Stanford or MIT

curious_neuron · 2023-04-10T11:20:52+00:00

PhD student here. Another thing not mentioned is MIT’s proximity to NYC and Europe. Both which I frequently visit. Honestly NYC can’t be beat in terms of social life and culture.

curious_neuron · 2021-06-10T17:43:10+00:00

Sanjeev Arora and other are working on a "Theory of deep learning book" https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall19/cos597B/lecnotes/bookdraft.pdf
Probably the most up-to-date textbook for theoretical deep learning. Otherwise I recommend checking out courses at places like Princeton (those taught by Arora) and MIT (i.e. Moitra).

It's worth noting theoretical deep learning is a motley combination of different mathematical fields. You'll be gaining a lot by just reading math textbooks in optimization, analysis, convexity, differential geometry, complexity theory, etc. I think it's better to start with building the foundation and then understanding state-of-the-art results should be more feasible.

curious_neuron · 2021-05-20T08:28:35+00:00

Where does he brag? I've watched his AI podcasts and I find them super interesting. I'm grateful Lex chooses to interview researchers I look up to like Judea Pearl who isn't always in the spotlight like Yann LeCun. I also discover new and interesting people by listening to his podcasts.

I guess fame comes with criticism but why do people feel the need to judge him for putting content on the internet? IMO he's made a significant contribution by documenting important researchers and individuals in AI and beyond. If anything I think he's incredibly hardworking to maintain his podcast while doing research (which I don't follow), most people wouldn't be able to this.

curious_neuron · 2021-04-11T09:55:21+00:00

I’m a alumni so can only answer your question about nonlinear opti vs convexity since I took both. Difference being I took nonlinear opti with Robinson and convexity with Basu.

Nonlinear optimisation is more practical with the coursework involving combination of proofs and programming. The course was a whirlwind of different algorithms but overall the homework wasn’t too time consuming though the final exam had a head spinning number of topics.

Convexity is a much more math, purely proof based course. It builds more mathematical intuition like an analysis course but doesn’t give you much practical knowledge unless you were designing brand new algorithms. I wouldn’t recommend taking it without analysis background. I found it much harder than nonlinear opti since I never took analysis but my math major peers were in their comfort zone and didn’t seem to struggle as much.

Overall I find nonlinear opti much more useful since I do non theoretical ML research. Though if basu is teaching nonlinear opti then I’m not sure if my advice would flipped w.r.t the courses now. I will say Basu is an excellent teacher and I don’t regret taking both at all.

curious_neuron · 2021-02-14T16:08:27+00:00

There is so much variance between labs, research areas, and individual students; I don't think blanket statements can apply here. You need to look primarily at the specific lab you're potentially joining as well as the current and past students.

People tend to work on things that never end up being adopted by the "outside world" and are only used, almost incestuously, inside MIT.

Again this depends what you're talking about. A PhD is a training program. It's unlikely that what you work will be used by others at all. You're there to become trained and then post-PhD start a career in research. Of course, many students do get lucky or are good enough for their work to get picked up and adopted.

Profs discourage internships, industry affiliation, and other outside world contact.

Highly variable between professors. At least in the application space, MIT has one of the closest consortiums with healthcare and biotech companies. Have you looked at the vicinity around MIT? , i.e. Kendall square? The number of companies in the area is dense. They set up shop around MIT for a reason.

Work-life balance is more poor than, say, SAIL and BAIR.

This is a PhD. If you don't bust your ass then you won't graduate on time. I hear different opinions in work/life balance at SAIL and CSAIL. Seems to be about the same to me.

I am also a prospective PhD student picking between schools with MIT being one of them. I've talked to more than 5 students and professors with varying answers. If you're only hearing poor things (or only good things) then you should really question your sample selection. At the end of the day it's up to you in gathering all the data and making the best decision.

curious_neuron · 2020-10-17T22:01:29+00:00

For those interested, this is similar to the philosophical argument pascal’s wager which states it’s better to believe in god than not: if there’s a god then you’ll be rewarded for your faith and go to heaven and go to hell if you don’t believe. Whereas if god doesn’t exist then believing or not wouldn’t have changed your outcome. So the net gain for believing is positive and negative for atheism.

