge from the greatest minds in their fields.
Here is the point though: Why would you take courses from some University when you can have ivy name attached to your person and be learning from the best? When I was at LSU I had conversations with a lot of my fellow graduate students on job prospects: something that graduate students are rather poor at thinking about. I raised the issue that Universities and colleges around the country were making budget cuts, cutting instructors and taking fewer grad students, stopped hiring, and just getting all current staff to teach more courses. When the budget cuts and hiring freezes are lifted, the Universities will realize they need no more faculty.
What is the point of all this? I'll tell you what the point is anonymous question asker. The point is that people in graduate school will have a harder time finding work then in generations before. Hard times finding jobs for recent grads? This isn't something new. Its also not bad when you have been in school for four years and may have to redesign yourself. However, when you have been in school for eleven years this may be hard to swallow. With the innovation of free education from top tier Universities offering courses, we may see a shrinking of smaller colleges and universities and their offerings.
As someone who uses and benefits from free courses, I celebrate. All I can say is I am glad I have left academia and my paychecks aren't derived from them.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Nowhere to Row
When I was a young man, my father emphasized the value of knowing what you are doing in life by telling me "You may be the best rower on the planet, but if you don't know where you are going you will never win the race".
His point, for those of you who are as lost as a 14 year old me was, means that hard work alone won't yield the life or results you want.
However, what happens when you don't know where you want to go or what you are looking for? For anyone who has ever been in research you know exactly how this is: there is some greater connection between two or more things, but you aren't sure what is it. The destination is now more important than how to get there.
More often than not, visualization can be the key to gaining non-trivial insights into such destinations. Recently, Noah Iliinsky gave a talk on the values of visualization and the dos and don'ts of it and the value of visualizing data. It can be found here (as well as a summary of it):
http://thenoisychannel.com/2012/04/18/noah-iliinsky-tech-talk-on-designing-data-visualizations/
Often times in the math world we just create examples and attempt to build insights from observations on those examples. The study of manifolds and topology has become first craft the examples then build out the theory. In the more data driven fields, visualization can provide insights into what data is telling us and what the outliers are telling us.
It is important to understand that data visualization is an art and takes skill to build good and robust software to do this. Take Mr. Iliinsky's suggestions to heart.
His point, for those of you who are as lost as a 14 year old me was, means that hard work alone won't yield the life or results you want.
However, what happens when you don't know where you want to go or what you are looking for? For anyone who has ever been in research you know exactly how this is: there is some greater connection between two or more things, but you aren't sure what is it. The destination is now more important than how to get there.
More often than not, visualization can be the key to gaining non-trivial insights into such destinations. Recently, Noah Iliinsky gave a talk on the values of visualization and the dos and don'ts of it and the value of visualizing data. It can be found here (as well as a summary of it):
http://thenoisychannel.com/2012/04/18/noah-iliinsky-tech-talk-on-designing-data-visualizations/
Often times in the math world we just create examples and attempt to build insights from observations on those examples. The study of manifolds and topology has become first craft the examples then build out the theory. In the more data driven fields, visualization can provide insights into what data is telling us and what the outliers are telling us.
It is important to understand that data visualization is an art and takes skill to build good and robust software to do this. Take Mr. Iliinsky's suggestions to heart.
Monday, February 27, 2012
We test students, maybe we should start testing congress
I recently posted about something that I found apalling: Rick Santorum, who I would definitely nominate for a Darwin award, is at it again. This time, hes going after a different minority group: children
You can check out the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57381029/santorum-obamas-worldview-upside-down/
Basically, for all you unfamiliar with this, Santorum believes that neither the Federal government nor the states should be mandating/running any form of public education. Their role should be funding it and thats it. The Communities should be running the schools as they see fit. While this works wonders in suburbia where I grew up where the community was filled with white collar executives and their families who worked very closely with the schools, not everywhere is like that.
I have spent five years teaching and one year coordinating a summer program. Most of my experience is teaching inner city students whether they are from Albuquerque, Boston, New York, or Baton Rouge. Luckily for me, I had the pleasure of teaching and working with high achieving students: They wanted to be there. It is incredibly enjoyable and it has shaped my life by working with some if not all of them.
However, I am not so blind. Not all students are motivated and hard working. In fact, you cannot rely on kids nor the communities of people they come from that are struggling to find work or are overworked and underpaid. The fact of the matter is that education is not their top priority. This is not to say that they don't care about their children. This is far from the truth. Most people are taking that second or third job to support their family and put food on the table. They rely on the state to educate their child: to have standards for what their kids learn and monitor who is at the front of the classroom working with them day in and day out.
States as a whole rely on the state to set standards and to monitor the progress of the insitutes of learning which call themselves public education. It is because of the state's involvement that schools where there isn't a strong parental/community involvement stay afloat. This is how America grew up, and it is the future of our youth and children. Mr. Santorum needs to step into a school before he starts decapitating public education.
You can check out the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57381029/santorum-obamas-worldview-upside-down/
Basically, for all you unfamiliar with this, Santorum believes that neither the Federal government nor the states should be mandating/running any form of public education. Their role should be funding it and thats it. The Communities should be running the schools as they see fit. While this works wonders in suburbia where I grew up where the community was filled with white collar executives and their families who worked very closely with the schools, not everywhere is like that.
