tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23881062936177118462024-03-20T01:40:39.787-07:00Improving Communication Skillsshahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-66511377466023221112017-05-03T09:05:00.000-07:002017-05-04T15:28:43.004-07:00More Tips from Charles Leiserson to Write Scientific Papers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I learned more from Charles Leiserson about writing scientific papers and doing presentations. The focus here is on diagrams, figures, codes, and other artifacts.<br />
Here are a summary of my observations from his today's workshop:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Shade foreground in diagrams with some light color. This directs attention to the right place. Sometimes (rarely) use shadows in diagrams (shadows are good for PowerPoint slides). This helps in terms of "emotional impact" on reviewers (e.g., no typos, not polished, etc.)</li>
<li>Avoid clutter on axis (e.g., instead of having multiple "*10×6", replace with "in millions").</li>
<li>Place data description close to data (e.g., replace legends with labels on the side of plotted function). </li>
<li>Try to change diagrammed functions in a way to have less compaction and make them more readable (e.g., normalizing them). </li>
<li>It is good to have a summary plot in the introduction and add breakdowns (with more details) later.</li>
<li>Have full sentences in the caption of figures (it is good to have a phrase at the beginning and continue with full sentences). The phrase is semantic and the following sentences are syntactic aspects about figure. In the body of the text, you do not talk about syntactic aspects. Similarly, arguments that belong to the text should not be in functions. Don't be repetitive.<br />One other way is to say: "X is better than Y" (semantic part, the takeaway, the message, ...), followed by syntax description. </li>
<li>Colors: they should enhance the figure; yet, the figure should be understandable for people who are color-blind or have a printed copy in black and white.</li>
<li>Be careful when presenting a diagram in terms of a continuous curve; it might raise questions when your data points are discrete (in that case, make sure the data points are highlighted using 'dots' in the diagram). Also, consider using bar-charts when applicable (sometimes continuity should be highlighted with using curves instead of charts).</li>
<li>You should always have one exhibit in the introduction as an <i>executive summary</i> (a diagram, a figure, a table, etc.). Work-examples are good also for Introduction to <i>motivate</i>.</li>
<li>Tables: generally, avoid vertical line and horizontal lines (unless needed, e.g., the first row). First column is left-justified and others should be center-justified. Consider using "siunitx LaTex package". Headers should be italic and body in roman. Make sure that the semantic is included at the beginning. </li>
<li>Captions should include a small semantic sentence/phrase, followed by syntactic sentences. It should not include more semantic descriptions/conclusions. They go to the text. Syntactic sentences should be precise. </li>
<li>No colons in the first column of table; in slowdowns, don't use 'x', remove 'test name', transpose tables in a way numbers that you compare are vertically aligned: stuff in the same column should be comparable (as opposed to rows). Include more data in necessary (e.g., include both running time and slowdown, it is better to have division of two rows if required (e.g., slowdown).</li>
<li>It is good to downsize caption compared to body text. Size of the caption should be uniform with the text in figures. There are exceptions, e.g., axis labels. This requires avoiding shrinking of figures -which makes figure labels smaller-.</li>
<li>In your figures, use alignment (e.g., in PowerPoint) so that figures are symmetric whenever required (e.g., boxes should have the same size and their edges should be aligned in a figure). </li>
<li> Be careful when using examples, e.g., when drawing a triangle, if you draw it with equal sizes, the reader easily generalizes it to all triangles in the text (while you might mean a general triangle).</li>
<li>For graphs, consider placing arrows on the middle of the edges instead of endpoints (in order to avoid congestion on vertices). This is done in "Combinatorial Mathematics".</li>
<li>Always use a face in a diagram if possible (e.g., a student in a diagram can be presented by a face of body). This will be more compelling for the reader. This point applies definitely to presentations and, to some extent, to papers. </li>
<li>It is not bad to be entertaining when writing your paper. It is OK, as long as it is not distracting. </li>
<li>Use Inconsolata font for including code and other situations which require fixed-width font in your paper. It is also good to put code in a box which is highlighted (with a little triangle on the bottom-right, which gives a feeling that the code is inside a sheet). Also, in case of a code, colorize it (see this <a href="http://wsmoses.com/tapir.pdf">paper</a>, for example). Avoid using black font in the code; replace it dark-dark brown, and apply the same when using words from the code in the text (e.g., "we do X to implement 'for' loops").</li>
<li>In papers, consider numbering code-lines globally. </li>
<li>Avoid possessive terms such "our software", "our result", etc. It sets up a dynamic with the reader which is not very nice. Do not have too much dependency on using "we" and "our" in general.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-31100600358490011592017-04-26T08:37:00.001-07:002017-04-26T08:37:36.350-07:00Charles Leiserson Tips for Technical Writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here are some useful tips about technical writings that I learned from Charles in his advanced performance-engineering class:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Avoid word New in the title (it will not be new 20 years from now). The same problem about novel (less serious).</li>
<li>Avoid needless words in the title ("building a").</li>
<li>avoid week words such "is" "to be" and "have". e.g., replace "they are unable to" with "they largely fail".</li>
<li>Always embed "however" in the middle of sentence. It is not the same for "But". In that case, use short sentences (break "xxx , but" with "xxx. But," ). </li>
<li>Verb is the most important part of the sentence. After that, the subject is the second important. So, never restrict a subject to a "This". Add a noun after "This". Also, avoid "it", e.g., avoid "it is clear that".</li>
<li>Related to the previous point, replace instances of "is focused on" with "focuses on" (a more powerful verb).</li>
<li>Avoid semicolons as much as possible.</li>
<li>It is OK to have passive verbs, however, only when it is required. </li>
<li>If you are using "while" as a connector, replace it with "whereas".</li>
<li>Replace instances of "very" with "damn" and then remove "damn" (inspired by Mark Twain diary). For example, replace "very good" with "excellent".</li>
<li>Be careful about hyphenating. "cloud-computing services" is different from "cloud computing-services". No need to hyphenation of "quickly growing function" because "quickly is clearly adverb (do not hyphenation adverbs ending with "ly").</li>
<li>Use "Performance-Engineering" instead of "Performance Engineering" because it the subject. In this example, "Performance-engineering" and "Performance-Engineering" are both fine. In similar situations, always make "Is" capitalized because it is a verb,</li>
<li>Replace "There are a number of " with "There are several" or "There are many". Then geAlso, "there are has previous problems.</li>
<li>Use present tense. Avoid future tense and, even worse, "would" "could", etc. It is fine to use past tenses depending on the context.</li>
<li><div>
Make a context first in long sentences: "when attempting XX, teachers face YYY" is better than "Teachers face YY when teaching XX". </div>
</li>
<li><div>
It is OK to Highlight a term in both abstract and body</div>
</li>
<li><div>
"IDs" vs "ID's". Acronym to be plural do not need apostrophe in modern English. Charles is OK with the old style, however. </div>
</li>
<li><div>
"a, b, and c" is preferred to "a,b and c".</div>
</li>
<li><div>
