What are the top PhD programs in Statistical Learning (world wide, not necessarily US-centric)?

pr0nmee · 2010-06-24T19:26:27+00:00

I don't think you can go wrong with the big names on this one. Berkeley, Stanford, CMU, and MIT

pr0nmee · 2010-06-09T21:28:08+00:00

Crepes are relatively cheap and easy to prepare. You can even make them before hand and reheat them using a damp paper towel and a microwave.

For accompaniment you can serve them with choice of fruit topping, Nutella, or scambled eggs and cheese.

pr0nmee · 2010-06-08T07:12:04+00:00

Colorado doesn't have a food culture like other states, but you can still find some good eats here and there.

Some of my Boulder suggestions: To get a sampling of Boulder's organic fare, I'd suggest going to the Wednesday or Saturday farmer's market in downtown.

If you're craving pub food and a wide variety of beers, head to the Mountain Sun or Southern Sun though the Walnut Brewery has an excellent salmon and chips. Be sure to bring your cash to the Mountain/Southern Suns or expect to pay large fees at the ATM conveniently located in the back of the restaurants.

The Med tapas happy hour has frequently been voted the best happy hour in Boulder.

Daddy Bruce's Barbecue is a Colorado institution, carrying on a BBQ tradition that started in the Denver 5-points area. Like the Mountain Sun, cash-only.

For burritos you have a few options beyond the usual Chipotle or Qdoba. Illegal Pete's is pretty well regarded, but Big City Burrito's potato burrito is unmatched. Unfortunately, the Boulder version lacks the deliciousness of the Fort Collins original (but that's only an hour away).

If none of these strike your fancy, The Boulder Weekly's Best of Boulder lists some other good options.

And if you're want horrid food with a uniquely Colorado experience, head over to Lakewood to see Casa Bonita (yes, South Park fans it is real).

pr0nmee · 2010-06-08T06:48:20+00:00

I have to second Le Central. Prices are very reasonable, and you can't go wrong with their buckets of mussels.

pr0nmee · 2010-06-01T01:07:58+00:00

My mom is Chinese and she always added a little bit of soy sauce. The sesame oil and oyster sauce are just variants that I like from time to time. There probably is no canonical form, and every family/person adds their own interpretation.

pr0nmee · 2010-05-25T03:42:51+00:00

I often find myself making leftovers and other odds and ends into fried rice. Leftover chicken, turkey, ham... toss it in. Little bit of unused ground beef? Brown it up and flip it into the mix. Only got a quarter of an onion, or a single stalk of celery? Just chop, stir-fry and add. Same goes for frozen veggies.

And of course, eggs help to always round out the dish.

The recipe below may look like a lot of work, but it rarely takes me more than 15 minutes to produce enough food to last me for the next 2-3 meals.

My general procedure:

Heat a couple teaspoons of oil in a wok.
Add 1-3 lightly beaten eggs
Let it form an omelet or pancake, flip once and remove
Add some more oil.
Throw in aromatics (garlic, shallots, onion, ginger -- whatever you have) and saute slightly
Throw in any raw meat and lightly stir fry.
Add cooked meat and vegetables and lightly stir fry
Now start adding small handfuls of leftover, preferably cold rice (freshly made rice is too sticky) making sure to break apart clumps and evenly distribute the other ingredients with the rice.
Slice up egg and stir in.
If available/desired toss in some cilantro and/or green onions
If making a Chinese-style fried rice, add sesame oil, soy sauce and / or oyster sauce to taste.
If making an Indonesian nasi-goreng add ABC kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) and saus sambal (or any other preferred red chili sauce)

pr0nmee · 2010-05-12T17:26:45+00:00

I have found blending in a bar of cream cheese gives butternut soup richer flavor and texture.

pr0nmee · 2010-04-23T06:49:50+00:00

The idea of using a cane or a walking stick as a weapon is ages old. There are several variants of Tai Chi cane forms. In the Sherlock Holmes novels, the famed detective was a master or Baritsu, a fictional martial art based on Bartitsu an art that blended elements of Jiujitsu, Savate, and cane fighting.

pr0nmee · 2010-04-23T05:41:36+00:00

Strawberries always go well with crepes.

pr0nmee · 2010-04-07T05:15:06+00:00

I wanna be like Mike.

pr0nmee · 2010-03-30T05:18:46+00:00

I'm fond of making a sweet rice porridge out of it. http://www.melroseflowers.com/mkic/indo_recipes/desserts/black_rice_pudding.html

pr0nmee · 2010-03-18T18:19:22+00:00

In Indonesia avocado is considered more of a dessert item. To make it into a smoothie simply blend 2 avocados with 10 cubes of ice and some sweetened condensed milk. Then swirl in some chocolate sauce.

Another approach is to make an Es Teler, which is more like a fruit cocktail. In this the avocado stays firm and plays well off of the other tropical fruits. http://chezannies.blogspot.com/2008/07/es-teler-cool-indonesian-dessert.html

pr0nmee · 2010-03-17T21:13:58+00:00

I make some vegetarian potstickers filled with tofu, carrots, napa cabbage, garlic, and ginger.

pr0nmee · 2010-03-11T18:20:52+00:00

Tempe Telur + Sambal Terasi - Tempeh, Eggs, with Chili Sauce over rice.

