Brian Keng

  • Academia and Research

    “Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.”
    – Mark Twain

    Professor Damodarn has written up a great post about academia.  He readily admits that academia is not the “truth seeking” profession that is idealized in movies and television (and indeed in academia!).  Instead, he gives six points about the realities of academia (which I must say that I broadly agree with after being around the block once or twice).  I paraphrase here (for brevity):

    1. Research what will get you published, not necessarily what is interesting.
    2. Bias is inherent in any human endeavor and drives not only the research direction, but also the how they experiments are setup and analyzed.
    3. Brand matters.  Who you are, your school, your mentor, your research topic can significantly affect your chances of publication.
    4. Every discipline has an “established” view.  If you follow it, your paper will have an easier time being published.  The inverse is also true.
    5. Peer review is widely variable and sometimes biased.
    6. Data abuse happens.

    Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it?  It’s almost as if you shouldn’t blindly trust any single paper that has come out of academia.  And that’s exactly what you should be doing!  Sort of.  Although he gives such a cynical outlook, he still strongly believes in peer review and empirical testing.  And being the pragmatic, straight talking wise man that he is, Professor Damodaran also provides some advice for laymen:

    1. Don’t assume that academics don’t have an agenda and don’t play politics. They do.
    2. Don’t let “research findings” sway you too much – for every conclusive result in one direction, there is almost always just as conclusive a result in the opposite one.
    3. Just because something has been published does not make it the truth. Conversely, the failure to publish does not mean that a paper is unworthy.
    4. Develop your own vision of the world before you start reading papers in an area. Take what you find to be interesting and provocative and abandon the fluff (and there is plenty in the typical published paper).
    5. Learn statistics. It is amazing how much of what you see reported as the truth fails the “standard error” test.

    All sage advice.  One important point in defense of academics though is that most work is incremental.  Break-throughs don’t happen that often, especially not every publication.  I suspect that almost every “break-through” we read about in the news is only one step in a promising new direction.  And only that — a step.  No one paper is going to have the exact cure for Alzheimer’s disease or produce cold fusion.  Most likely the results will have to be reproduced, built upon and engineered (I couldn’t leave this part out) before we realize the impact and value of the publication.  And that’s the beauty of it.  Millions of researchers are taking millions of steps in different directions trying to expand human knowledge.  Most of it will be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but a few will change the world forever.  And of course along the way, there will always be people who cheat, as well as people who do great work, but (scientific) progress is made.  Instead of being cynical I like to think about it more like the Carpenters: “we’ve only just begun”.

     

  • How I’m re-learning Chinese

    I read an article the other day about an interesting fellow who learned to speak four languages in a very short amount of time.  He had these four broad steps:

    Stage 1: Learn the correct pronunciation of the language.
    Stage 2: Vocabulary and grammar acquisition, no English allowed.
    Stage 3: Listening, writing and reading work.
    Stage 4: Speech.

    Having a background in Chinese, the pronunciation wasn’t too difficult.  The second step was where I have been stuck for the past fifteen years.  My vocabulary consists basically of common words I would hear at home, which is greatly inadequate for say ordering food at a restaurant or watching television.  Enter Anki.

    For stage 2, the article recommended this amazing program called Anki.  At its core, it’s just a flashcard program.  At its best, it’s pure and utter genius.  If you need to learn a bunch of facts into your long-term memory (e.g. Chinese characters), then this is the program for you.  The basic idea is that you don’t learn your whole deck of flash cards at once.  You are slowly introduced to new ones every day.  After you “look at the answer”, you rate how easy or hard you found it.  The program will then show you that card at an appropriate time interval just when you are about to forget it.  See this video for more details.  Just find a pre-existing deck for what you want to learn (there were tons for Chinese), install the app, and you’re on your way.

    There’s one catch though: the program is free, the decks are free, but for some reason the iPhone app costs $24.99 (the idea is that the iPhone version subsidizes all other development).  I know what you’re thinking: “that’s an outrageous price!”  But let’s remember what Oscar Wilde said, “A fool knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Working backwards.  This program has the potential for me to learn Chinese, how much would I be willing to pay for that goal?  A lot more than $25.  Even if I got 1% closer, it’s still worth it.

    I’ve been using the app for over a month now at about five to ten minutes a day.  Each day I learn five new characters/phrases.  I’m currently at 245 cards that I’ve seen (out of 3000 in this deck).  Maybe I won’t be fluent any time soon but at least I’m 245 cards closer.

  • An Apocryphal Story

    I recently re-read a story about Max Planck from a transcript of a speech by Charlie Munger.  He describes it as “apocryphal”, and I have to agree.

    After he won his nobel prize, he was invited to lecture everywhere, and he had this chauffeur who drove him to give public lectures all through Germany.  And the chauffeur memorized the lecture, and so one day he said, “Gee, Professor Planck, why don’t you let me try it by switching places?”  And so he went up and gave the lecture.  At the end of it, some physicist stood up and posed a question of extreme difficulty. But the chauffeur was up to it.  “Well,” he said, “I’m surprised that a citizen of an advanced city like Munich is asking so elementary a question, so I’m going to ask my chauffeur to respond.”