This is about using digits vs spelling of numbers. Knuth says if the number is less than 10/12, then you spell it out; otherwise, use digits. However, it is a bad rule for technical writing. Let's do the following: If you do math on numbers, use digits, otherwise, follow the other rule. </div>
</li>
<li><div>
Be cautious in using "we", since it can be all authors or authors plus readers. The distinction should be clear. </div>
</li>
<li><div>
The first sentence of the paper should be about contributions rather than describing. </div>
</li>
</ul>
Here is an example:<br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Performance-Engineering of CilkSan</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Compressed Dictionaries for Optimizing the Shadow Memory</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-f102c52a-aad9-440a-c8cd-000bbee359a3" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This paper explores new solutions for maintaining the shadow memory of CilkSan, a debugging tool that detects determinacy races in programs written in Cilk. At the heart of CilkSan lies the SP-bags algorithm, which is a provably good, efficient race-detection algorithm. The SP-bags algorithm maintains a shadow memory data structure that stores the IDs of the previous reader/writer procedures for each memory location. Unfortunately, the large size of the shadow memory is a bottleneck for detecting races for programs with high memory demand. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We tend to decrease the size of the shadow memory by applying compression techniques. We introduce the concept of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Compressed Dictionary</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as an abstraction of a shadow memory with high spatial locality. This abstract data-type is expected to have applications beyond CilkSan. We employ different techniques such as run-length encoding, Lempel Ziv, and Burrows-Wheeler encoding to implement a compressed data structure. Using these solutions, one expects the size of the shadow memory to be considerably smaller than the memory requirement of the current serial program. As a result, we can determine races in real-world applications in which the current version of CilkSan fails due to excessive memory usage.</span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-5284009520279373402017-04-22T11:04:00.000-07:002017-04-22T11:04:04.215-07:00Postdoc Improv Class<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I attended an Improv class arranged for MIT postdocs. It was different (much better) that the class that I described <a href="http://tipsfortalk.blogspot.com/2016/10/improve-workshop.html">here</a>. It was a two-hour class in which three instructors from <a href="http://www.improvboston.com/">Improv-Boston</a> introduced around 20 postdocs with the concept.<div>
We started with a counting down exercise, where we counted from 8 to 1 then 7 to 1, etc. For each count, you have to move one of your hands/legs. This is to help breathing and getting comfortable about the situation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The first task was to 'imagine an extra-human power for yourself and pick a name for yourself based on that, and then act that name'. For example, my extra-human power was to 'be able to impeach any president', my name was 'Shahin-the-impeacher', and the action was just 'playing throwing off something'. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The first real improv excessive was 'list-5-things' where you asked a random participant a random question, and they had to answer with listing 5 items. For example, I was asked about 'my sports that I like to play' and after answering with a list of 5 (after listing each item, others cheered), I asked another postdoc 'list 5 animals that you want to reincarnate to'. There is an element of surprise, and you have to answer without knowing the questions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another exercise was about 'gift-presenting'. Two participant attended, the first one pretended to give the other a gift. Based on the way he/she acted, the second one should improv what the gift was and thank him/her for the gift. For example, I can pretend to give you a big, heavy bag, and you can thank me for giving you a bag of potato. Again, there should be an improvisation on what the gift is, and how to handle the question that follows it: 'how did you know that I need a bag of potato'?</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
For the next exercise, we were partitioned into groups of around 10 people. Each group had to advertise a product. The instructors throw random questions at each member. For example, our product was inspired by the problem of 'people not cleaning after their pet'. The first question was 'hat is the name of your product?', followed by 'how does it work?', 'where is your market?', 'what is your moto?', and so on. I was asked 'which celebrity uses your product?' and my answer was 'Peter Griffin'. Finally, we had to advertise our product with an improv act. One of our group members played the role of a dog, one was dog-walker, and I was the narrator. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The next task was a random improv dialogue. I found this one the most interesting. Two people started a conversation with short sentences. The conversation followed by each person repeating the sentence of the other person, and adding 'And ...' where their sentence followed. For example, you could say 'I love Boston' and I could answer 'Yes, you love Boston, and I think the weather could be better in Boston'. Here, I am showing a sort of disagreement, but I do not use 'But'. This seems to be critical in continuing an improv dialogue.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the final task, we were given a page where we wrote a problem on one side and the name of a random object on the other side. In pairs, we you to use improv to solve the problem of other person with your own object. For example, I had to provide a solution for 'not having enough time' with 'a pair of glasses'. It was quite challenging, and I think I was not creative enough in providing a solution.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I found the class very interesting and helpful. I am considering to register for the next class that starts in a few weeks, and ends just before my departure from Boston.</div>
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-57473529469689526372017-04-19T11:48:00.002-07:002017-04-19T11:48:58.166-07:00Sliceform Studio<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am sitting in the <a href="http://erikdemaine.org/">Eric Demaine</a>'s class on <a href="http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/spring17/">Geometric Folding</a>. This course is not a typical Computer Science course that I enjoy. However, occasionally, it involves cool, interesting topics and tools.<br />
Last week, I learned about <a href="https://www.sliceformstudio.com/">Sliceform Studio</a>, developed by former MIT student Yongquan ‘YQ’ Lu under the guidance of Eric.<br />
<br />
The idea is to use geometry to understand/reproduce the beautiful designs often found in Islamic (particularly Iranian) tiles and fabrics. I enjoyed a lot playing with this tool. The code is open source and one can play with it.<br />I discussed with Eric the idea of making a font with this tool. I believe one can make a beautiful font with an oriental look with Sliceform Studio. More details about the tool can be found in its <a href="https://www.sliceformstudio.com/">website</a>.<br />
An example of the design that it generates is followed.<br /><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqoreVN6KJRjtKqYIVZN4-OTZCkiXgU_3oxQKmT8QwTCg46JLvwZ25xyTtWUAGvScEV7BpXcXOfAZ4kbNQDzBCV4PJiJSUWPbGSEjH1MsryiwMxkRNrSrww-0nzn_wwG5TBK50kfq6HE/s1600/my_design.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqoreVN6KJRjtKqYIVZN4-OTZCkiXgU_3oxQKmT8QwTCg46JLvwZ25xyTtWUAGvScEV7BpXcXOfAZ4kbNQDzBCV4PJiJSUWPbGSEjH1MsryiwMxkRNrSrww-0nzn_wwG5TBK50kfq6HE/s320/my_design.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-30904111237649611112017-04-06T07:19:00.000-07:002017-05-01T07:19:45.897-07:00MIT EECS Postdoc Visiting Committee / postdoc issues<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Since last Fall, I have been a member of the postdoc visiting committee, which is aimed to get some feedback about postdoc lives and their concerns/issues at MIT.<br />