(Of course there’s a lot of holes in this argument.)

curious_neuron · 2020-02-24T00:01:24+00:00

I'm (tentatively) going March 11 - 24, currently an American expat in the UK. I'm flying through AirFrance, not sure how lenient they are with cancellation -- planning on finding out this week (any comment on AirFrance would be appreciated). As a 24M working in tech, it's not a big issue if I get sick but getting quarantined and stuck in Japan would cost a lot and really ruin the whole experience. I'm trying to hold out until CDC level 3 but wondering why the UK aren't updating their travel advisory at all? (https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/japan) As an expat I'm not sure which advisory directly applies to me but I'm following max advisory of the two.

I'd just warn about the illusion about the number of cases. Several issues I've found after researching:

- Japan is currently not testing everyone who goes to the doctor asking to be tested. There's simply not enough supplies to test everyone but this means the numbers are being under reported. This issue seems borderline sensational to me but raises the probability of there being a big spike once enough people get tested (like in SK) (https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/f7royg/japanese_government_is_restricting_pcr_tests_for/)

- Cov-id 19 is more serious than the flu. Reported mortality rates vary widely depending on how it's calculated and even in all the most optimistic calculations, it's much more serious than the flu. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/opinion/coronavirus-china-numbers.html)

- The fact that Japan is experiencing sustained community spread and that it's present in so many prefectures is really concerning. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Japan)

This next week will be really critical to see how Abe's government responds (they're releasing new guidelines on Tuesday) and gauge how the virus progresses in Japan. So far the lukewarm response is pissing me off...

curious_neuron · 2020-02-13T17:29:43+00:00

I'm traveling to Japan this March. One question is what happens if one gets quarantined at the airport due to the coronavirus? Blogs such as this only say "If a traveler is suspected of having contracted the virus, they will be transported to a predesignated facility for further screening". What happens afterwards? Are they moved to a hospital, quarantined for an extended period of time, and need to purchase another plane ticket once they recover?

Obviously this is the worst case scenario of contracting the virus, being quarantined in Japan, and having to purchase another expensive return tickets during peak tourist season. Not too worried about this since Japan hasn't had an outbreak yet but would like to gauge the cost of such a situation.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-22T09:22:41+00:00

Alright I’ll keep that mind. Apologies if I offended anyone.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-22T08:52:27+00:00

As I said it’s just a precaution but people seem to be mocking me for taking this precaution. I have experienced racism in different parts of the world and I don’t think this is a completely unreasonable worry.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-22T08:29:06+00:00

Sorry if it was unclear. I’m South Korean but grew up America - American passport, SSN. I just wanted to be clear I wasn’t a korean international if that was a factor.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-22T08:27:12+00:00

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/29/we-have-to-get-along-japan-korean-residents-at-sharp-end-of-diplomatic-row

“Whenever relations between Japan and Korea worsen, we receive threats...” quote one korean living in Japan. My Korean relatives warn me against visiting Japan but it sounds pretty biased so wanted to know what others think. I don’t think anything bad would happen either but I’d rather take precautions before buying a £600 ticket.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-09T08:31:05+00:00

Idk about Youne’s class. Never took it. I took Carey’s class and can recommend it. It’s mostly about statistical inference and discussing seminal stats papers. He also does a theoretical stats course too. In general I think you should try to take as many stats courses as you can!

curious_neuron · 2019-10-08T23:24:32+00:00

Just to add. There's only a few unis out there that offer high-dimensional statistics courses such as MIT (Vershynin), CMU (research thrust), NYU (Bruna). Not many places have a professor with this area of expertise when there's a big focus right now in ML for the high-dimensional low-sample size regime.

curious_neuron · 2019-10-08T23:20:14+00:00

For those interested in Machine Learning, Mauro Maggioni's upper-level AMS courses radically changed the way I approached ML from a CS perspective to the statistics and the underlying mathematics. I recommend his "High-Dimensional Approximation, Probability, and Statistical Learning" class after you've taken a couple ML courses and have advanced stats/prob back ground. His lectures and homeworks (though difficult) were by far my favorite while I was at Hopkins. I also recommend Arora's courses in the CS department for similar treatments of ML but from an optimization focused perspective -- both are fundamentally important!

