books, stories, poems, algorithms, math and computer science. 

some art and anecdotes too.
There is a lot of need in the Industry for engineers who know the art (edited to craft )of research (pursue and find the right literature and algorithms, understand prior art, adopt and modify for a specific context with domain awareness, interpret results, dive deeper into the unique insights), or researchers who can apply this art with engineering finesse. I wondered yesterday in a meeting if…
Amazon Advertising opens applications for early career scientists. The new program, which offers full-time two-year positions, is aimed at recent PhD graduates who want to innovate, publish, and have their work impact millions of customers. The application deadline is May 14.
The Paul Getty Museum did an exhibition juxtaposing Mughal art of Shah Jahan from 1600's with the sketches of Rembrandt 1000's of miles away inspired by the tales. A book goes with it. NY times could not resist making the connection in a recent, beautiful examination of one miniature work on Shah Jahan .
My childrens' book " Redwood Tree and its Friends " was written from China Grade Road in the Big Basin State Park. This road was on fire last week. The park headquarters got gutted (the gift shop carried this book for sale). From here: " Six of seven employee-housing structures burned to the ground. Many wooden bridges over creeks are damaged. Wooden stairs and steps have been torched to coals.…
Darth Vader "I find your lack of faith in masks disturbing" with his choking fingerhold. Covid times, thanks to Disney+, we are all rediscovering Star Wars. To my Facebook friends, please do not buy more drones for kids. Facebook is showing me drone ads incessantly. At troubled times, I look to Jazz. NY Jazz is alive on streams . Jazz is still wafting but hasn't nailed the Covid moment and human…
Yesterday I had NY-quality bagels made by neighbors in Mercer Island. Artichokes and flowers in the garden. Older: Daddy working on a piece of art: 5 year old says, "You are mysterious!" Daddy in COVID times: the little one says " Chewie !" No longer, now more like Picard.
I managed to join a zoom meeting yesterday to honor John Conway. Peter Winkler paid tribute with a story about the brick-stacking puzzle (was interesting to hear "skintle" in context of puzzles). Roger Penrose paid tribute with tilings but also an old classic, Morley's Trisector Theorem. Others like Don Knuth appeared in the pre-meeting chat room, but I could not stay for the entire 3 hrs+ homage.…
Cyril Connolly said, "the greatest impediment to Science is the stroller in the hallway" (he said Art, but Science fits as Graham commented), but greater impediment is kids staying at home from school and greatest is kids staying at home doing Art.
Here are questions in my mind: Spread of COVID-19 virus under realistic models, where are we going to be in July 2020? Current stats here . Impact of COVID-19 virus on short and long term commerce. Will the Internet Service Providers be able to scale their provisioning for every kid and adult working and learning from home all day? Today I went to a grocery store and saw they were discounting…
The universal symbol for love should be the brain, not the heart.
On why I don't like to travel to Hawaii in winters: It is basically Seattle West. On why mice and birds don't like Cats: bad reviews! I saw the Harlem Nutcracker in Seattle. The story centers around an African American family in Harlem at Christmas, highlighting the centrality and significance of the grandmother in African-American culture, the resilience of Black American families, and Harlem as…
Someone asked me for my second favorite musical instrument: Trumpet. Hear it, and I challenge you to not raise your head and look beyond horizons. Put it into a soup of jazz and it makes you do all kinds of things.
While work involves "reading", I didn't really read much this year. During this Thanksgiving break, I got a few free moments to read and a desultory path took me to Clive James's, “If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do."
Chopsticks are useful in ways imaginable, and yet to be imagined. A couple of days ago, I had a mice at the house. I set many different types of traps because I didnt know how many and what kinds of mice found their way in, and spent the sleepless night monitoring them, eventually capturing the singleton mice in the AM. Then I picked up the mousetrap with chopsticks, put it into a trash bag, and…
Someone inspired by my hair showed me this stone they brought back from Alaska and carried with them for years. And a colleague did the following.
I was at the marketplace innovations workshop at Stanford. I enjoyed meeting the few faces I recognized and the multitude of new folks in the field. Thanks to the organizers for an excellent program. It was great to see folks attacking two-sided marketplaces in Uber/Lyft. I left with a question. We have had a few iterations of spectrum auctions. These are supposed to be for pricing and using a…
I don't have time to explore and discover untrodden things these days from my base in Mercer Island. A few weeks ago, discovered Toppenish murals , a remarkable community effort to produce historic murals. Thanks to folks at Crafted for letting me have the whole basement to frolic and dine, walkin. More local: The coval house of Mercer Island developed over a 100 years and recently demolished. "As…
NEW CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT ACM-SIAM Algorithmic Principles of Computer Systems (APoCS20) https://www.siam.org/ Conferences/CM/Main/apocs20 January 8, 2020 Hilton Salt Lake City Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Colocated with SODA, SOSA, and Alenex The First ACM-SIAM APoCS is sponsored by SIAM SIAG/ACDA and ACM SIGACT. Important Dates: August 9: Abstract Submission and Paper Registration Deadline…
I was hungry. I came to NYC for Thanksgiving. I went for a walk and found a hole in the wall Japanese curry place which reminded me that good food can be cheap. Then I had a drink in a basement near a stone wall, 3 fireplaces and drinks served by folks with indeterminate life trajectories. Finally, I saw a $20 offoffbroadway work with super acting, sitting with a dozen old souls, the kind of place…
I got an Uber driver with 3 rides total in his profile. I realized I am the target of a MAB algorithm.
After a looong week, I came home, made myself some tea, looked around with no particular focus. I saw large green mangos on the counter. Still unfocused, I checked to see if they were organic, they were. I was about to put them away when my daughter, walking past me, said, "We bought them because they are grown in CA." That perked me up, and I remembered the story of Keitt mangos , the tropical…
Amazon has an interesting way to have scholars (professors, experts) work flexibly with Amazon. Check with the program here . Obviously online advertising is of great interest too, including ML/AI, game theory, optimization, etc.
Amazon has a program for research awards. Check out the process . The focus areas include online advertising for the first time and this should be interesting to researchers in mechanism design, optimization, game theory and multiagent systems, among other things. There is also a lot of interest in machine learning methods in general, and theory in the context of these focus areas. The deadline is…
People who work with data often don't innovate on presenting it. Tufte's classic books presented new options for a generation, but maybe dated. I like a recent book called " Dear Data ". As authors say, "For our project Dear Data, each week throughout a year we collected and measured different types of personal data relating to our lives and then visualized it as a drawing on a postcard which we…
I walked through the sixth avenue, following the pride parade, with two ambient kids. I got a "Go Dad!" cheer from a tired group of paraders. I picked up a pie of Joe's Pizza and walked home. An old man walking the opposite way said, "Hand over Joe's and we will call it a trade," as a way of negotiating a passage across a tight sidewalk spot on the west village. I am glad strangers in NY still…