In the course of a few months, we collected information/surveys from postdoc. <a href="http://www.mit.edu/~rty/index.html">Rabia Yazicigil</a> was managing our efforts and presented the result last Tuesday.<br />
We were reporting to a group of MIT faculty/alumni, who seemed very willing to help postdoc lives. I think the postdoc management and leadership workshop that I attended on January 2016 was inspired by the last visiting committee report.<br />
The main concerns that postdoc at MIT have can be summarized as follows (from my point of view):<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>A sense of ``belonging'' to MIT. Postdocs spend relatively short period of time in the institute, and at a relatively older age. It is harder for them to ``connect'' to an environment which already ``belongs'' to students and other staff. Postdocs are mostly occupied with doing research and planning for the future, and a result of this pressure, have little time to participate in activities which help them make a community and adapt to the new environment. Note that this issue is inherent in postdoc structure. MIT has done a good job to address this problem. But still it seems to bother many postdocs.</li>
<li>MIT has two concepts of ``postdoc-fellow'' and ``postdoc-associate''. I am both because I receive money from both MIT and outside MIT (NSERC). But if you want to ``partition'' postdocs into the two categories, I will be a fellow because most money that I receive comes from outside. Now, there are distinctions in benefits for these groups. In particular, me and other fellows do not receive any health benefits. A postdoc fellow pays around 300-400$ per month for health-related insurances, which I found astonishing. Health insurance has been the worst memory that I have from MIT (and arguably this country).</li>
<li>Postdoc Leadership Workshop has been great in helping postdocs to from a community in which they enhance their leadership skills in <a href="http://mitendicotthouse.org/">Endicott House</a>, which is located outside Boston. This workshop takes two days, and many postdocs cannot attend it because they have a family. This reveals one of the main differences between a typical postdoc and a typical student. I think MIT is planning to hold similar workshops (but one-day workshops) in the near future. </li>
</ul>
I have found the idea of Visiting Committees very exciting for understanding and solving the issues that students, postdocs, and other staff experience in an academic environment. You can learn about MIT visiting committees <a href="https://corporation.mit.edu/committees/visiting-committees">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-17561631595207817392017-04-01T12:32:00.000-07:002017-04-19T12:34:18.394-07:00My Supervisor, Alex ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On March 12th, just after a Sunday hike in <a href="http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dcr/massparks/region-south/blue-hills-reservation.html">Blue Hill Reservation</a> in outskirts of Boston, I received three emails from Waterloo. <a href="https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~imunro/">Ian Munoro</a>, senior professor in Algorithms group in Waterloo, as well as <a href="https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~kdaudjee/">Khuzaima Daudjee</a>, in Database group, and Daniela, a friend, informed me that my PhD supervisor, <a href="https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/">Alejandro Lopez Ortiz</a>, had died earlier in that day. I had visited Alex last time in February, where I found him very thin and tired. He had lost almost half of his body weight, and looked very exhausted. There was no further treatment, and he was just waiting for his time to go.<br />
In our last meeting, I took my PhD degree to the hospital and asked him to sign it. Instead, he wrote a long note on the back of its cover. It remains very dear to me. That meeting happened in Waterloo general hospital cafe, where Alex's two kids, his father, and Daniela were present<br />
I attended the <a href="http://erbgood.com/tribute/details/13370/Alejandro-Lopez-Ortiz/condolences.html">memorial</a> for Alex on Saturday, March 18th, just before the Spring and the Iranian new year. A music was being played, which was selected by Alex, and we were given a sheet of paper with a poem that he chose for this occasion. I realized that he has done many of the arrangements, as this sad occasion was expected.<br />
<br />
For me, Alex was a fun friend and boss, who taught me a lot about research, and about life. He helped me a lot in all stages of our collaboration, from the moment that I met him for the first time seeking for a professor who helps me switch adviser, to the moment that I was negotiating my job offer with University of Manitoba. I remember the time that I received an email from Dr. David Johnson, my PhD external committee member whom I wanted to work with as a postdoc, informing me that we probably cannot work together since he had cancer. When I told Alex that David has cancer, Alex became very sad and shocked. That happened a bit before Alex himself was diagnosed with a much worse cancer. I remember the day that he was diagnosed, and how gloomy and shocked all the Algorithms lab was. I left Waterloo for MIT a month after. Alex helped me a lot on this path, and later I realized that David has also recommended me for that position. I miss both of them. David passed away a few months earlier than Alex. I lost two great mentors in a few months. I cannot stop thinking about Alex. He will be dearly missed.<br />
<br />
p.s. <a href="https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/news/memory-professor-alejandro-alex-l%C3%B3pez-ortiz">here</a> and <a href="https://necrocanada.com/obituaries/alejandroalexlopez-ortiz-1967-2017/#.WPe1hXXyu1M">here</a> are two pages on Alex's memory.<br />
<br />
p.s. the first picture is from the day of my defense. From left to right: Ian, me, Alex, Jonothon Buss, David, and Jochen Koenmann. The second picture is from the day of my convocation with Alex.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEPl-2-SvMwWBN4Urq7q_K2XjiBN3EDwNnpOChBrfLM4G6sy-lFc8f-TQhIrIE-o46hnpj2KlLy5-Vmiary-_iXeUbfdwe-l9dfRmrFrkO84g9ZFMns2ZvMrMmr9x0dHYMKKB9hH3DynY/s1600/After+Defense.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEPl-2-SvMwWBN4Urq7q_K2XjiBN3EDwNnpOChBrfLM4G6sy-lFc8f-TQhIrIE-o46hnpj2KlLy5-Vmiary-_iXeUbfdwe-l9dfRmrFrkO84g9ZFMns2ZvMrMmr9x0dHYMKKB9hH3DynY/s320/After+Defense.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0TOsewfy7W3npoKfpeAJth8eJjURHR13Ez6KJe-mUwUaCsSFXpioqJWNE69rFng3BMrhjEeSPM7ht5f_i-e_XRntHqcg6_jpBkT7Z_8G6B4SSLF6WC3A2OG9eE9Kp6L_MmhS1JQaqZ4/s1600/DSC01664.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0TOsewfy7W3npoKfpeAJth8eJjURHR13Ez6KJe-mUwUaCsSFXpioqJWNE69rFng3BMrhjEeSPM7ht5f_i-e_XRntHqcg6_jpBkT7Z_8G6B4SSLF6WC3A2OG9eE9Kp6L_MmhS1JQaqZ4/s200/DSC01664.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-5384026202376722762017-03-25T10:40:00.000-07:002017-04-22T10:42:13.523-07:00A One-Day Course by Edward Tufte at CSAIL<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was fortunate to be supported by my adviser at MIT, Charles E. Leiserson, to attend a one-day course by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte">Edward Tufte</a> on March 17th, 2017. <a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses">Here</a> is some info about the course on Tufte's <a href="https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/">website</a>. MIT CSAIL organized the event and made it possible for many students and postdocs to attend it. It took place on a big conference room in Mariot Cambridge, which is quite close to Stata Center. Because of the bad weather of a few days earlier, two classes were combined and there was a big audience. As a result, there were two screens in the big room, and Edward seemed to have difficulty switching/focusing on one. I have learned from another workshop (see here) that two screens for a talk is simply a bad idea, which is now rare compared to 10 years ago.