A Grief Observed

I've recently gone through one of the hardest experiences of my life.

During the month of December, I made a new friend (a girl who worked at the University) and enjoyed the brief time I was able to spend with her. The getting-to-know-you phase was cut somewhat short by the holidays (I went home for a few weeks), but we still kept in contact. On December 30th, I flew back into town to plan a New Year's Eve party, and picked her up to help buy decorations. About 5 minutes after I had picked her up, I made the turn into my apartment—the same left-handed turn I'd made hundreds of times in a year and a half of living there—and was broadsided by an oncoming car. I was knocked unconscious so there's a good chunk of my memory that's rather blurry (and I remember none of the incident or the supposed other car), but after a few CAT scans and other procedures, I was released, completely fine.

She never made it out of her coma.


The ten days between when the accident happened and when she finally passed were some of the hardest days of my life: wrestling with God, with my emotions, trying to accept what happened. And the days and weeks that have followed have not been any easier. Since that time, I've gone through a complete gamut of emotions: intense guilt followed by sweet peace; sadness and fear that things will never be the same, followed by an optimistic hope and a knowledge that they would...followed by the confused, gradual, heavy settling that she was permanently gone and I was powerless to do anything about it; concern that I had forgotten her and moved on too quickly followed by intense, violent sobbing...

I've also learned a lot about comfort in grief. I've learned that the worst (and yet most common) thing one can ask is "How are you doing?" (Are they using the phrase in its trite, meaningless greeting sense, or do they know what happened—and are they prepared for the floodgates that might be opened in response?)

But most of all, I struggle with the "What can I do for you?" question—which is traditionally followed by "No really, what can I do for you?" and almost always wrapped up with "Well remember that if you need anything, I'm just a phone call away." As if repetition and emphasis makes up for the burden they've just (knowingly or otherwise) placed on my already-weary shoulders, the burden of making them—the non-grieving, nonetheless—feel better by offering them control in a situation that for me has been spinning violently out of control for days and weeks and now months... I've since quit telling them, "Well for starters, you can never ask me that ever again," and have instead opted to just smile and thank them for their concern. Sometimes, the simple repeated song is all that humans or birds know how to sing.


In stark contrast, the most meaningful expressions since that day have been in the form of gifts. Gifts I neither asked for nor expected, but sent me to tears nonetheless—tears of appreciation and gratitude and friendship and love. One such gift was the remote to our apartment complex gate, so I could take the back entrance instead of revisiting that same left-hand turn day after day, driving over the fluorescent-green painted lines in the street that shouted to all passers-by "something terrible happened here."

The other gift that meant the world to me was a pair of pants. Someone should have told me when I got on the plane that cold December morning to put on a pair of ragged jeans and a sweatshirt I didn't care about. When they pull you from your totalled vehicle, they don't ask you nicely to lift up your arms as they gently take off your jacket. They don't even spend the time to unbutton your shirt or unzip your pants. Instead, they take scissors (or a knife or bolt cutters or a blow torch or whatever they have handy, I guess) to the lot of it, giving it back to you in a hospital carryout bag like a prize from Dave & Busters. No, they really should have told me not to wear my favorite outfit, to keep my faux leather jacket I still haven't replaced safely hung in the closet, to keep my brand new pair of Bonobos safely unpacked, and to save my favorite flannel shirt for a different chilly Texas day. So when the pants came in the mail (from one of my very best of friends who, despite her attempts at remaining anonymous, left her billing address on the packing slip), I was once again reduced to tears. But this time, they were welcome tears, appreciative tears, and--most important--tears I could experience on my own, in the comfort and privacy of my own car, and at the rate I wanted or did not want.


Maybe this is the way all grief is: the disgust with trivial "checkins," the appreciation of gifts. Or maybe I'm different. In conclusion? Save your favorite outfit for a day when you'll decidedly maintain a comfortable distance from ambulances and paramedics with blow torches. And buy a friend a pair of blue jeans.

Solidarity

It's a beautiful day when one can realize that we, as humans, are all in this fight together.

This morning I was on the bus and the gentleman in the back was having a rather heated conversation on the phone. I'm not sure if he realized it, but his voice was loud enough and distinct enough that the entire bus was aware of his conversation. And I'm also not sure if he was aware, but this was probably not a conversation he wanted the entire bus to hear. I wish I had recorded the conversation, but the only phrase I can remember (perhaps because it was repeated eight or nine time with varying emphasis) was, "We've gone out several times now and she still hasn't introduced me to a single one of her [expletive] friends!"

But the best part of the entire trip, the part that gave me the warm-fuzzies, was when those of us at the front of the bus realized we were all having the same experience. Smiles were exchanged, eyes were rolled in unison, and understanding nods made us all instant friends.