    I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t talk about what you don’t know — unless you’re as witty as the chauffeur.

  • The Milgram Experiment

    Sometime in the summer of 1963 in a small town somewhere in New England, a young man named John stepped into an empty room to find a tall dark middle aged man in a white lab coat holding a clipboard. The man introduced himself as Dr. Milgram, momentarily stepped out and came back with a chair, a single sheet of paper, and a little box with a dial on it. John was told that we would be participating in a revolutionary new method of teaching that could lead to a golden age in American education. His job was to learn how to apply the method properly to see if it could be replicated across all American schools. [1]

    Dr. Milgram proceeded to attach two electrodes to the John’s chest, turned the dial on the little box to “50V” and pushed a red button on the box. He felt an immediate, slightly painful, shock. Dr. Milgram then called in another young man who would be the student. John’s job was to teach this student every pair of words on this list. He would read one out, then the student would respond. If the student did not respond correctly, he would turn the dial up by 50V and press the red button. If the student did respond correctly, he would continue on to the next word in the list. The student then walked into the other room where he could be heard but not seen.

    John felt a bit apprehensive about this whole situation but Dr. Milgram reassured him that this was safe. So he began with the first word on the list. The student from the next room answered incorrectly. John pressed the red button and the student made a sound that was barely audible. He turned the dial up 50V and proceeded to the next word on the list. The student again responded incorrectly so he pressed pressed the red button again. This time the student could clearly be heard from the next room. John pressed on. Turn up 50V and ask another word. This time the student got it right, John was relieved but that soon faded as the student from the next room cried out in pain from his incorrect answer.

    At this point John knew something was wrong. He asked Dr. Milgram if we should check on the student, but Dr. Milgram assured him that the student was fine and said that: “The experiment requires that you continue.” John kept listing words and kept turning up the dials. Next 200V, then 250V. Dr. Milgram insisted that the experiment go on. “It is absolutely essential that you continue,” he said. 300V, 350V. “You have no other choice, you must go on,” pressed the doctor. Finally, he got to the last word which was incorrectly answered and 450V was applied. The student in the other room cried out in agony and quietly wept afterwards. Dr. Milgram thanked him for his time and showed him the way out.

    For years after that incident John would be able to hear the cries of pain coming from that poor student. What had he done? How could he have inflicted so much pain on another person? Why did he listen to Dr. Milgram? Why did he do those terrible things?  Those were questions that alluded him for the rest of his days. [2]

    1. [1] Although the story is fictional, this experiment was actually performed to see the effect that authority can have on an individual. Of course in the actual experiments, the subject (John) was told afterwards that the “student” was not actually being shocked but just pretending to be shocked.[↩]
    2. [2] This story is a great example of authority and how it can influence us. I was originally going to write about how it’s dangerous to blindly follow heroes but then I started writing the above and it turned out pretty well. My original idea was that since I highly respect Warren Buffett, it’s important not to blindly follow whatever he says. The important point is to think. Always. One great way to get around that is to find opposing opinions by intelligent folks on whatever subject you might get blinded by and I was going to refer to a recent post by Professor Damodarn titled “The Buffett Plan: An apt name for a sanctimonious, hypocritical and superficial proposal.” I still might write something on this so look out.[↩]

  • Lemmings

    There exists a fascinating little creature in nature called a lemming. What’s remarkable about this rodent isn’t its shape, nor its size, nor its long soft fur. Rather, what’s fascinating about this little creature is what happens when you put a bunch of them together, can you guess what it is? Yes, yes, they do have a lot of sex but something more remarkable than that happens. These seemingly disparate brains begin to stop working. Not just stop working, but stop working in a wonderfully fantastic and tragic way — they commit mass suicide. On occasion, this single unified herd of lemmings hurdles themselves off a cliff into the ocean jumping to their tragic demise in one of nature’s most twisted spectacles. [1]

    Now’s what hard to imagine about this scenario is how the lemmings can possibly think to do this.  Sure, the first lemming might justifiably have to run off the cliff because he’s got no place to go — either get trampled by the crowd, or take your chances going off the cliff.  The next guy in line doesn’t fare any better because he’s got to follow the first one off the cliff, or else be trampled by the group.  The ith rodent doesn’t know any better because he’s just sees everyone in front of him running and everyone behind him running, so what else is a rodent to do?  Now here’s the interesting part: what’s the last rodent thinking?  As he approaches the cliff he sees that everyone is jumping to their watery grave.  So he has two choices: join the charge to his furry demise, or stop and think about what comes next.  Guess what happens? [2]

    That last rodent is infected with a particularly viral meme: the “they must know something that I don’t” meme.  They must know something I don’t know.  They can’t all be wrong.  They can do all your thinking for you?  There are countless papers, books and evidence of this social proof phenomenon happening not just in our furry little friends the lemmings, but in every imaginable human society that ever existed.

    Looks like everybody on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and every other social networking site is getting ready to jump off a cliff.  What are you waiting for?

    1. [1] Actually, this is a myth.  Click the Wikipedia link above to understand where it comes from.[↩]
    2. [2] I got this story from a MBA Valuation lecture by Professor Damodaran where he was talking about markets and perception.[↩]

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