Today I acted as a scribe for one of the blind students here at Stanford for his EE101 final exam. Long day! Professors give them 8 hours for the usual 3 hours final. Feeling kinda suffocated after sitting in that one room for 8 continuous hours with nothing but packed cold sandwich to eat. On one hand, I have a feeling that all my sins have been wiped away after this noble deed, on the other hand I constantly get reminded that I was clearly doing this for money, that too rate as high as 20 INR/ minute.
Okay, so here is how it works. Professor gets two copies of the question paper, one in braille (20-30 pages of huge A3 sheets) for the student and one in normal text for the scribe. Scribe does mainly two things: First, read out the question for the student if he/she asks for it. This is important because sometimes people who convert text to braille screw up, especially with typical EE things like circuits, graphs or equations. And second, write down answers in the answer booklet as the student dictates them periodically.
Student had a dog (trained one for safety, most disabled students on campus carry one), a braille typewriter (where in he can type and only he can understand), braille notepad (where in he can draw stuff like diagrams, which he can himself sense by hand and can also show it to me for copying in the answer booklet), a voice-enabled-calculator and of course, more food than me. Typically, student reads the question, clarifies if he/she finds anything weird, takes his time to solve on the braille typewriter and then dictates the solution once he/she's done. Scribe is essentially sitting idle (or doing own work) most of the time and ideally should not crib about long hours.
I was told repeatedly not to help the kid with any EE knowledge or even ask questions like "Are you sure about this?" (:P) even if the mistake is painstakingly obvious. Only reason EE person is needed is to understand the terms without any hassles. For example, if the person says R1 parallel R2, scribe should automatically be able to write R1 || R2. Having said that, I must add most of the questions weren't trivial for me either (Yes, some random 3-stage amplifiers with 1 stage being common gate, 1 stage being common drain and so on) :D Rather, it was amazing to see how a blind person can show so much interest in the topic and take efforts to learn the subject on a par with regular students. After all, we crib so much! So, next time you crib about exams or work or this world being not nice to you (:P), think twice!
Friday, March 23, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
RSA Expo
I went to meet my adviser on Wednesday morning and he says how about you go to San Francisco tomorrow and visit RSA Expo. RSA Expo was essentially an exhibition that was being held in San Francisco this week as a part of RSA conference. As you might have guessed, saying no wasn't really an option :D
There were about 200 computer and network security firms in the expo with their exhibits. Most people were nicely dressed in business casuals (as against my usual perception about tech firms :P). As you can see, atmo was 'rich' (again, unlike the usual perception about tech firms I have from India :D) with loads of freebies and i-pad raffles!
Here is an unsorted list of interesting things/people that I came across:
- Smart Cartridge Project
Most people buy a good quality printer from a recognized brand. However, when it comes to replacing cartridges, they tend to go for 'pirated' low quality ones. As a result, printer companies are losing money and they also 'claim' that it reduces printer life. Smart Cartridge Project is about making cartridge authenticate itself to the printer before it can be put to use.
- Differential Power Analysis
This type of attack was introduced by Cryptography Research Inc (16 year old Stanford product). It's an attempt to guess the key by analyzing the power consumption of a cryptographic device (e.g. smart card). I had heard of this before, but didn't know it actually works!
- The PhD guy
I met a guy who is joining Stanford's CS PhD program coming fall. He graduated around 1995 (!!) and worked for Cryptographic Research Inc for last 16 years. Now, given the fact that they've sold off the firm to Rambus (another Stanford product, EE HOD owns this one), he has made up his mind to go back to school! One crazy career path !! :D
- Indians
The number of Indians at the expo was astoundingly high and I found it irritating for some reason. Is tech all that Indians do in US?
All in all, silicon valley is promising. Lot of intelligent people are working on variety of interesting and challenging problems. Question is whether you want to be one of those.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Casino Night!
The weekend is almost over and I am sleepy (it's 2.30am), so I am going to be real quick on this one. My housing, Rains, had organized the Annual Black Tie Casino Night this Friday. The description said "Highly formal attire is strongly recommended" which I earlier thought was a prank, so I went around the venue to check what people are wearing. Considerable number of people were indeed dressed up in formals, so I followed the suit (pun intended).