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At the beginning, we were given Tufte books which are centered on "how to present data and information". In general, the course was about selected topics from these books. I believe if someone has the books, there is little reason to attend the expensive class. We were asked to show up one hour before the course and were given instruction to read particular parts of the book 'carefully'. I thought it is necessary for understanding the material and following the course. Unfortunately, later we learned that it is just to illustrate Tufte's approach to teaching, where he presents students of his classes with some learning material before beginning a class. In the case of this course, that data was never referred to.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The course began with darkening the room followed by a piece of piano with an animated graphical score as a way to 'present the underlying data', something like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IXMpUhuBMs">this</a>. The course continues with a review of web-page design and high-resolution screens, etc. During the course, the room lighting were adjusted multiple times. Sometimes we were in complete darkness, which made it hard to take notes on paper (and awkward to do so on laptop as it seemed too bright). We were barred from taking videos. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One of the things that I remember (and do not necessarily agree) from the course is that Tufte objects the idea of presenting little material in order to effectively teach it. He believes a lot of data can be presented, e.g., in the same figure and the reader can perfectly digest them. I agree with this in many cases but not always. Sometimes the extra details just becomes confusing. Quite related to this, we learn that Tufte prefers high-density data display that conveys a lot of information. As a result, he does not like PowerPoint or slides since they tend to break data into small portions. <span style="background-color: #f8f8f8; color: #555555; font-family: "raleway" , sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One interesting point that Tufte makes is that, data explanation (e.g., what a color or bar means) should be close to the data diagrams (those colors or bars). You should not add an explanation on a corner of a figure. Just added in exact place that is required.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I also learned about sparklines, which are introduced by Tufte in 1980s. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline">Here</a> is the wiki page about them. I find them useful in presenting high-density data, and I believe they are required but not-present in many Computer Science research papers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One nice thing that I remember from the course was a 19-th century diagram about loses of French Army in Napoleon's Russian invasion. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard">Here</a> is a wiki page about it. It is a good example on how data can be a 'beautiful evidence' (title of Tufte's book which include this topic). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I find this <a href="https://eagereyes.org/criticism/edward-tufte-one-day-course">review</a> about Tufte's course quite interesting. I agree that Tufte rambles a lot, talks too much about his books and himself, e.g., when he talks about his experience with NASA, power-points, or his personal dismissal of big data. He looked like an arrogant person to me, specially when I saw how he made a long dialogue with a colleague while there was a big line of people waiting for him to sign the books (I wanted to have his signature on the books; but I changed my mind after that).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
According to my experience, which is shared with a few others who wrote reviews about the course, Tufte's books are better than his class, and arguably better than his manner.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-63354935501350272632017-02-19T09:15:00.002-08:002017-02-19T09:15:45.360-08:00ImprovBoston II <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is the second part of the stand-up that I am preparing for ImprovBoston presentation that I have in 8 days. A lot has happened since my last post here. Particularly, the drama about Trump's executive order and also deterioration in the health of Alex Lopez (my PhD supervisor). All these pressures make it hard for me to do stand-up. In any case, I am going to give it a shot:<br />
<br />
My name is Shahin. What kind of weird name it is? If you wonder, let me tell you that it is an Iranian name. You remember those seven bad countries who wanted to send bad guys to do bad things? Iran was one of them. But... don't worry. I have always said to my friends that I am not a bad person... and they always believe...<br />
Well my name is an animal's name. Yes, that's right. My parents selected their favorite animal and put its name on me. That's how I started my childhood! Shahin, my name, means hawk. Other Iranian parents use other animals such as Dove, Gazal, and Lion. It means I have mammal friends, I have bird friends, and even I have insect friends. Yes, I have a fucking insect friend whose name is Butterfly. To be fair, I am still looking for an amphibian friend. My girl-friend's name is Mina, which literally means Mynah. Yes, she is also bird... a bird which happens to be in hawk's diet. In other words, I am her predator... So, imagine your name is python and your girlfriend's name is chicken. That's my situation!. After all, I am not complaining. There are worse Iranian names. I have a friend whose name is name is Poopack. Yes, Poo Pack. I have a few theories about Poo Pack's parents. Either they did not know any English, which is unlikely in the modern times, Or, they knew it and they did not like UK and US; so they put a name on Poo Pack to prevent her from migrating to US or UK. Maybe they were fond of Germany. Another theory is that Poo Pack was unwanted, and they wanted to get revenge of their uninvited guest to came to f... their lives. I cannot verify my theories because I find it hard to discuss this issue with Poo Pack. If you wonder what Poo Pack is, it is hopoe, yet another animal. Iranian obsession with Poo names is reflected in other names such as Pooria Pooneh Pooyan Poojan. </div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-91772067777340038262017-01-17T08:03:00.003-08:002017-01-17T08:03:35.614-08:00ImprovBoston-I<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After taking a relatively long holidays in Canada (which was full of personal pressure and drama), I am back to Boston now. I have registered to ImprovBoston class titled "Introduction to Standup". The class is taught by Dana. I had missed two classes before, and attended the 3rd one last night. The class involves about 15 students, and I am the only non-American student there. The assignment for the class was to prepare a funny 2-minutes writing about myself so that I can read it while sitting (what is called 'dry workshop' by Dana as opposed to 'wet workshop' in which you stand and move, etc.).<br />
<br />
Here is what I had:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<i>Well, I should tell you that I am a Computer Scientist from
Iran. Is it funny? I think it is! But let me continue. As you
might guess my mother tongue is not English. In the last years
of my primary schools I was good in all courses except two
courses. Two courses that I was almost **** in! These two
were English and Introduction to Computers. The two worst things
that I remember from my childhood are red alarms (I was raised
during a long war), and English dictation by an angry teacher
(I just checked the spelling of 'dictation' when I wrote this).
The only good part was that our teacher's English was not that
good either.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Thanks to `god', I ended up living in English-speaking
countries and working with Computers as my job. You might say
why? Before answering this question, I should </i><i>say that,
after 15 years, I love English and Computers (well, that is a
certain type of `love'). Although, as you might guess (again!)
my English is not that good yet, and so might be my Computer
skills. But, why did I do that? I did very poorly in the
Entrance Examination of Universities. Among 50 choices that I
made for universities, I was admitted to the 37th, and it was
Computer Science. And among 40 students admitted in my
university my rank was 40th! </i><i>You might ask why I
migrated to English-speaking countries. Well, I just followed my
brother. If you think he knew what he was doing, you are wrong.
