Another newsletter
I had an in-person conference last week, the first in years for most of us. There, I ran into a colleague on the street. After the customary, "how have you been?", she asked me, "are you still writing that newsletter? I think it's really important." Why did she say this?
Dynamic range
In a common parable, a group of blind men heard that a strange animal called an elephant had been brought to the town. The moral of this story is that humans have a tendency to view the world through their experiences. But this is not the whole story.
Counting cycles
We published a paper last week. 🎉 We worked on this project for several years, plus one additional year for the editorial process (broken, I know). A conservative measurement estimates at least 5 years from start to finish. If a cycle takes 5 years to complete, how many cycles are left?
Consistency
It’s 9 o’clock on Sunday morning. I’ve written an article and sent it out every previous Sunday for almost a year, but I haven’t written this Sunday’s article yet. There goes the streak. I should probably throw in the towel.
Scientific judgment under uncertainty
How is it that we are quick to be skeptical of science but less skeptical of news? Why this difference?
Why skeptical sounds smart
I'm skeptical. It's the phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of innovators and creatives everywhere. A new idea is fragile and must be nurtured tenderly before it is ready for the slings and arrows of the skeptical world. But how do we protect our ideas from the skeptical skeptic?
Composable ideas
Programming language wars arise when software developers disagree over which language is the best tool for a given task. Which language is best?
A publishing problem
If I needed to send every article to a ghostly editor of this site's publishing platform to read and decide whether it's interesting enough, you'd never read an article here and I would be stuck in publishing limbo. This absurd universe describes the academic publishing system.
An approach problem
I want to start by telling a story about a young scientist. This young scientist had everything that you would
A funding problem
In 1999, the NIH set a modular budget of $250,000/year. In the past 20+ years, the modular budget has not moved. Ask any academic scientist about the hardest part of the job, and they will undoubtedly say funding.