I have spent five years teaching and one year coordinating a summer program. Most of my experience is teaching inner city students whether they are from Albuquerque, Boston, New York, or Baton Rouge. Luckily for me, I had the pleasure of teaching and working with high achieving students: They wanted to be there. It is incredibly enjoyable and it has shaped my life by working with some if not all of them.
However, I am not so blind. Not all students are motivated and hard working. In fact, you cannot rely on kids nor the communities of people they come from that are struggling to find work or are overworked and underpaid. The fact of the matter is that education is not their top priority. This is not to say that they don't care about their children. This is far from the truth. Most people are taking that second or third job to support their family and put food on the table. They rely on the state to educate their child: to have standards for what their kids learn and monitor who is at the front of the classroom working with them day in and day out.
States as a whole rely on the state to set standards and to monitor the progress of the insitutes of learning which call themselves public education. It is because of the state's involvement that schools where there isn't a strong parental/community involvement stay afloat. This is how America grew up, and it is the future of our youth and children. Mr. Santorum needs to step into a school before he starts decapitating public education.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Finding the hack
Earlier this year, a great book came out by Marcus Wohlsen called Biopunk. It was a collection of stories of biologists and bioengineers hacking the science of life. It amounted to these talented individuals finding clever and cheap solutions to various problems (such as seeing whether local milk had a dangerous contamination).
This type of biology called DIY or Do It Yourself Biology is becoming increasingly popular. It is analogous with the early 90s when cell phones were being introduced in mass: Expensive at first, but then came down in price. This price drop, while had many factors, reflected a change of standard of living. It reflected the fact that people expected to be able to contact each other: No matter where you were, you could be contacted within seconds. This idea has transcended mere communication. We now have changed our ideals about our health and how it is not only doctors and healthcare provider's responsibility, but our own.
Now more than ever, we need to research and take care of our self. Social media has even gone so far as to be able to link us to people with similar stomach types and how to best deal with those various bacteria that identify us to other members of society.
The point of all of this is that with rising healthcare costs, we need to find alternative and cost effective ways to stay healthy. Thanks to @pascal_biotech for posting this:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/health-industry-smartphones-tablets
Researchers are now working within our current arsenal to bring mHealth or "mobile health". It is through cost effective "hacks" such as mobile applications that our country can reduce its healthcare costs and we can bring healthcare to countries that aren't financial juggernaughts. It is only through hacks and alternative innovation such as this that we can bring healthcare to the ever scaling masses.
This type of biology called DIY or Do It Yourself Biology is becoming increasingly popular. It is analogous with the early 90s when cell phones were being introduced in mass: Expensive at first, but then came down in price. This price drop, while had many factors, reflected a change of standard of living. It reflected the fact that people expected to be able to contact each other: No matter where you were, you could be contacted within seconds. This idea has transcended mere communication. We now have changed our ideals about our health and how it is not only doctors and healthcare provider's responsibility, but our own.
Now more than ever, we need to research and take care of our self. Social media has even gone so far as to be able to link us to people with similar stomach types and how to best deal with those various bacteria that identify us to other members of society.
The point of all of this is that with rising healthcare costs, we need to find alternative and cost effective ways to stay healthy. Thanks to @pascal_biotech for posting this:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/health-industry-smartphones-tablets
Researchers are now working within our current arsenal to bring mHealth or "mobile health". It is through cost effective "hacks" such as mobile applications that our country can reduce its healthcare costs and we can bring healthcare to countries that aren't financial juggernaughts. It is only through hacks and alternative innovation such as this that we can bring healthcare to the ever scaling masses.
Introduction
Hi all,
Welcome to my personal/professional blog. This is a blog about science, myself, and decisions (mostly of the healthy variety). As the name suggests, I will discuss a number of decisions that I have made, other people have made, and how you can make similar decisions. Too often I see/hear people (including myself and those close to me) make decisions for arbitrary reasons. They don't stop and think why they are doing so. They don't ground those choices in data, in reason, in probability. Well I am tired of it. Its time to stop making decisions, its time to start decisioneering!
As for myself. My name is Alex. I am a fallen mathematician. Now I write for MMORPG.com (although the views I express are my own). I am currently a data analyst with a pursuit of placing myself on the bleeding edge of computational biology. I used to be a DJ for WUML (found at WUML.org). I am the eternal student and love learning. I live in Boston and think it is truly a wonderful place.
Welcome to my personal/professional blog. This is a blog about science, myself, and decisions (mostly of the healthy variety). As the name suggests, I will discuss a number of decisions that I have made, other people have made, and how you can make similar decisions. Too often I see/hear people (including myself and those close to me) make decisions for arbitrary reasons. They don't stop and think why they are doing so. They don't ground those choices in data, in reason, in probability. Well I am tired of it. Its time to stop making decisions, its time to start decisioneering!
As for myself. My name is Alex. I am a fallen mathematician. Now I write for MMORPG.com (although the views I express are my own). I am currently a data analyst with a pursuit of placing myself on the bleeding edge of computational biology. I used to be a DJ for WUML (found at WUML.org). I am the eternal student and love learning. I live in Boston and think it is truly a wonderful place.
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