His English and Computer skills were always worse than mine (he
also does Computer Science!). </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I still follow the same pattern of taking random choices in
life. For example, a year ago I had a job interview in Winnipeg,
Manitoba. If you wonder where it is, it is north of North
Dakota! I was there for a day and a night. The weather was
around -40 degrees. When I was there, I wondered why the job
interview is scheduled in January; it surely does not encourage
any one (well, except polar bears) to take that Job. However, I
got the answer when I accepted a job offer from them a couple of
months after. </i></blockquote>
<br />
I had used the R-word (replaced by **** here). I was gently reminded that it is offensive and should not be used. After each student red their story, others would comment and critic the performance. One common mistake is to say a joke and pass it without 'cooking it well'. Many jokes have potentials and should be developed (instead of jumping to another one).<br />
<br />
It is a totally new experience for me to attend this class. It is true that I belong to a 'minority' in Canada and US. However, I have been always surrounded by people who also belonged to minority groups. In that sense, we were 'majority' always. This class, however, is totally different. As expected, there are cultural references that I cannot get. I have difficulty understanding some jokes. This issue makes the class more challenging and more interesting. I look forward to future classes.</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-79912867256585094812016-12-01T10:11:00.002-08:002016-12-01T10:14:58.842-08:00Day 8: Boredom and other issues <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"Boredom is the shadow of boring people". This is a quote I learned from Dana in today's class. Many times we are 'stuck' in situations (such as waiting in a doctor's office). This situation is different from being bored. In order to address the issue of bored audience, the speaker should first take a look at himself.<br />
<br />
I gave a talk about computer scientists in today's class. More precisely, it was about wrong perceptions about what computer scientists do. Next week, I will repeat this talk in an open-mice session. Also, Dana is planing for me to perform in a karaoke session (this is something I am not doing well even in Persian).<br />
<br />
We watched the video of my today's talk. I am more comfortable with my body movements. I was joking that my body movements are at least better than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cunningham_(talk_show_host)">Bill Cunningham</a>, an extremely conservative radio host whom I learned about when driving to Montreal last weak. He apparently uses his hand movements to intimidate his audience, which is quite non-academic. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ6NiYc2pvc">Here</a>, you can find an example (jump to 1:40). To connect with your audience in academia, you should fill the gap and make a bridge (via, e.e., a joke). This practice will be a good start for a critical discussion (and is widely different from talking with people who already agree with you in a conservative radio-show).<br />
<br />
Dana asked me to listen to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle">Dave Chappelle</a> monologue on <a href="http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/dave-chappelle-standup-monologue/3424955">Saturday-night-live</a> which happened on the Saturday after election. Dave apparently is an independent stand-up who rejected a 50-million dollars to perform a TV show to skip the pressure. He decided to go to Africa for a while, and now he is back with new innovative comedy. <br />
<br />
I just enrolled in Dana's '<a href="http://www.improvboston.com/training/2017/intro-to-standup-monday-630pm-830pm-starts-0102">Intro to Standup</a>' in <a href="http://www.improvboston.com/">ImprovBoston</a>. It is going to be fun!<br />
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-42889725795216673802016-11-20T13:17:00.003-08:002016-11-20T13:17:42.093-08:00Improve - Nir Shavit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last January, I attended the 1st Leadership and Management Skills workshop offered for MIT postdtocs. Here is a <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/creating-postdoc-connections-0314">link</a> to an article about that workshop. A part of the workshop was an imropv session by <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjLnNu3krjQAhVDzmMKHcYcAk0QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.csail.mit.edu%2Fshanir%2F&usg=AFQjCNFoG33xsXaUNK8h93eGyTFyR2J5NA&sig2=hqB3S0JRBDnTgDCUrGCr-Q&bvm=bv.139250283,d.eWE">Nir Shavit</a>. Nir is a professor at MIT CSAIL that I deeply respect. Last night, I attended a party held by Charles for <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/bradley/">Bradly Kuszmaul</a> to celebrate Bradly's tenure at MIT. Nir showed up again and repeated the workshop. It is a nice experience about connecting with people. In both cases we were a group of around 20 people, and we were asked at the beginning to take off our shoes. Here is what we did.<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>We formed a circle and Nir asked us to clap hands one after another in the circle. We did it a few times, each time faster than the previous time. Then, we turned our backs, facing walls, and repeated. Finally, we did it with closed eyes. Clearly, it was much harder to do it smoothly and properly as we advanced. Communication is important, even for doing the simplest tasks.</li>
<li>The second game was about counting. The goal was to count from one to eleven. Each member of the group could say the next number. However, if more than one person said the number, we had to start from one again. It was hard to count to 11 this way, and it was harder when we were asked to count all the way up to 21. At the end of this game, 19 chairs were placed to form a circle for 20 of us in the group. We did the same game of counting, while walking around the circle. Now, when two people said the same number (which involved re-counting), we all had to find a seat. The person who failed to seat was omitted and had to seat for good (and not participate in counting). As more people are omitted, it becomes easier to count. Collaboration in a big group is harder!</li>
<li>We played 'cat & mouse' game. We were paired, and each person holded their partner's hand, while making their other hand 'available'. Two people are indicated as 'cat' and 'mouse'. The cat chased the mouse; the mouse could escape it with holding the free hand of one person from any group. In that case, the other endpoint of the three-person chain becomes the new mouse (whom the cat now chases). In the case cat can 'catch' the mouse, they change roles. </li>
<li>We played the 'Assassin Game'. Nir asked us to walk in the room, exploring all corners. Then he asked us to stop and close our eyes. Then he indicated one of us, with a shoulder tap, as the assassin. No one knew who the assassin is. The game continued with us walking in the room. The assassin might decide to 'murder' a member by blinking at them while walking. The victim 'dies' five seconds after the blink (while walking normally after the blink). Nir asked us to play dying a horrible death (and stay in the ground after that). If one is still alive, they can accuse someone as being the assassin. If they are right in their accusation, the game ends. Otherwise, both accuser and accused die. If played properly, it is a very nice 'zombie game'. </li>
<li>We formed two groups on the two sides of the room. One group had to decide over an country and occupation in a ten second period indicated by the other group counting from one to ten. The game goes on with the counting group marching toward the middle of the room asking loudly 'where are you from'. The other group responds by marching toward the center saying 'we are from ...'. The counting group marches again asking 'what do you do'. At this point the two group should be a couple of meters away from each other. The game continues with all members of one group miming the occupation they chose while the other group guessing what that is. In case of a right guess, the miming group 'escapes' toward the wall and the other group tries to tap its members before they touch the wall. The tapped members join the other group and it continues a few rounds.</li>
<li>We formed a big circle holding hands of our neighbors. Nir started walking, while holding hands of his neighbors, and passed the side of the circled he faced. In this process others had to walk also to keep hands locked. This is followed by a few other walks. The goal is to make a human knot as complex as possible. Then we were asked to use intuition of 'un-knot' ourself. </li>
<li>The final part was actual performance. First, four volunteers danced with a music; each member was leading the dance for five to ten seconds and then rotated to give the lead to another person. Two groups of volunteers did this. Each person took the lead two times. The next part was that a volunteer told a story and four other volunteers had to play it. The playing was based on by forming a frozen scene of the story (as directed by Nir). Three to four scenes were played for each story.</li>
</ul>
Nir ended his improv with asking us to form a circle and play the most memorable part of the night. In conclusion, I find these exercises very useful for connecting with people, specially in an academic context in which it is not always easy to relate with people as humans.<br /><br />
<br />
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-11283459103421588462016-11-08T11:24:00.001-08:002016-11-08T11:36:50.257-08:00Day 7: Delivery as a Salad Dressing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is the election day and I talked with Dana a little bit about it. I have watched videos of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin">George Carlin</a> to learn from his great talks. We agreed that George is missed to comment about this election.<br />
<br />
We talked about building a bridge, once again. Dana asked me what aspects of my first talk in September is improved compared to the last week's video. I mentioned that the unintended body movements (e.g., hanging hands) are removed. Also, I feel my talks do not seem as boring as before; I feel passion when talking and knowing this adds more energy to my talk. This sort of passion is directly affected by the type of relation a speaker makes with their audience. Yes, it is about building a bridge.<br />
<br />