So thanks, Mr Unashamed-Phone-User. Thanks for bringing us together. And I hope for the sake of another bus of isolated individuals that your girlfriend continues to keep her [expletive] friends to herself for many months to come.

Musical Turing Test

I currently TA for an undergraduate Issues in Computer Science class, and during one of the lectures, the professor talked about a computer's ability to create art and music—which, one might suppose, are very "human" skills. Can a computer compose music? Sure...but it won't sound quite right. Right? In class, the professor tried this with two composers: Bach and Joplin. For each of these composers, she had a computer program generate ("compose") a musical piece after it had identified patterns ("learned") from a lot of music from that composer. She then recorded a pianist playing the computer-composed piece, so a piece generated by a Bach-learned program would sound a little something like Bach, and a Joplin-learned one would sound quite a bit like your typical Joplin rag.

I won't bore you with any more details (there are a few more at the actual test—you should take it, it only takes 7 minutes tops), but the results were interesting. During class, the teacher juxtaposed each computer-composed piece with an actual human composed piece, and then asked the students to pick the real piece. The performance was terrible. It was clear these students couldn't tell the difference between a great like Bach and a computer imitation of Bach. But then I began to wonder: as I took the test, I was able to pick out each of the real compositions. Was this because of my musical background? I decided to give the same test to a larger audience, this time recording their self-reported musical experience.

If you're not interested in the individual results and discussion, the takeaway is that, even among self-reported musicians, only just over 40% of the individuals were able to correctly identify the human composer. Yes. Only 40%. In other words, more often than not, humans think computers are more "human" composers than Bach or Chopin or Joplin. This is a terrible result! (There's a pretty good description why this is bad in this RadioLab episode, at about 16:26.) I'll try and go into it more in the Analysis section below.


Population Distribution
For those of you interested in the questions and population distribution, I've been updating the values here. For your information, the quiz consisted of 6 questions: three background, and three with the paired audio samples. For the first three questions, here are the number of respondents (total of 247) in each category:

1. What is your major field of work? The responses were free-form and varied from math to computers to culinary arts to music to motorcycle repair. I haven't looked at any of these responses past collecting answers.
2. Do you play any instruments? This was multiple choice, divided into 4 categories of increasing "musicality." Here are the number of respondents that self-selected each category:
1. No: 28
2. Yes, but I've picked it up on my own without lessons: 27
3. Yes, and I've had official lessons for at least one year:  131
4. Yes, I would consider myself a professional musician: 61
3. What is your technical musical background? This was also multiple choice with 4 categories, and had the following number of respondents:
1. None: 38
2. I know some musical theory, but I've picked it up on my own: 42
3. I've taken a class or lessons in musical theory: 124
4. I'm a professional musician or majored in music theory: 43

Categorical Results by Response
And here are the responses, separated into response for each category

Second question, accuracy by response:

1 - 27.4%

2 - 40.7%

3 - 42.0%

4 - 50.3%

Third question, accuracy by response:

1 - 32.5%

2 - 42.9%

3 - 40.9%

4 - 54.3%

Average total accuracy:
42.2%

A graphical representation of the responses, by category. The x-axis has the question number, and the y-axis has the accuracy. The circle size is representative of the number of respondents for that specific question.

Overall Results and Analysis

The overall accuracy for all three composers was 42.2%. In other words, only 42 out of 100 times were people able to correctly identify who the human composer was. There probably aren't quite enough samples to show statistical significance, and the survey process wasn't exactly accurate (I didn't prevent anyone from cheating—they could take the survey as many times as they wanted), but there does seem to be a general trend that with musical experience, the accuracy increases.

This is what I expected.

Almost.

On closer inspection, this all is actually quite disconcerting. With the sole exception of those who are professional musicians, humans think that the computer composer actually sounds more human. How could this be possible? Well, I can think of a couple of possibilities.

First, it's possible that there was a hidden variable we weren't controlling for. I had my roommate take the quiz first, and he got them all right. I asked him how he did it, and his response was that he just picked the better recording each time. Oops. When I designed the quiz, I already had the mp3 files for the computer composers, but I was lazy with the real compositions and just ripped the music off YouTube clips. I went back and actually purchased the music off iTunes so they would sound more similar. When I sent the survey out to a larger audience, there were more issues. Turns out iTunes adds album artwork, which was displayed in some browsers when they played the music. Oops again. This was a little harder, but with some online conversion and VLC magic, I finally cleared them all of their extraneous information. Perhaps there is something more I'm not controlling for—if this were real science, I'd want to have the same performer play each piece and be recorded with the same device. Good thing this isn't real science, right?

