On My First Return to Hong Kong in Three Years

Potential titles for travel books on Hong Kong

• Pollution (You Name It, We Got It)
• Holy Shit, Chinese People!
• What Personal Bubble?
• Wrong Side of the Road, Dude!
• ¿Hablas cantonés, mandarín e Inglés?

More seriously, some of the changes since the last time I was here (which was December 2008):

• A lot of ads have Android/iPhone app icons, even Facebook links. QR codes doesn't seem to be quite as popular yet, although there's some similar system that seems local to Hong Kong.
• All the steps on stairs seem really short. I can't tell if I've grown taller in the past three years, but I've noticed that I'm definitely above average height when on the trains. YES.
• When I first got to the States I kept doing price conversions back to HKD. Now I do it the other way around, except that I have no clue what the baseline should be. 39 HKD seems instinctively more than 5 USD, but it's ultimately the same. Obviously, small numbers are inherently more likeable (since we see them more often). I wonder if there's literature on how the conversion rate influences spending...
• I've lost a lost of my spatial memory of Hong Kong, even for places I would visit on a weekly basis. Then my parents' house has also been remodeled, so it's a little harder to get around.
• Whenever I've stayed in the States for a while then come back, I get allergic to something in Hong Kong and would always have a runny nose and keep sneezing. This time I settled with a partially stuffed nose. I think being sick just before leaving somehow buffered whatever I was reacting to.

Font Fun

I'm heading to DC tomorrow for the AAAI Fall Symposium on Advances in Cognitive Systems. My paper got a poster acceptance, and so the last two weeks was spent wrangling with beamer. One can only focus on LaTeX for so long, so to pass time when I'm not sword fighting I decided to play around with some fonts. Can you guess the major web businesses that use the following fonts? Hover over the images for the answer.

While making the poster, my advisor noted that people sometimes confuse the Michigan block M wordmark with the Missouri block-M wordmark. So I looked up all the M states (turns out there's eight of them; my initial list left out Maine and Massachusetts), and collected their wordmark for comparison:

University of Maine

University of Maryland

University of Massachusetts

University of Michigan

University of Minnesota

University of Missouri

Mississippi State University

Montana State University

Book Tracking

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I recently closed my Shelfari account. The reason for this is their restriction against exporting my library: some new policy in the last year required your profile to be at least 90% complete for your library to be exportable. This didn't use to be the case, and it understandably led to a lot of complaints (but which the Shelfari staff never justified). Getting up to that percentage required me to join a few groups (which I didn't want to) and add "friends" (which I don't have... kidding! *sob*). I joined a few generic groups, but really didn't want to contact other people to be friends, and eventually gave up on that process. The upshot of this is that I closed my account entirely.

I've therefore set up a new account at Goodreads. It has worked well for me so far; I particularly like how the tag system is done through a "hovering" dialog box, so I can very quickly move from one book to the next. In Shelfari this was through a model dialog, which required more clicks to do the same thing. In general Goodreads do a better job at user interface. There is a lot less AJAX crud, which makes the page load faster. I'm also keeping an eye on the recommendation system, although I don't have too high hopes for it. I suspect the system is much more useful for fiction than non-fiction, where people read largely similar books; with non-fiction, it's boring to read about the exact same topic over and over again.

Anyway, in the process of switching to Goodreads I had to export my library from Shelfari. Recall that I had given up on making Shelfari allow me to export my list. Instead, I loaded up their list of my books, then saved the HTML. I then wrote a quick script which extracted the authors and titles of books. Ah, the advantages of being a programmer... Here I hit a snag: Goodreads allows users to import books, but only by ISBN. Shefari, in its exported CSV file, contains those, but not on it's normal display page. Luckily, I had a backup file of my library, so I had ISBNs for the majority of my books, but not all of them. For the rest, I used the Library of Congress' Search via URL service, which would return detailed book information given a title and an author... which I have! Putting everything together took about an hour, manually verifying that the books were correct a little longer, but at the end of that I had completely moved my library with minimal loss of information. The other upshot is that I cleaned up my list a little, removing books that I'm no longer interested in.

To make sure that this wouldn't happen again, I checked the file that Goodreads would export. It had more information than Shefari, which was nice. What caught my eye was that, in addition to the ratings I gave my books, the exported spreadsheet also contained other reader's average ratings. Which allowed me to make the following plot:

The x-axis is the average rating of other people of any particular book on Goodreads, while on the y-axis is my own rating. The red crosses are the books on this scale, while the red line is a linear regression over these points. The blue line is y=x; that is, what the regression should look like if my ratings were exactly in line with the average reader. As you can see, I have a slightly lower opinion of books in general, especially on the lower end of the scale. Qualitatively, my tastes agree with the average reader, but the discrete ratings on my side makes it hard to give a good regression.

