Zittrain on Colbert

So I'm a little late with this news (hey, I was out of the country), but Jonathan Zittrain was on Colbert plugging his book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. (If you Google Zittrain and Colbert, you'll find links...) It's a pretty tech-laden interview for the mainstream, in my opinion.

This is relevant (at least to me) because I've known Zittrain for years -- we interned at Microsoft at the same time back in college, and bumped into each other again at Harvard (where he was a law professor, before moving to Oxford). I'm now officially humbled -- someone I know, approximately sort-of in my field, has appeared on Colbert. (OK, I admit, I'd personally rather go on the Daily Show, but still...)

CS Family Values

One aspect of graduate school at Berkeley I recall quite clearly was the lack of children. Graduate students having children was and is generally quite rare, and I'm not sure that CS at Berkeley was much worse in that regard than anywhere else -- I'd be interested if readers have any pointers to stats on the issue, by field and/or by school. But it struck me even then that it seemed unusual for the faculty to have kids, particularly in the theory group.

I know there's the old advice -- still apparently prevalent in some circles -- not to have children until you get tenure. Though that advice seems less widespread these days, or perhaps just more young faculty are choosing to ignore it. (Or, perhaps, I'm just out of touch -- at Harvard, at least, the common case is for CS junior faculty to have kids.) [And apparently I may also be suffering sex bias; see this summary and this pointer to an NSF report, suggesting that the effect on tenure chances for men having children is small, but is much larger for women.]

Does having kids help or hurt one's work? I don't think there's a clear answer, that it probably depends on the individual (and that the effect, in any case, is probably overestimated). On the other hand, I think a career framework that pushes people to postpone or not have children is ultimately cutting off a substantial supply of raw talent, which can't be a good thing. If academia as a whole is moving away from that 20th (19th?) century mindset, I'm all in favor of it.

(An aside -- Chloe Elizabeth Mitzenmacher arrived last week, prompting some of these thoughts. Which, due to lack of sleep, might be even less coherent than average...)

Barbara Grosz now Dean of Radcliffe

Barbara Grosz was officially appointed dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Barbara had previously been the dean of science for Radcliffe and took over as Interim Dean of the Institute when Drew Faust was made President of Harvard.

For those who don't know Barbara, she's known for her work in AI, and has been a professor at Harvard since 1986. I took her class and TA'ed for her as an undergraduate. I'm excited this has been made official, because I was getting tired of using the word "interim" whenever discussing Barbara's status.

Harvard computer science continues its tradition of being quite "outgoing". Harry Lewis was Dean of Harvard College, Mike Smith is currently Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and now Barbara Grosz is Dean of Radcliffe. Per capita, we're well above average in Dean-ness. The joke around the department is once you get tenure you have to watch your back, or someone might make you Dean of something....

An Experiment in Viral Marketing : Buying Tickets Online

(Warning: the following post is highly crass and commercial. If that offends you in any way, please don't read on.)

Thanks to some friends who are working in Web marketing, I have a chance to try a viral marketing experiment right here on the blog. I have been give some discount codes for a new ticket site -- ticketheroes.com -- which offers tickets for sports/concerts/other events. Anyone can use them, at least until 1/1/08, so you can use them, or tell a friend to use them, or have a friend tell a friend, or whatever. According to that whole 6 degrees of separation thing, it's possible that everyone in the world could learn my discount codes, which by the way are:

MMBLOG1 [$5 off any ticket purchase]
MMBLOG2 [5% off any ticket purchase]
[Yes, you can only use one of them...]

To be clear, I am officially acting as a consultant for the SEM company that is trying to drive traffic to TicketHeroes. I am not getting a direct cut back from sales using these codes. (Though if this experiment is hugely successful, perhaps I'll try to negotiate one!) But I will get back data -- I'll get to see how many sales used the codes. (Don't worry, I won't get your credit card number.) I find this all very interesting. Can this little blog, focusing primarily on academic topics, help sell things? Really? I kind of doubt it, but hey, I remember thinking around the year 1999 that it would be a really impressive thing if Google became a 1 billion dollar company, so clearly I don't know as much as I should about marketing.

I've done my own checks and the site's prices look to be slightly less than or the same as other similar sites, even without the discount. So this should be a win for anyone looking for tickets, although of course you shouldn't trust me, you should compare.

Next post, we'll return to less crass, commercial topics, like how to re-finance your mortgage.

Graduate Students, Socialize!

The discussion that in my mind connected breadth requirements to social networks reminded me of my time as a graduate student at Berkeley, where there were lots of informal social opportunities for graduate students to meet and talk. The CS grad student association had a weekly bagel/donut hour that was always well attended (mmmm...donuts....); the theory students arranged a Friday afternoon seminar (I believe called TGIF) where theory students would present something (a practice talk, some ongoing research, a paper they liked), no faculty allowed; there was a regular Friday pre-weekend grad student get-together that would be at a semi-randomly chosen local bar (usually upwards of a dozen or so people would show, with a high percentage of theorists, who didn't have to spend the weekend coding or running jobs); a grad student poker game broke out once a month or so (again, with a high percentage of theorists, who'd add complexity to the games).