Assume you want to start a lecture in a classroom filled by potentially bored undergraduate students. The first step can be looking at the students while remaining silent. This might go on a few seconds until a student asks what is going on, and you can answer: ``Yes, this question was what I was waiting for to start the class''. The class has started with dialogue initiated with students! Similarly, before talking about automatons, you might show a video about 'convey's game of life' or before teaching 'Turing machines', you might talk about Alen Turing's dramatic life. Even starting a lecture with a totally unrelated topic (e.g., a picture from a recent trip of the speaker) can be helpful in making the bridge.<br />
<br />
An essential element about being 'passionate' when talking is to respect your audience. It is hard to imagine an arrogant professor giving a great lecture. Learning in a class should be preferable a group activity which involves the instructor learning. Say ``we learn together'' rather than ``I teach you this''.<br />
<br />
The passion in talk has a universal language. You can see someone talking in another language and yet `feel' a sort of passion without understanding the context. Similarly, you can listen to someone without looking at them and yet feel passion (an example is the crazy man in the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj7_ODI85nQAhVi04MKHYLyD8UQtwIIGzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsFeErTYAD_4&usg=AFQjCNF4BTdsyq4T8Jn7IWW4LGxnq1-oFg&sig2=rJXfzjcXqbxixl7tt5eroA&bvm=bv.138169073,d.amc">bridge scene</a> in <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiP8LHT85nQAhUlxYMKHQMRAXMQFgghMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0087884%2F&usg=AFQjCNGc94X7t2WLAr6NAI_8ZmjQafrU-w&sig2=ZeF4wxsLPC83G_yaoCb1yg&bvm=bv.138169073,d.amc">Paris Texas</a>).<br />
<br />
I was telling Dana that context of a talk is like a salad and its delivery is the dressing. To have a good salad, both are important. Metaphors like that can be useful in engaging audience, adding more passion to the talk, and eventually having an interesting delivery of the material.<br />
<br />
Sometimes finding the right 'words' can help in improving your delivery. For example George Carlin used a term like `100 bucks' instead of `cache' because there is more stress, pressure on the word 'bucks'.<br />
<br />
I talked about <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiomLb085nQAhVVVWMKHR9pDhAQFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGrizzly_Man&usg=AFQjCNF3gcH9FX5_5Ji44Q81csBeRl3CBw&sig2=7M7Mt0YJH8BiTkN3pxciVw&bvm=bv.138169073,d.amc">Grizzly man</a> in my presentation. He was a bear enthusiast who was eventually killed by a Grizzly. It seems my body movements and energy has improved (without me monitoring them when giving the talk). It is a good sign. </div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-32299631608189936962016-10-27T16:00:00.000-07:002016-10-31T08:43:16.865-07:00Effective Presentation Skills Workshop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I attended a workshop on Effective Presentation Skills by Bob Dolan. The workshop was held by MIT Global Education & Career Development (<a href="https://gecd.mit.edu/about">GECD</a>). Bob is the Assistant Director for Postdoctoral Scholars. When I arrived, I saw nice photos on the screen from Barcelona (later I realised it has been from the last trip of Bob and taken by himself). These photos were coupled with a jazz music that was played before the start of the workshop. Bob started the workshop by indicating that this technique can release the pressure and stress from a diverse audience who were participating. I had heard from Charles that it is a useful technique and some professor(s) apply it in their classes.<br />
<br />
Bob was dressed formally, and it was one of the messages in the talk. Although, I confirmed with him that this does not apply in all situations (specially in the field of Computer Science). Some of the useful techniques that I learned from this workshop are the followings:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>A study shows 55% of the messages received by a typical audience are not conveyed verbally. People make a lot of judgements from how you dress, how you move when talking, how you use facial expressions, how the slides are arranged, how confident you 'look', where you come from, etc. In fact, people make around 15 judgements in the first few seconds they see a speaker!</li>
<li>Control your body movements. There are a lot of undesired moves which are not even captured by the speaker himself. I have seen this in my first videos that Dana captured: my hands were moving without any harmony and control. I can still see trends of this problem in my body movement. Bob mentioned some people have their heads leaning toward one side for a long time without realising it. Monitoring yourself can greatly help.</li>
<li>When you have slides, or when you are working on board, never turn your back to the audience for more than 10 seconds. This is interesting and very important for making a bridge to the audience.</li>
<li> TTT rule: when writing on board or slides, first Touch the board/slides (at most 10 seconds), Turn back to audience and point to the slides (with left hand so that you do not block what you pointed to), and Talk. Do not talk when your back is to the audience.</li>
<li> Make sure to have eye-contact to all people or at least all parts of the class/audience.</li>
</ul>
<div>
I asked about opening a lecture with a joke, and as I had seen in another workshop, Bob recommended to start the talk in a serious manner and, as people start knowing you better, apply your sense of humour. A joke is suitable for closing a talk!</div>
<div>
The workshop was fun and useful. Bob is definitely a professional in this field.</div>
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-10419546997241033172016-10-27T08:40:00.004-07:002016-10-27T08:57:39.895-07:00Day 6 - Natural Energy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I watched my previous talk about cemeteries in Paris. It is here.<br />
I was happy about my body movements compared to previous videos. However, I felt I was 'boring' and lacked energy. Dana advised me that it should come 'naturally' and cannot be faked. Exercises Dana taught me in the first <a href="http://tipsfortalk.blogspot.com/2016/09/day-1-with-dana-preliminaries.html">class</a> (such as taking deep breaths) can be helpful in that regard. I feel<br />
that I have different personalities that show up depending on the situation and the mood that I have (e.g., speaking in English about Computer Architecture in a rainy day would be different than speaking in Persian about Algorithms in a sunny day). By practice, one can minimize the effects of situation in a positive way. For that, Dana suggested me to brows 'speeches' in movies, songs (specially hip-hop), comedy shows (Dana introduced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Carlin">George Carlin</a> to me), and political speeches. The important thing is that the energy, the jokes, the body movements, all should come 'naturally'.<br />
<br />
At the end, I went through the 'you start dying slowly' poem one last time. I was happier about my energy. I tried to be funny. As for the body movements, I think they were not bad, but they can be improved. Dana is happy with the way I have improved. He asked me to go through all videos and see the improvements in my speeches.<br />
<br />
The video of my talk is here.</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-8025824615273673012016-10-20T08:44:00.001-07:002016-10-27T08:57:19.323-07:00Day 5 - More passion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Before attending this session, Dana asked me to list a couple of things that I am really passionate about. I chose history and travelling as my top passions. Today's class was mainly deduced to observe how passion affects the quality of my speech.<br />
<br />
I have almost memorised the poem 'you start dying slowly'. It is incorrectly attributed to Pablo Neruda while it is actually a rough translation of a poem by Brazilian Martha Medeiros. Regardless, I relate well with it. The plan is that I memorise it and present to a real audience in a few weeks. Today, I presented it for Dana; I could not recall all parts but I could feel progress as the first step.<br />
<br />
I talked with Dana about aspects of history that fascinates me. He wanted me to talk about things that I love to observe my talk quality and I felt into his trap. Apparently, the passion that comes out has a positive affect. I also casually talked about my trips to Japan and India and travelling in general, which is the second passion I had listed. Dana recorded a video of me talking about Paris cemeteries. An interesting observation was that, when I talk about these fascinating experiences, I talk well, my body movements are solid, and adapt myself to situations (e.g., rising my voice when a helicopter passes), without even paying attention to techniques I have learned for giving talks.<br />
<br />
I should find ways to direct my passion into my research talks and lectures. A part of the issue is that Dana as an audience member gives a lot of positive energy when I talk in front of him. This is not necessarily the case for a typical undergraduate class or a lecture talk in Computer Science.<br />
<br />
The video of my talk is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBdwL6jklKo">here</a>. </div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-8624719817851249912016-10-19T14:03:00.000-07:002016-10-19T14:03:07.262-07:00Improve Workshop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I attended the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_176461184"></span>KTCP<span id="goog_176461185"></span></a>) offered by MIT Teaching & Learning Laboratory in Summer 2016. As an alumni of KTCP, I was invited to attend an Improve Workshop offered by the same centre. The link to this workshop can be found in this <a href="https://tll.mit.edu/design/improv-workshops">link</a>.<br />
<br />
A group of around 20 PhD students and postdocs attended the workshop. First, we formed a circle and started to count loudly from 5 to 1, then from 4 to 1, etc. We repeated this four times, and each time we moved one limb as we counted numbers. This was a preliminary 'exercise' to feel comfortable and confident (similar to alphabet exercise Dana taught me in the first <a href="http://tipsfortalk.blogspot.com/2016/09/day-1-with-dana-preliminaries.html">class</a>).<br />
<br />
We moved on with a game where the instructor, Jake Livengood, started with a random word (e.g., 'camel') and participants had to continue adding more words to that (until one uses the word 'period').<br />