But there's another possibility that seems more likely. When the computer "composed" a piece by Bach, she wanted it to sound as much like Bach as she could, so she consciously added bits and pieces of actual songs. But when Bach really wrote his pieces, his goal was to create something new and fresh, something that didn't sound like anything he'd written before. Something that people would clearly identify as Bach--or would at least recognize it when they heard it before. All of his similarities to previous works were subconscious, influences from his schooling, the music he enjoyed listening to, even some of the music he previously composed.

Conclusion

With high statistical confidence, humans think that a computer who is trying to imitate a Bach piece actually sounds more like Bach than the composer himself. Maybe this is bad (computers will eventually replace composers and artists and singers and all other "human" fields), but maybe, instead, this identifies an aspect of talented human creators: the ability to create something truly unique.

Notes:
Note1: As people take this test, I'll update the results on this page. Hopefully I replace them all so it makes sense. Also, if you want some more statistics, I can try and get them to you—or I could probably give you the data myself, it's pretty well-anonymized.
Note 2: The first numbers were published on 23 Nov 2013 with 65 respondents and 42.6% accuracy. The results were updated on 26 Nov 2013 with 99 respondents and 40.7% accuracy. They were updated again on 11 Dec 2013 with 201 respondents and 42.8% accuracy. They were updated on 12 Sep 2014 with 247 respondents and 42.2% accuracy.

Back it up

My hard drive just crashed, completely unexpectedly. I have a high-end MacBook Pro that I only bought in 2011, so it was well under the typical 5-year life of most spinning drives. I learned two lessons from this experience:

1. Get the Apple Care. If you're buying Apple, it's one of the best add-on purchases you'll make. It gives you three years of protection (most companies only give you two), and it's only a fraction of the cost of your entire machine. The amount you spend will definitely be justified by your peace of mind. Apple replaced everything for free--and did it all over the weekend (I went in on Saturday and was out by Monday. The lag was because I had customized hardware). Very fast and efficient.
2. Back up your devices. While waiting in line to pick up my laptop, I stood behind an older gentleman who was obviously distraught after losing data on his phone--probably in the form of non-replaceable pictures of his grandkids. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do after the fact, so prevention is the only way to go. Get a large external drive, something like the 3 TB Seagate drive I have (on sale, it's just over $100--definitely worth the hours of time you'd spend rewriting all your papers). If it's this big, you can also use it to store any pictures and music and movies that don't fit on your machine. Make sure you set it up to remind you to back it up every 10 days or so, or you'll forget and will have wasted the $100.

Do it. You won't regret it.

And to help you remember, I've included this wonderful song: 

The powers that be, hard at work

Finally, after years of hard work and countless failed revisions, the illustrious University of Texas at Austin has put together a "new Student Honor Code." It is the hope that this well-worded Code will not only inspire students to achieve greatness, but will also mention academic integrity--a fundamental flaw that prevented several other Codes from making it past round 2 of the workshop phase. 

Other codes that could have been approved but were rejected:

• "As a student of The University of Texas at Austin, I shall abide by the core values of the University." (Doesn't include "academic integrity")
• "Let's just be good, y'all." (Again, doesn't mention "academic integrity")
• "A longhorn is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly..." (Again, doesn't mention "academic integrity", and there were also some minor issues with Legal)

The official message announcing this change has been copied below for your convenience:

From: President

Date: September 6, 2013

Subject: Official: New Student Honor Code in effect

Dear Colleagues:

Now that classes are underway, I'd like to announce that a new Student Honor Code has been approved and is now in effect. I'm proud that our students, led by the Senate of College Councils, have taken the initiative to update UT's Honor Code.

The new Student Honor Code reads:

"As a student of The University of Texas at Austin, I shall abide by the core values of the University and uphold academic integrity."

This code is more succinct and explicitly mentions academic integrity, as requested by students. 

The code that we have used for the last nine years is now known as the University Code of Conduct and is applicable to all members of The University of Texas community. It reads:

"The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community."

Meaningful words have real power, and I am proud that our whole campus community contemplates and abides by these principles.

Sincerely,

Bill Powers

President

Academic Hazing -- Part II

It's been a while since Part I happened, and I didn't publish it because I wanted to remain in good graces with my adviser. Now that it's officially over, I figured I could post Part I and finish up with Part II.

To keep the three major actors (all advisors) in this play separate, I will give them names. First, my PhD adviser I'll call M, the graduate adviser for the CS graduate program I'll call Al, and the academic adviser (she knows all things rules and regulations) I'll call G.

I got an email from G mid-August, informing me that since I hadn't given my qualifying presentation by that point, I needed to provide the graduate committee with a schedule for when I would accomplish it. I wasn't too concerned--since I had already prepared for it in Part I, I could really do it any time.