PS. A book I'm reading that is not listed on my shelf is Donald Knuth's The TeXbook. One might expect a book about a pseudo-programming language for typesetting to be dry, but Knuth makes it pretty interesting.

Scattered Thoughts

In lieu of writing single posts about each of these topics (which would require willpower I don't have), I've decided to give one paragraph abstracts of my thoughts. If any of these particularly interest you though, I might spend the time to refine and lengthen it.

Computer Science Education

The gist of this train of thought (and it's a fricking freight train) is that computer science education should be mandatory much earlier on, in the same way that maths is. There are many arguments for this, the most powerful argument being that while computers are now ubiquitous, many people still view them as magic, aka. "sufficiently advanced technology". Another powerful argument is that, like literature and mathematics and science, computer science teaches a different way of thinking. If science is the study of why (things are the way they are) and mathematics the study of what (is the relationship between structures and its implications), then computer science is the study of how (to achieve a specific effect through many small steps). I sincerely think that computer science is the study of process, of the "how" of things; programs are merely a formal language for describe how to change things from one state to another. Since this is about computer science education, I also think that computer science is relatively easy to teach, precisely because computers are everywhere. Students don't need to wait for the teacher's validation - if their program works, it works! On a negative note, a recent paper suggests that not everyone can become good programmers...

Mike Rowe's Testimony to Congress (transcript)

I heard about this from the Blogosaur, and another friend of mine agrees with her, but I have a slightly different opinion to share. I don't disagree that plumbers, welders, and other "dirty jobs" and skilled laborers are as necessary now as they are before, or that they are worthy of respect. What I disagree with is Rowe's suggestion that hard work is no longer valued, or the more blatant assertion that technology does not require hard work. Programmers at start-ups work no less hard than the skilled laborers of yesteryear, and these are the same people who would be fascinated by metalwork and paved roads and suspension bridges 40 years ago. Rowe talks of people who don't know how to fix things, who are afraid to get dirty; how many computer owners know how to fix their computer? Do computer technicians get any more face time with their customers than plumbers? Market economics suggests that as wages for skilled labor increase, this gap will be filled. It might not be filled by Americans, but more likely, people will be more willing to go into those jobs. If plumbers really are as essential to our society as psychiatrist, is it so bad an idea that we should pay more for the latter? Isn't that, in itself, a reflection of our culture's valuation of plumbers?

PS. This goes nicely with my thoughts.

Finite and Infinite Games (wikipedia)

I read this on a friend's suggestion a few years ago. I recently found my notes for it, reported back to my friend, and have since thought a lot more about its subject. The big take away for me is that you can only lose a game if you are playing a game, and you can only play a game if you willingly join it. A corollary is that if you're losing a game, you can always decide to play a larger game instead - until you play the largest game of all (aka. life), in which no one can lose. It supports something I've come to firmly believe: if you don't like something, either change it or change yourself. It also fits into the "Ha Ha Only Serious" hacker mindset, as well as why I derailed my philosophy class onto unicorns for 15 minutes. But that's a different story.

Teach For America (wikipedia)

Some of you may know that I had planned on Teach For America as my backup in case I wasn't accepted into any grad schools. I abandoned my application when I was accepted into Michigan, but I also did a little more research, primarily by reading Donna Foote's Relentless Pursuit. Hindsight is 20/20 and it sounds like sour grapes, but I have philosophical disagreements with the TFA philosophy. While their goal of education equality is commendable, I don't think having a bunch of recent graduates teaching for two years is the best way to do it. This approach is inherently transient, despite the stated goal of hoping TFA fellows will go on to impact education at the policy level. Another stated assumption, that good leaders will be good teachers, may also be unjustified, and that's without taking into account whether the people they hire are good leaders. I personally believe that to become a good teacher one must first know and love the subject, which is more than I can say for most graduates. That applicants to the program has surged in recent years provides additional evidence that people are not seeing it as an opportunity to solve the education problem, but merely as a sentence on their resume (if, of course, they make it through the program). Undoubtedly, my views would be different if I did go through the program, but I would like to think that at least I've done enough teaching outside of TFA to know that I like it.