Apparently, this improvisation game can be helpful to handle real-world situations in classes or inter-personal communications. The workshop continued with a similar game where participants 'throw' words at each-other; you receive a word from a random person in the circle (e.g., 'banana'), improvise the first related word that comes to your mind (e.g., 'monkey'), and throw it to another random person in the circle. In another game we were asked to ask a random person to list 5 random things (e.g., five cities they want to visit) and they answer immediately. This last game was repeated twice with the second time we were asked to think and reflect on our body movements, reflecting our 'confidence'.<br />
<br />
The last part of the workshop was about solutions for handling unexpected situations in a classroom. For example, when no student answers a question you ask in a lecture, you can grab students' attention by rephrasing the question, playing devils' advocate. When a student asks an offensive question, depending on the situation, you might rephrase it in a positive way (e.g., by saying 'I assume you mean... right?').<br />
<br />
In summary, the workshop was fun. Other related workshops/talks were advertised that I might attend in the short future.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-34001765069915953902016-10-07T11:38:00.003-07:002016-10-27T08:56:03.446-07:00Day 4 - Passion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
One of the hardest tongue twisters that I have found is the following: </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"The sixth shack's sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep 's sick" </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We tried it a bit with Dana; he believes it might be the hardest tongue twister in English. Tongue twisters are helpful for improving the intonation; hence I am putting some time on them.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Yesterday, I was reading a poem which I used to love when I was younger and can still relate to. To fin it, you can google <i>'you start dying slowly'</i>. Since I am very passionate about it, I thought it helps if I practice body movements with it. When I read this poem, I can move my hands better and even walk in more harmony. I talked about it with Dana, and he suggested that I memorise the poem and sometime read it in a micro night. Also, I red it again for Dana and could apply his techniques (pauses, hand moves, thinking when talking, etc.) and the outcome was good.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Today's class was partly about passion and its effect on speech. Conveying your passion when reading a technical script is much harder than a poem. To see that, besides the poem, I red a technical paragraph from a paper about 'semi-online' algorithms. Dana also red the same poem and paragraph. It was much easier for me to convey my passion in the poem compared to the paragraph (although the paragraph was about a research topic that I am very interested in). In contrast, Dana could show the passion for the paragraph (although he called it 'a very boring text'). As the first step to fix this, I am going to read some technical paragraphs and in doing so 'pretend' that I am reading a poem. As I said, I found it hard in the first attempt. Besides the passion, I had little issues like pausing between an adjective and its noun (as in 'robust algorithms), partly because I put too much stress on the word 'robust'.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
For the body movements, Dana asked my to give two talks: one seating and one standing. Although the topic of the first talk (favourite food) was easier than the second one (traditions in Fall), the second talk went much better (both talks were improvised). Seating makes me feel restricted, I cannot approach audience or (pretend to) look at them. Apparently, this is a good sign that I am improving my body language -hence I need to stand and walk-. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
For the next week, I am going to find a dialogue from a novel that I just finished and talked with Dana (named 'The winner stands alone' by Paulo Coelho) and we will try to act it. Apparently, there is only a fine line between acting and giving a public speech. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
The video of my talks are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsQA6yHfGJE">here</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4-80xill10">here</a>.</div>
</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-28888096991095737872016-09-28T13:00:00.000-07:002016-10-27T08:52:46.496-07:00Day 3 - Body movements<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yesterday, Dana sent the following about my talk last week:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>“I noticed that you're relatively stiff from the waist down. Perhaps we can work on moving with your energy tomorrow. In addition, I noticed that your gesturing is consistent with your vocal tone. If you're putting emphasis on a word, you're probably making hand gestures that support that. That's good. We'll play with that a little bit tomorrow, too.”</i></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We started today’s meeting with a discussion about Eric Demain. He is a great speaker and I wanted to know Dana’s opinion about his hand movements. I realized that Eric has been a student of Dana in a comedy class. Dana told me that Eric’s hand movements are in par with his other movements and their excessive move conveys a sign of enthusiasm: “It is like an unfamiliar birth species moving their wings differently but after all they can fly”. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">We continued with some tongue twisters with an emphasis on ‘Th’, ‘L’, and ‘R (these are harder for a native Persian speaker). Here is a website that Dana introduced:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm</span></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dana suggested to start and end a talk with a joke. Sometimes, to grab attention in a classroom, he said, I can say a sentence in another language (e.g., my mother tongue) to grab students’ attention at the beginning of the class (this does not seem to be appropriate for a research talk). In addition to be a comedian, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dana is also a mime artist. Practising mimes can be helpful in improving one’s gesture, facial expressions, and body movement. For that, Dana did a mime and I guessed what he wanted to convey, and repeated this with roles changed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To improve my movements, we went to the open area beside Stata. While Dana was swiftly changing his location, I started miming (talking silently) about a research topic. The idea was that I pay attention to different locations, approach to the people that I am looking at, and move smoothly </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;">back </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the center. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the second practice, Dana asked me to improvise a talk about Halloween. I was supposed to keep my hands up and moving (do not put the down) while approaching the audience and having eye contact with them. I tried to add pauses in my talk, and I could see improvements in my body movements. Although, there is still a long way to go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Video of my talk is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko8SpM0CuS4">here</a>.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<br /></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-1619472948688322872016-09-23T13:00:00.000-07:002016-10-27T08:52:30.359-07:00Day 2 - Building a bridge <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I met Dana with a week delay; although unintentional, I believe more gaps between our sessions can be helpful for me to apply what I learn. Dana is becoming a friend and we started talking about personal matters like my parents visiting me. We reviewed the recorded video of the first session. My feedback on the video was close to what he wanted to tell. I had written:</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-954b-5222-996a-2a0433f17e1c" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“ My body movement is not natural. My hand moves seem a bit fake and do not sync with what I am saying. Too often I looked at the sky and this might make audience feel that I am stressed. I often put my weight on one leg which is also a signal for discomfort. I should have walked a bit, which I did not and it affected my other movements.. Basically, I was restricted to two stones :).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My speech lacked enough energy. Some sentences were monotone, and the stress were not on the right words, e.g., at 1:00, I say 'it was very quite' and there was no stress on any word. There should be some emotion in saying sentences; in the above example, when I say 'quiet', I should convey that I was surprised and yet happy (I am practicing how to say it). “ </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He had replied:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I LOVED your video self-feedback. I completely agree with everything you wrote. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your eyes definitely looked up and around at times. I didn't necessarily think it was because you were nervous, maybe just that you were talking to just me and not a real audience. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your hands seemed to lack purpose and your weight shifted from foot to foot without purpose / perpendicular to your intention / emotion. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You could have been more energetic and excited about what you were saying - we'll work on these things this week</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.