My Supervisor, Alex ...

On March 12th, just after a Sunday hike in Blue Hill Reservation in outskirts of Boston, I received three emails from Waterloo. Ian Munoro, senior professor in Algorithms group in Waterloo, as well as Khuzaima Daudjee, in Database group, and Daniela, a friend, informed me that my PhD supervisor, Alejandro Lopez Ortiz, 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.
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
I attended the memorial 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.

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.

p.s. here and here are two pages on Alex's memory.

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.

                                                       

A One-Day Course by Edward Tufte at CSAIL

I was fortunate to be supported by my adviser at MIT, Charles E. Leiserson, to attend a one-day course by Edward Tufte on March 17th, 2017. Here is some info about the course on Tufte's website. 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.

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.

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 this. 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. 

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.   

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.

I also learned about sparklines, which are introduced by Tufte in 1980s. Here 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.

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. Here 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). 

I find this review 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).

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.

ImprovBoston II

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:

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...
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. 

ImprovBoston-I

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.).

Here is what I had:

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.

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 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!  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 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 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).

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.

Day 8: Boredom and other issues

"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.

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).

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 Bill Cunningham, 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. Here, 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).

Dana asked me to listen to Dave Chappelle monologue on Saturday-night-live 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.

I just enrolled in Dana's 'Intro to Standup' in ImprovBoston. It is going to be fun!

Improve - Nir Shavit

Last January, I attended the 1st Leadership and Management Skills workshop offered for MIT postdtocs. Here is a link to an article about that workshop. A part of the workshop was an imropv session by Nir Shavit. Nir is a professor at MIT CSAIL that I deeply respect. Last night, I attended a party held by Charles for Bradly Kuszmaul 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.

• 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.
• 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!
• 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. 
• 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'.   
• 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.
• 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. 
• 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.

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.

Day 7: Delivery as a Salad Dressing

This is the election day and I talked with Dana a little bit about it. I have watched videos of George Carlin to learn from his great talks. We agreed that George is missed to comment about this election.

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.

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.

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''.

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 bridge scene in Paris Texas).

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.

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'.

I talked about Grizzly man 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.