Circular Logic - "glow"

The NYTimes has a regular column on math puzzles. I don't usually look at them, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis... what? Oh yes, Numberplay. Most of the time I can't be bothered to figure out the answer, but one of the questions this week happens to be computationally easy. The question is:

Consider the word "glow." If you replace each letter with its counterpart in a mirror alphabet you will get the legitimate word "told." What other words exhibit this same property?

So I started wrote a little script in Python:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import re
if __name__ == "__main__":
    src = open("/usr/share/dict/cracklib-small", "r")
    words = set()
    for word in src:
        word = word.strip()
        if len(word) == 1 or re.match('[^a-z]', word):
            continue
        words.add(word)
    src.close()
    for word in words:
        mirror = "".join(chr(219-ord(c)) for c in word)
        if mirror in words:
            print(word, mirror)

This script uses the computer's dictionary file (which I've used before), mutates the letters, then checks if the result is in the dictionary. The script outputs:

all   zoo
ark   zip
art   zig
blip  york
de    wv
dr    wi
drib  wiry
elm   von
era   viz
err   vii
fir   uri
fm    un
ge    tv
girl  trio
girt  trig
glib  tory
glow  told
gm    tn
gs    th
hob   sly
hold  slow
holt  slog
holy  slob
horn  slim
ir    ri
irk   rip
iv    re
ivy   reb
levi  over
low   old
lug   oft
md    nw
me    nv
mix   nrc
mn    nm
mrs   nih
ms    nh
nh    ms
nih   mrs
nm    mn
nrc   mix
nv    me
nw    md
oft   lug
old   low
over  levi
re    iv
reb   ivy
ri    ir
rip   irk
slim  horn
slob  holy
slog  holt
slow  hold
sly   hob
th    gs
tn    gm
told  glow
tory  glib
trig  girt
trio  girl
tv    ge
un    fm
uri   fir
vii   err
viz   era
von   elm
wi    dr
wiry  drib
wv    de
york  blip
zig   art
zip   ark
zoo   all

As a sanity check, notice that "glow" does indeed turn into "told" (and vice versa).

Problem solved in 10 minutes.

PS. I would have commented on the post, but I have no clue what my NYTimes password is.

Herstory

I read a book recently (or maybe it was the internet; I don't remember) where the author talked about how history has been male dominated and asked the question, "what happened to herstory?" Well, if you want to play that game...

I used a short regex to find all the words in my computer's dictionary file which started with "his", "man", and "male". I chose a few to systematically replace with "her", "woman", and "female", with slight hand-tuned adjustments for spelling. Here are some particularly funny ones (with commentary).

NOTE: Before you yell at me to say that not all feminists do things as pointless as wordplay, I know. I'm using the word "feminist" (and related terms) below to refer to those who do play these games.

• femalefactor - female criminals; also, the critical element behind every successful man
• femalevolent -  things like the silent treatment; also, witches
• herpanic - what Spanish women would do if they found out about this change
• herred - past tense of the sound female snakes make
• womanager - your female boss
• womanatee - another name for baby tees
• womandrake - a shapely plant
• womaneuver - the special way females handle vehicles
• womangled - what every women's hair is when they wake up
• womanhole - *ahem*
• womania - what Freud and folk psychology called "hysteria" (hersteria?)
• womanifold - laundry; not to be confused with "womanifolds"
• womanipulate - actually, this is the etymology of the word "manipulate"
• womanservant - subject of a lot of male fantasy
• womanslaughter - it seems like the unmodified version fits the feminist movement better

We can, of course, go further. See if you can identify the original word for these:

• abdowomen - the medical name for a pregnant belly
• accompaniwoment - another word for escort
• antidisestablishwomentarianism - the longest word in the English language
• Archeredes - a virtually-unknown female ancient Greek mathematician
• ewomancipation - the process of women obtaining political rights and equality under the law
• hashersh - why feminism feels good
• homomorphersm - another word for lesbianism
• husbgyny - the domestication of women
• hywoman - a membrane around the penis which breaks on first sexual intercourse
• multidiwomensional - the idea that women cannot be rated on a single scale
• portwomanteau - a famous species of wine grape
• rowomantics - the behaviors of the female crew team
• serapher - another word for angel
• whersical - this list
• womenstruate - actually, I have no clue what this means

I'll all for feminism, but really: there are more important things to talk about than sewomantics. Also, study etymology.

PS. Also see the ad fenimam logical fallacy.

Twitter Wordle

A summary of my tweets (created with Wordle):

 

A poor excuse for not writing, I know. I'm hoping to have something up soon, on computer science education.