But before I could email any response, M preemptively replied to the thread (Al, G, and me) with a two-sentence response:

I am no longer supervising Nathan Clement.  I will be at the meeting.

I spoke with Al and he told me I should probably get my act together, create a plan for how I would fulfill what I previously had considered "arbitrary requirements," and try and smooth things over with M. Since these "arbitrary requirements" consisted essentially of writing a 30-page background chapter for my PhD dissertation in the next two weeks, I sent a sort of extended abstract to M as a token of my dedication. This morning I got an email that simply stated:

Your emails have caused me to revisit events and progress per your research with me.
I come to the same conclusion. I am no longer your advisor.

In talking to a fellow student in the lab, he recommended I still talk in person with M and express my willingness to "take my scholarship seriously," so I waited for him to arrive at his office.


I described the meeting to a friend via text like this:

there's not really much of a story ... I talked to him, he said no, I said "please", he said never, and then I threw his chair out his window. 

maybe the chair part was only in my mind... 

I find it interesting that less than a month ago I was considering what I'd do if "my life were completely and irreversibly turned around."

Academic Hazing - Part I

I just got a scathing email from my advisor. There's a little bit of back story, so bear with me for a minute.

About the end of April, I finished writing a paper describing my research to that point, sent it to my advisor for review, and then set it aside to do some more research.

About the middle of May, I prepared to give a presentation–somewhat equivalent to the qualification exams in most PhD programs–invited colleagues and professors, and was about to purchase fruit and drinks. The night before I was scheduled to give this presentation, my advisor suggested I wasn't ready. Suggested is a light word. He actually forbade me from giving the presentation.

About the middle of June, my dad encouraged me to submit the paper I had previously written to a conference: there was one in Australia and one in Greece. On a whim, I asked my advisor about these conferences, if he had heard of either of them, and which one he thought I should attend. His response was that I don't know enough to submit to either conference and I should instead think about combining forces with another graduate student and submitting to a conference in Colorado (who wants to go to Colorado when they can go to Australia?) I respond with a short message saying, "Thanks. I'll just submit to one of these conferences and see if I can get some feedback on my paper."

About the beginning of July (now), he sends this "scathing rebuke." Apparently, my work to this point has been unsatisfactory, it is clear that I don't know what I'm talking about, my response to his email was "very discouraging," and if I didn't fulfill a set of arbitrary requirements, he was going to metaphorically and physically kick me out of his lab.

As I sat there seething, trying to think of some sort of witty, biting email to put him in his place, I imagined how the "perfect scenario" would play out:

I would write a scathing rebuke to him (my graduate advisor was already CC'd–let that continue), and he would become incensed. The graduate advisor would schedule a meeting in an attempt to mediate between the two of us, but tempers would be high. My advisor would make his first (weak) arguments that consist mostly of things clearly made up on the spot. I would politely wait, a wry smile on my face, then patiently ask, "Are you finished?" when he stopped talking.

And then my turn would come: "Oh. So you say I've not done my part? Well, what part have you done? How do you know I haven't attained the level of scholarship you desire? You haven't even read my work! You won't be able to give me even one detail from my paper that would prove you looked at anything past the abstract–because you didn't! If anyone is to blame here, it's you."

And then I would give him the kicker. I would issue the penultimate threat. I would put him so far into his place, he would have no response but to...

And then I realized. There was no possible way for my "perfect scenario" to end in my favor. At the end, I would tell him he was lousy and should jump off a cliff. He'd tell me I was lousy and didn't belong in his lab. I'd tell him he wasn't kicking me out of his lab cause I'd already left. And then my so-called perfect scenario would be turned completely on its head. Sure, I might have been able to get a couple biting jabs at him, let the graduate advisor know a few things he surely already knows. But I'd be no better off than I would be in any other scenario.


And then I was reminded of my fast-growing comparison between receiving a PhD and getting admitted to an elite club. I've always known it was an elite club, that you had to complete a set of somewhat-arbitrary requirements before you met some completely-arbitrary standard. And I knew that, once you were "in the club," you could get the secret handshake and sit at the secret table and talk with all the super-important people just because you had those special three letters attached to your name.

But until this point, I had never thought there was hazing. Every semester, the school sends out reminders that "individuals or organizations engaging in hazing could be subject to fines and charged with a criminal offense." Causing physical harm to someone else just so they can enter your club is strictly prohibited. But the mental and emotional hazing is part of the game. My last advisor required me to spend a summer unpaid, working on a dead-end project, and didn't approve when I wasn't in the lab every day. Why? Hazing. If you want to join the club, there has to be some sort of (usually unreasonable) mental/emotional/physical harm. And then once you do join the club, you get to inflict the pain on others.


Or perhaps I really do need to better my scholarship and just take it silently.