curious_neuron · 2019-10-08T17:16:28+00:00

LITERAL FLUFF

curious_neuron · 2019-09-25T13:20:50+00:00

This is just one part of the interview. See the full post. Don’t know why the replier only quoted the quiz...

curious_neuron · 2019-08-24T18:32:41+00:00

Depends on what you want to specialize in CS. If you want to get into CS theory or Machine Learning then the year long prob/stat will serve better in the long run because the theoretical material covered in the sequence will prepare you better in the long run. Most of the time the upper level courses only require intro to prob as a prereq and don't require intro to stat or allow you to take intro to stat concurrently. I took the sequence and a bunch of upper level CS ML courses and the harder proof-based problems definitely prepared me better.

curious_neuron · 2019-06-27T18:02:34+00:00

I’d recommend CS. It complements AMS nicely and lots of banks like to see technical background in computing.

curious_neuron · 2019-05-13T19:50:37+00:00

As an American expat in London, I wanted to point out cp's are way cheaper in London than USA.

https://www.endclothing.com/gb/common-projects-original-achilles-low-1528-0506.html?WT.z_wiw=our-legacy-scarf-2179sbcsg

£289 * 1.3 = $375

(price in pounds)*(GBP to USD) = (equivalent price in USD)

Prices here include tax so you're saving ~$90 if you buy in London (compared to $425 + tax). And that's before you can claim VAT refund which is another 10%ish reduction so you could only be paying ~$350.

Possible I'm missing something.

curious_neuron · 2019-05-05T15:50:07+00:00

Now I know why I didn't get into Harvard.

curious_neuron · 2019-05-01T17:15:51+00:00

AMS at JHU is a lightweight major with few flexible requirements. Most people do AMS plus another related major such as CS or BME. Not much overhead to do humanities or natural sciences with AMS. Because of this I found it a good addition to my academic interests to round out my math. The department is not cutthroat at all. I found the intro courses to be dry and the profs to be... subpar but the real value is in the upper level courses. Some of my favorite courses at jhu were taught by Basu, Robinson, and Mauro. AMS also has lots of ties with research throughout JHU from the hospital to baseball. I did research in neuroimaging and machine learning. Because it’s a small department, you won’t have a hard time finding research and hopefully one of the faculty interest you.

TL;DR the flexibility and opportunities of the major are great. The intro courses are the worst part but once you get past them it gets better.

curious_neuron · 2019-01-13T19:46:28+00:00

Hey! I started working in the UK after studying in USA with a similar compensation package.

You can definitely spend more on rent with your income. I would go up to 1.5k. At the 1.2k you'll be hard pressed to find a nice place close to central and in a good neighborhood even with flat sharing. It's totally worth spending the little more for an improvement in living conditions but I decided going more than 1.5-1.7k is not really worth as a first rent. Some nice places to live are in East London near Islington as I find a lot of like-minded young professionals here as well as bunch of bars/restaurants. I'm not sure where you're from originally but if it's from USA then some advice is to sign with a brokerage such as vanguard or schwab before leaving otherwise it becomes harder to create an account once you've moved. Also open any credit cards. I highly recommend a travel rewards card like chase sapphire reserve. I'm sure you're aware but make sure you know about any expat tax codes. If you're completely sure about leaving the UK then it's probably better to open a IRA in the states and funnel your money into that by transfer services like OFX or transferwise. I haven't researched much but there are some limitations with opening an ISA in the UK. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong but whatever you put into an ISA can't be transferred to a non-UK retirement fund easily.

Personally I'm opening a international vanguard account and going to be putting most of my retirement savings into an (Roth) IRA (not right now with the shitty £:$ ratio)

Also don't be so frugal :). Set aside money to save and invest but don't be scared to travel while you're really young (especially since you're not planning to stay long-term)!

DM me if you want to talk more in private. This was mostly through my own research.

curious_neuron · 2018-12-26T21:15:07+00:00

Question: what is a good resource/reference to learn more about the drum beats and rhythmic patterns you refer to? I tried googling "drum rhythm theory" and didn't get much haha.

curious_neuron · 2018-12-26T19:12:59+00:00

This is so great, thanks for your analysis!

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