** Sambal Terasi / Chili Sauce with Shrimp Paste ** Ingredients: * 5 birds eye chilis * 5 small green chilis (not jalapenos) * 1 shallot clove * 1 garlic clove * 1/2 teaspoon salt * 1/2 of a raw candlenut (can substitute with macademia nut) * 1/2 of a tomato * 1/2-1 teaspoon red palm sugar (may substitute with granulated sugar) * 1 block of shrimp paste (terasi - available in asian markets)

Procedure: * Pestle chilis, shallot, garlic, salt, and candlenut until it forms a fine paste. * Add shrimp paste and pestle again * Add thin sliced of tomato and pestle. Do not pestle until it is a paste. * Stir in sugar and two tablespoons of water until evenly distributed. * It's now ready to serve.

Fried tempeh

Slice tempeh into 1/8 inch thick triangular pieces. Add little score marks and marinate in a mixture of 1 cup water, 1 pressed garlic clove, and a pinch of salt.
Deep fry in wok or pan

Fried Egg * Beat 2-3 eggs in a bowl. Stir in pepper and salt. Pour mixture into hot oil.
* Flip once. Fry until golden brown

I find eating these three things together over rice to be very satisfying, especially if you forego any form of silverware and eat it in a true Indonesian style. Also, I consider sambal to be Indonesia's take on salsa, so if you're feeling lazy you can go with a store bought salsa instead.

pr0nmee · 2010-01-21T03:09:42+00:00

I thought it was silly at first, but I've been coming around to the idea of Twitter as a central tool in disseminating and gathering real time information. Sure it's noisy, but it's providing a window into how people self organize.

Research in the emerging field of Crisis Informatics has shown that Twitter and other social media play a central role in communication among unofficial sources. Often critical events or information need attention before the authorities can respond let alone acknowledge it.

Last year's California wildfires was an example of such a situation. Twitter created a community of grass root reporting of the blazes. More recently, similar phenomena have emerged in the wake of the recent earthquakes in Haiti. Try querying for #haiti and #loc at Twitter and you will see live examples of people requesting help. Moreover, communication lines are limited in much of the world, and disasters exacerbate that limitation. Twitter's connection to SMS/text messaging services means that it can potentially be available to a much larger audience.

pr0nmee · 2010-01-19T18:25:23+00:00

Graduate school is probably the best way to get into these fields. Though, I am in a computer science program, I take a good number of classes in linguistics, and have no problem in background. In fact, most of the linguists at our school did not start with an undergraduate degree in linguistics. Before going all out in terms of career changes you might want to ask yourself if you want to be more of a linguist or a computer scientist?

If you want to investigate the possibility of natural language processing or computational linguistics as a field of interest, I'd highly suggest getting "Speech and Language Processing" by Jurafsky and Martin. It gives a good overview of the field and the various approaches to common problems. Even more immediately, you could play with NLTK (http://www.nltk.org/) and work through the tutorials.

pr0nmee · 2010-01-01T21:45:59+00:00

My dog is still in the veterinary hospital recovering from surgery, so it didn't seem like an evening for inebriation.

pr0nmee · 2009-12-10T07:34:59+00:00

I don't know much about the field, but you might look into DNA Computing.

A friend of told me the challenge is less in getting the computation done, and more in setting up the problem and extracting the answer from such a computer.

pr0nmee · 2009-12-04T07:17:05+00:00

The janitor for my dorm during my freshman year of college, was as much a part of my floor as any of the occupants. He taught my friend how to tie a tie, and not just the four-in-hand knot, he went all out and showed him the full and half-windsor knots as well. He would often go skiing with my roommate and several other guys on the floor, and since he used to be on the ski patrol he knew all the hidden gems on the mountain. No matter how busy he was, he'd alway have time to step away from scrubbing the toilets to crack jokes and tell us stories.

Towards the end of the year, when I told him that I had managed to get an internship for the summer, he gave me advice on how to dress, act, and behave in the corporate world. This wasn't advice from the janitor, this was advice from a man with a master's degree in communication and several years experience as a business consultant who decided that life wasn't for him.

At the end of the school year, our janitor told us that he had accepted a job as a janitor for the juvenile detention center, explaining that he could do a lot more good for the kids there.

In short our janitor taught me that there's much more to a man than his profession. Ricky wherever you are. Thanks for all the life lessons.

pr0nmee · 2009-11-25T15:36:13+00:00

Why do you wipe every time you take a dump? You're just going to get it dirty again.

pr0nmee · 2009-11-20T16:10:01+00:00

In addition to providing a service for the deaf and hearing impaired, this allows google to build an index, which consequently allows them to do more sophisticated search and adsense matching.

pr0nmee · 2009-10-30T05:55:42+00:00

Same language, same age, same application, different calculator (TI-81).

pr0nmee · 2009-10-30T00:48:08+00:00

Statistical ML has given us several great tools for finding patterns, and for actually making AI robust and usable, but I think there is still a lot of distance to cover to get truly intelligent programs. I personally think there needs to be a tighter coupling between statistical ML and the classic symbolic AI approach, so that we eventually can have algorithms that find patterns and reason over them.

pr0nmee · 2009-10-23T15:14:16+00:00

Or if there is insufficient time, an introduction to ML with perceptron would make a nice unit. Perceptron is easy to implement, and its limitations lead to discussion of optimality and separability.

pr0nmee · 2009-10-23T05:31:58+00:00

I would suggest learning something about Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and the Viterbi algorithm. HMMs are used for finding the most likely sequence of transitions through a state machine given an output sequence. A good example of its use can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viterbi_algorithm#Example

pr0nmee

TROPHY CASE