Talking is hard

Okey so this is cool. The hackathon project I did with a group is launching off into the real world. People are interested. Much of this is because my partners are super good at networking and presenting. We went to a brain health summit the other day (it’s a tremor-detecting app). There were a bunch of professionals there and we presented to them. By that I mean they talked and I looked pretty.  Then they kept on networking and talking to people and we presented again to get a grant. (they talk, I look pretty) We need $$$ for a hippa-compliant server.

I’m very impressed at how they are good leaders and by watching I am getting all those leadership development points. I think this project is good for the community because it’s for patients so bam service engagement. Actually they plan to commercialize but it’s still good for everyone. Watching these people with their unique skills, my Global Awareness has been raised.

There’s a lot of stuff to know even just in the field of computer science. 2 guys on my team are super good with coding servers and web pages, I don’t know anything about that… I can make script files? Very good script files. Outside the field, my other 2 partners know a lot about the neuroscience behind the app and the ideas were surprisingly necessary. And everyone is better at talking to people then me. Social skills seem hard, I hope that this trend will continue.

That which you do not know

Okay so here I am, classic undergraduate. “Let’s try to do some research”

Obviously the most fun category is machine learning, but WOW did I not know what I was getting into.

So I read this guy’s paper. HOLY CABOOSE. It is unreadable jargon. Imagine reading this, but every word is just as complex as the word ‘jargon’. Now, imagine that you are also drinking a cup of coffee as you read this. As you note that it is a bit bitter, a friend comes over and asks you if you’ve been to the beach recently. Thanks for imagining that.

Of course, with deep thought and contemplation I am able to make out some words that I understand in the paper. The paper is about how we have a bad understanding of deep learning. The paper proposes that we must actually first understand kernel learning.

Ok, what’s a kernel? It’s something that computes dot products fast in high-dimensional space, and is useful for giving a distance metric for a loss function. Or something. Alright, I can deal with high-dimensional space. How many are we talking about? 4? 10? Hell, I’m ready to deal with 10,000. Once you get past 3 it’s all really the sa –

“In particular, many phenomena of large-scale high-dimensional inference are best understood in terms of optimization on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, where standard algorithms can sometimes have properties at odds with finite-dimensional intuition. “

Wait. Did I read that right?

Did I really just see the words “infinite dimensional”?

And like this, the paper would continually flabbergast me, defying all expectations of complexity. I would ask,

“What’s a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert space?”

Google: “It’s a special kind of Hilbert Space”.

“And what’s that?”
Google: It’s a special kind of Banach Space”

“Which is…?”

Google: “A complete vector space, you moron. It’s a special type of vector space. Don’t tell me you don’t even know that.

“Umm…”

Google: “It’s just an extension of a complete ordered field!!”
“UMMMMMMMM”
okay it actually goes about 6 levels deeper but you get the point. I have much to learn.

Oh, and I got the research position so I guess I’ll be learning over the summer. Guess that’s Original Inquiry for you. I’ll get a lot of Academic Enrichment from that. That’s what those terms mean to me.

Hello world!

Hello world is the typical thing programmers do when they just want to see anything work at all goddamnit but nothings working and everythings crashing i can’t even get TEXT on the screen jesus CHRIST why is it so hard to do something so simple how the HORSE can I expect to ever make a PICTURE oh my GOD PICTURE OF A HORSE.