“</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today we discussed a few topics related to connecting to audience. Dana mentioned that if he wants to read a book, the first chapter would be about ‘making a bridge’. Connecting to the audience helps in having them more engaged as well as the speaker being more confident. When giving a talk, don’t be far from your audience; this makes them feel you are protecting yourself and conveys a message of weakness. Eyes are windows of the soul; eye contact with the audience is very important (it sees I have no big issue in that sense). Sometimes having more eye contact with people who are engaged is better (e.g., stand-up-comedies in bars and restaurants) while sometimes focusing on less engaged members of audience is helpful to involve them (e.g., in a classroom where some students don’t pay attention). Sense of humour can be helpful to be ‘closer’ to the audience as well as being more confident. Think of including a joke at the beginning of a talk. When talking to an audience, it helps to say something particularly about that audience, i.e., make them a part of the story (e.g., when there is a couple, a joke about relationship helps in comedies). Also, talking about stereotypes (or contrasting them) can help, e.g., as a computer scientist, I can joke about computer nerds, or clarify them I am not one them (to connect to another audience). We played a game that we looked at someone and tried to come up with guesses about him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To improve the low range of my intonations, we note that not only more stress on adjectives, adverbs, and important parts of sentences helps, but also stressing on certain phrases that convey emotions can help (e.g,. When some method was tried and worked, a sense of excitement can be conveyed). To fix a monotone voice, it is good to occasional talk softer to grab attention. Pauses are a great tool to convey confidence and let audience to think. Dana also mentioned situations that monotone voice can be avoided by imitating other people in a story with a different peach (occasions like when he mimics his sister in a comedy show or when I can imitate a manager who wants a new software product). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, having the audience in mind, I gave a short talk (about my parents visiting). I tried to have eye-contact with Dana, his phone, and my bag, who were audience in three corners of an open area in the campus. I tried to be funny, passionate, and ‘close to audience’; think it went well. However, connecting a real audience should be easier and more natural. This makes me think of professors teaching online courses in a room filled with cameras and no student.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dana has sent me a few TED talks as well as my video to review for the next week. TED talks are great for public speaking practices. I also have an exercise for my body movements (getting a bit closer to the member of audience which I have eye-contact and backing off after the eye-contact). I am sending Dana a lecture by Erik Demaine. I am curious to know his opinion about his hand movements. These sessions are going very well.</span></div>
<br />
The video of my talk is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULpni0z_34c">here</a>.</div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-43100583901418242182016-09-06T13:00:00.000-07:002016-10-27T08:44:53.429-07:00Day 1 with Dana J. Bein<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-9544-bd76-c885-e729b30ef57a"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-9544-bd76-c885-e729b30ef57a"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I met Dana in front of Stat Center. I was a few minutes early and he was already waiting. We went to the back of the building to start the first class in the public space. A part of Dana’s plan is to be teach me be comfortable with people who sometimes stare at us or even take pictures. </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-9544-bd76-c885-e729b30ef57a">
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-9544-bd76-c885-e729b30ef57a"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dana suggested that before any seminar or class, I do a few exercises. A couple of minutes for stretching the body, especially the parts that are numb or painful (in my case shoulders), can help reducing stress and give more energy to the speaker. This was followed by a couple of breathing exercises (breathing in through mouth, holding for a few seconds, and breathing out with noise). Then we ‘shouted’ English alphabet with a stress on the sounds that letters make. This can be helpful for people like me who have monotonic voice to prepare for putting enough stress on letters of each word during a talk. Finally, Dana asked me to repeat a Shakespeare's poet that was aimed to put stress on the right word of a sentence.</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-81ed6eb9-9544-bd76-c885-e729b30ef57a">
<br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the above preliminary exercises, Dana asked me to talk about my morning for three minutes. I improvised my short talk and it was recorded to be used as a reference point. As I realized, a few problems were observed in my talk: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">(1) I need to convey my emotions/energy </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">(2) I need to have better body movements </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">(3) I need to address my monotone sound </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">(4) I should add more ‘pauses’ in my talk (I am too fast in connecting sentences). </span></li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, the above problems are all related. To investigate these, I gave two short talks, first in English talking about an issue that makes me angry, and second in my mother tongue about something that makes me excited. In the first talk, I was asked not to move my legs to observe how it affects me. It was observed that this restriction has a dramatic affect on my presentation as I looked stressed and did not move my hands either. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It turns out that language barrier plays a role the level of my excitement. I could convey my emotions much better when I talked in Persian (Dana could figure it from my body language, facial expressions, and intonations). I tried to follow up this issue by observing Dana’s talking; I figured out that he puts a great stress on the words that convey emotions; these are usually adjectives and adverbs, and often come at the end of a sentence. An example was when he said ‘look, this is a GREAT stone!’, and the stress on the word ‘great’ could convey the message. This is an issue that I am practising to address starting today.</span></div>
<br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have found Dana’s tips helpful in improving my communication skills. An important part of this process is me observing him as a great speaker; it seems he naturally uses tips that can be formulated (e.g., putting stress on adverbs or putting his hand on his chest when he is talking about himself). We ended up talking different aspects from architecture (Stata building versus Boston city hall) to politics to music (how rappers use intonation to convey a message). Dana is going to send me the video of my talk to observe myself in action, as well as the Shakespeare's poem to practice it more. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In general, this is a great experience and I am thankful to Charles for it.</span></div>
<br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>September 8th, 2016</b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Update: The poet that I mentioned is not from Shakespeare. Dana updated me that it is from Gilbert and Sullivan's </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mikado:</span></div>
<br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dock</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span></i></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a pestilential prison, with a </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lifelong lock</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span></i></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,</i></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From a cheap and chippy </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chopper</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on a big black block</span></i></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #252525; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #252525; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #252525; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The video of my talk is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQJ3fuiw24U&feature=em-upload_owner">here</a>.</span></span></div>
</span></div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2388106293617711846.post-75142115791565374682016-09-01T10:00:00.000-07:002016-10-05T08:13:29.461-07:00About this blog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My name is <a href="https://people.csail.mit.edu/skamali/">Shahin Kamali</a>. I am a postdoctoral associate in <a href="http://mit.edu/">MIT</a> <a href="http://csail.mit.edu/">CSAIL</a>. I work in <a href="http://supertech.mit.edu/">Supertech</a> group under the advice of Prof. <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/cel/">Charles E. Leiserson</a>.<br />
I was born and raised in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arak,_Iran">Arak, Iran</a>. My mother tongue is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language">Persian</a>. I did my B.Sc. in <a href="http://ut.ac.ir/en">University of Tehran</a>, Iran, and then migrated to Canada and did my M.Sc. and Ph.D in <a href="http://www.concordia.ca/">Concordia University</a> and <a href="http://uwaterloo.ca/">University of Waterloo</a>, respectively. My field of study and research is computer science.<br />
I joined MIT in September 2015. I look forward to joining <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjWqLaq98PPAhVI4oMKHTbwBcYQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fumanitoba.ca%2F&usg=AFQjCNHJ5tB0eX5I-K-tEyyNJcT2rin_BQ&sig2=TPYf4OoQN1v6TVwmbIueXw&bvm=bv.134495766,d.amc">University of Manitoba</a> as a faculty member in Summer 2017.<br />
<br />
In the years that I have been in academia, I have given many research talks and taught a few undergraduate courses. Nevertheless, I have had some issues communicating with my audience. To address these issues, Dr. Leiserson kindly suggested and financed private classes for me with <a href="http://www.djbfunny.com/">Dana J. Bein</a>. Dana is a stand-up comedian who is very experienced in teaching communication skills in different levels. Since the problems that I am facing are common with people in academia (issues with body movements, monotonicity, etc.), I am publishing what I learn from these classes in this weblog. This is meant to serve as a reference for me and hopefully others can also find it useful. </div>
shahinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03540044981493467655noreply@blogger.com0