Besides helping create a more pleasant graduate student atmosphere and experience, these activities let graduate students get to know more about each other and what they were doing. And I believe expanding your own work-related social network pays dividends in the long run.

I don't know what the current state of graduate student life is like these days, but if you don't think there's enough of this sort of stuff where you are, I encourage you, take action! (Don't wait for the department to do it; you'll do it better anyhow.) Try to get a grad student poker game going. Or a biweekly pub night. Or start an informal seminar. Or an open problems session. Or whatever it is you want to do, where graduate students can just hang out together, without faculty, with it being about fun, instead of or combined with work. Besides having more fun, you'll open up more opportunities for the serendipitous events in your work-life that lead to exciting projects.

Harry Lewis's book, Excellence Without a Soul

Since my colleague Harry Lewis is kind enough to stop by and post comments from time to time, I would be remiss not to encourage everyone with an interest in the education of college students -- in the broad sense of whether universities are and how universities should be teaching students to become adults -- to pick up his book Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education (also now available in paperback as well). I highly recommend the book, and plan to give it to my daughters to read when they're teenagers so they're better prepared for the college experience.

The book takes a stark look at the directions of modern college education, painting a picture of increasing directionlessness at the leading research universities, using Harvard and Harry's experience as Dean of Harvard college as a backdrop. Whether you agree with it or not -- and I have to admit I found a strong resonance with most of the issues in the book -- it is definite food for thought, well-reasoned and well-argued through and through.

There are two very small points of criticism I can make with the book. The first is that while the book sheds light on a number of challenging problems, it frustratingly offers little advice in the way of solutions. However, I think this was quite intentional. Indeed, one of the points in the book is that for many of these problems, what is needed isn't a "solution", but leadership, discussion, and the building of a consensus within the university.

The second nitpick is that one issue raised repeatedly in the book is the invasion of the consumer culture in education. Students pay a great deal for an education, particularly at private institutions, and they expect to get what they pay for; Harry argues forcefully that this trend is not good for the education of students. It would seem to me that this should be another compelling reason why Harvard shouldn't charge for tuition, as it might lessen the "I paid for this" attitude of many students (and parents), but perhaps Harry believes that even if there was no tuition, the consumer attitude would remain.

Book Reviews

For those of you who haven't succumbed to buying the
Mitzenmacher/Upfal textbook on Probability and Computing,
there are two very positive reviews that will appear in the next SIGACT newsletter. Here are the reviews, excerpted from the SIGACT book reviews page Bill Gasarch maintains.

A Book on the Energy Crisis

This post is dedicated to a researcher most CS people might not know about (although most information theorists probably do), David MacKay. I encourage you to go take a look at his web page.

David and I got to know of each other's work because we were both working on Low Density Parity Check codes around the same time. Since then, he's written one of the great textbooks on information theory. He's one of the key people behind the Dasher project, which provides text entry methods for the handicapped based on information theoretic principles. (Really. It's amazing what a well-thought out system based on arithmetic coding and a clever UI can do.)

And now he's finishing up a book on sustainable energy. The book is for laypeople, showing how to think in rough quantitative terms about how much energy is available, how much is being used, and what it all means. No matter what you think about the energy crisis, the book serves as an interesting example of how to try to encourage people to think quantitatively about policy-related issues. He's made a draft freely available. I encourage you to have a look.

Harvard's New Dean

If you haven't heard the news, Michael Smith, a computer science professor renowned for his work in compilers, programming languages, and security, has been named the next Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences here at Harvard. This is great for many reasons:

1. It's great for Harvard. Mike has served as associate dean (which equals chair in Harvard-speak) for EE and CS here; he is a fantastic administrator with great insight and vision. He knows how to build consensus and get positive things done. We need that here.
   
2. It's great for computer science. Mike will have a large presence in the world of higher education; this will improve the visibility of computer science in the always-important administrative circles.
3. It's great for applied science at Harvard. Harvard has been talking a lot about improving its applied science programs; Mike has the background and knowledge to continue to make these improvements happen.
   

However, I can't help but be a bit saddened by his selection.

1. It's a bit of a blow to computer science at Harvard. We're losing one of the key figures in our department. Sure, technically he'll still be around, but we won't have the immediate benefit of his leadership.
2. It's a deep personal loss. Mike has been in the office next to me pretty much since I arrived at Harvard. He's been a mentor and a friend. Sure, technically he'll still be around, but I won't be able to just pop my head in next door anymore. I'll probably have to make an appointment.
   

The times are a-changing for the better here. Best of luck, Mike!