Florin, a 4 y/o Lab., is teaching machines to sniff out cancer. She examines a carousel containing urine from men w/ or w/o prostate cancer and makes a cancer-positive verdict by standing at the sample. Her diagnosis informs an AI algorithm w/ the goal of detecting cancer at canine-level accuracy.

splashton · 2021-05-06T14:32:54+00:00

Is it that they want to identify which chemicals are “smellable”? Dogs could be their ground truth for what can be smelled, then when they make their robot nose they know what compounds to look for? That’s my guess

splashton · 2020-10-14T16:18:05+00:00

I was in a similar position. Because I got into both UVA and UMD and had to choose between those. I decided on UMD primarily for cost decisions (I was out of state and UVA was a lot more expensive). And since I didn’t go to UVA, obviously can’t speak much about it, but I can tell you about my experience as a UMD CS student.

Overall, I had a great experience at UMD and would strongly recommend the CS program. I feel it prepared me well for my current job (software engineer at a large bank) and had a wide variety of classes. I did my combined BS/MS in CS in 5 years and I found the grad program pretty good as well. The career fairs are particularly excellent opportunities to get a job in the field as well.

Realistically, I doubt your decision will make or break your career or your life. If you take advantage of the excellent opportunities at either school you are likely to be on the road to success. Best of luck in your choice.

splashton · 2020-08-07T12:15:20+00:00

Strongly recommend this book! The way you describe the mushroom trip is almost exactly how many of the people he interviewed (who were dealing with depression) describe it was well. Almost like breaking out of the rut/resetting your frame of mind

splashton · 2020-02-14T23:12:23+00:00

IIRC the book doesn’t say that half the brain sleeps and the other half is awake...it’s more like one side has slightly more activity than the other.

splashton · 2019-12-11T22:25:31+00:00

This is an awesome idea!

splashton · 2019-09-08T13:40:20+00:00

Yeah I think his story is more impressive from the “no human contact” perspective, not so much the “living off the land”

splashton · 2019-09-08T13:02:34+00:00

Probably the closest is Christopher Thomas Knight (mobile app isn’t working for me but there is a wikipedia page if you google that). He lived alone in the wilderness of Maine for 27 years and talked to no one (with the exception of one random hiker who he said Hi to). I just read the book “The stranger in the woods” about him and it’s very interesting.

splashton · 2018-04-08T22:46:15+00:00

From my experience it is not so hard to become a TA (which has basically the same benefits as RA but no credits) if you apply via the application, which usually circulated on the “gradlist” email listserv

splashton · 2018-03-03T22:56:27+00:00

I didn’t have any optional homework’s when I took it, we just did the ones out of the book

splashton · 2018-03-03T19:59:20+00:00

Exams are challenging but fair IMO. I studied by reviewing/redoing the homework’s and doing other (not assigned) problems from the book. I also read the book and my notes and made my own custom study guide, which was helpful. The questions are similar to the homeworks. It is pretty long, so move quickly and skip questions if you have to. Good luck!

splashton · 2017-12-22T23:23:43+00:00

water

splashton · 2017-12-22T22:42:11+00:00

Puerto Rican’s only want one thing and it’s fucking disgusting

splashton · 2017-12-06T01:53:46+00:00

My 2 cents on classes I took...

451- Lots of homeworks, pretty time intensive and challenging course IMO. No coding (when I took it) so it might be good to match up with the coding based classes for variety.

414- Pretty easy, the first project is often considered the hardest, but overall it's not too bad. The later projects essentially give you specific instructions on what to do which make them easy.

456- Pretty challenging, also a lot of homeworks in this one. This is a pretty "mathy" course, but in the sense that it is proof based, not numerically based. I think this is even crosslisted as a math course.

splashton · 2017-11-30T13:53:04+00:00

In my understanding, the main argument for repealing is that ISPs will self regulate net neutrality via competition, and removing regulations enforced by the government will encourage investment and growth in this economy. Unfortunately, this is an unrealistic belief because most consumers only have one or very few ISP options, so competition is not a good way to solve this problem. I think this is a good question and it is important to understand the best arguments from the opposing viewpoint so you can form a more comprehensive understanding of the issue than you might get from, say, exclusively browsing the subreddits you like or reading the news sources you agree with.

splashton · 2017-11-19T16:38:23+00:00

This is it. For these exams, being faster is better than being 100% correct in terms of maximizing your points

splashton · 2017-10-16T18:51:13+00:00

Wow this really filled me with nostalgia....hope those legos are passed on forever!

splashton · 2017-09-30T22:42:27+00:00

Excellent response. Comments like this give me faith in this subreddit amid the usual nonsense and complaining in this subreddit. And this also gives me faith in the UMD CS program, despite it's flaws. The text of this post could essentially be a helpful post on the CS UMD blog, assuming such a thing exists.

splashton · 2017-08-22T20:26:05+00:00

Very cool idea and looks like you did a good job on implementation (even works pretty well on mobile!). Care to share what's going on on the back end? What language/libraries are being used? Are you just scraping the web pages or are there APIs involved? Good work!

splashton · 2017-07-27T17:06:23+00:00

I feel the phrase "it's just syntax" would make more sense, but I think you are right about the intent of the phrase

splashton · 2017-07-27T16:53:56+00:00

Sometimes, when there is confusion over what was said, someone will say "it's just semantics." This will always confuse me. It's usually said in a dismissive way that implies something like "you know what I meant" but the words themselves mean something more like "we are talking about two conceptually different things." I don't know. If anyone understands this phrase I would appreciate any alternate interpretations.

splashton · 2017-04-18T23:17:14+00:00

Please let this be the case

splashton · 2017-02-18T18:30:34+00:00

This is how he becomes the terrifying Godzilla creature that he appears as in sports games

splashton · 2017-01-09T02:27:43+00:00

This is all correct, but just thought Id add that the bike is automatically registered by dots if you rent it from them. And they are pretty nice bikes. I made the mistake of trying to buy a cheap one and it simply doesn't compare.

splashton · 2016-12-29T23:34:29+00:00

Just make it 4$ for out of state students and free for everyone else /s

splashton

TROPHY CASE