There were 4 games - Blackjack, Poker, Roulette and Craps! I knew only poker before this event. It was fun learning other three on the fly. I got a good hang of Blackjack tricks while I found Roulette and Craps pretty dumb with lots of unnecessarily complicated terminologies. There was no actual money involved, we played with millions of dollars of chips that were given to us upon entry :P Some people were really good (or should I say lucky) and had more money than the blackjack dealer at one point :D There were few raffle prizes but I wasn't lucky enough to win them :D
I think what made this event a success was not the games, but the ambiance. Dim lights, mild music and a counter for classy drinks made one perfect gambling atmo! The variety in cocktails was simply amazing, there was Rum, White Russian, Screw Driver, Cosmopolitan and Gin n Tonic. White Russian was kinda funny because it's essentially a mixture of vodka and milk!! :D Kudos to CAs for organizing this superb event and especially, for having a patience to say "All bets on the table" for continuous 3 hrs :D
There were 4 games - Blackjack, Poker, Roulette and Craps! I knew only poker before this event. It was fun learning other three on the fly. I got a good hang of Blackjack tricks while I found Roulette and Craps pretty dumb with lots of unnecessarily complicated terminologies. There was no actual money involved, we played with millions of dollars of chips that were given to us upon entry :P Some people were really good (or should I say lucky) and had more money than the blackjack dealer at one point :D There were few raffle prizes but I wasn't lucky enough to win them :D
I think what made this event a success was not the games, but the ambiance. Dim lights, mild music and a counter for classy drinks made one perfect gambling atmo! The variety in cocktails was simply amazing, there was Rum, White Russian, Screw Driver, Cosmopolitan and Gin n Tonic. White Russian was kinda funny because it's essentially a mixture of vodka and milk!! :D Kudos to CAs for organizing this superb event and especially, for having a patience to say "All bets on the table" for continuous 3 hrs :D
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Experiencing The Inverted Classroom Model
Looking at the huge success of Khan Academy and Stanford Online Classroom Programs (SCPD, campus-class and ones in pipeline like Coursera, Udacity and Dkandu!? :P), inverted classroom is something that is being tried out for the first time this quarter.
What is inverted classroom model? There are no classes. A bunch of lecture videos are uploaded online every week. There are in-video quizzes that pop-up (like YouTube ads! :) ) to make sure you are up to speed (read, to make sure you are not asleep). Apart from that, you get a weekly dose of graded quizzes, problem sets and programming assignments all of which you submit online. Optional interaction sessions are held once a week where you can discuss course material/assignments with faculty, TAs and more importantly other students.
What's 'inverted' about this model? - In a normal class, you learn the subject 1-way in class while 2-way discussions happen outside the classroom, for example, in your dorms. On the other hand, with this model, you learn the subject at home while the 2-way discussions can happen in classroom during classroom interaction sessions.
Having experienced this model for last two months, here is my take on its success:
Upsides:
- Flexibility! Course doesn't clash with anything. You (and the instructors :D) don't have to wake up early for lectures. You can watch the videos whenever you feel like! At the same time, weekly assignments make sure that you are up to speed.
- You can learn at your own pace. Substitute for "Can you please go over the last slide once more?" is simple! In fact, instructors tend to be more lucid since they have a liberty of uploading 4-hrs of videos every week instead of having to stick to 2.5 classroom hours :D
- Highly active discussion forum! This is what happens when you can't raise your hand in the class :D A pleasant break from "You can use moodle/courswork for discussion", which never happens. I see this as an upside since everything gets documented. In fact, there are additional things like course wiki, which students happily contribute to.
- Novelty :P
- The courses also run for external audience. So anyone in the world can learn the subject sitting at his/her home for FREE! Yes, you don't even have to pay Stanford's hefty tuition fees and housing rents like me :P
Downsides:
You don't get to meet the like-minded people face-to-face which you would have otherwise. People posting on facebook about the joke instructor cracked in the video lecture and ending it with :D does not match the classroom full of laughter.
Agreed that it's much more efficient way to learn the course material, but is that the only reason we go to school? Classrooms are fun! Remember BGF? who says "Are you with me?" and then claps three times :D How about paro? who will never be the same if we watch her lectures at 0.7x :P Remember those HSS lectures? where we used to count the number of times prof uses "so", "what" and "only". Damn, cellphones can't ring in Manjunath's video lectures!! How about the sheer joy of clapping in Chandorkar's classes? Where will the thunder of 'surprise quizzes' go?! Gota's "Sir sir sir, I have a question" will be missed thoroughly :D There will be no back-benchers, no late comers :D Noooo, I can't imagine going to such a boring school :P
Anyhow, can't help it. The very concept that you can learn a subject from the best person in the field who may be thousands of miles away or probably retired or even dead is revolutionary for sure. 'Books' of new era, so to say!
What is inverted classroom model? There are no classes. A bunch of lecture videos are uploaded online every week. There are in-video quizzes that pop-up (like YouTube ads! :) ) to make sure you are up to speed (read, to make sure you are not asleep). Apart from that, you get a weekly dose of graded quizzes, problem sets and programming assignments all of which you submit online. Optional interaction sessions are held once a week where you can discuss course material/assignments with faculty, TAs and more importantly other students.
What's 'inverted' about this model? - In a normal class, you learn the subject 1-way in class while 2-way discussions happen outside the classroom, for example, in your dorms. On the other hand, with this model, you learn the subject at home while the 2-way discussions can happen in classroom during classroom interaction sessions.
Having experienced this model for last two months, here is my take on its success:
Upsides:
- Flexibility! Course doesn't clash with anything. You (and the instructors :D) don't have to wake up early for lectures. You can watch the videos whenever you feel like! At the same time, weekly assignments make sure that you are up to speed.
- You can learn at your own pace. Substitute for "Can you please go over the last slide once more?" is simple! In fact, instructors tend to be more lucid since they have a liberty of uploading 4-hrs of videos every week instead of having to stick to 2.5 classroom hours :D
- Highly active discussion forum! This is what happens when you can't raise your hand in the class :D A pleasant break from "You can use moodle/courswork for discussion", which never happens. I see this as an upside since everything gets documented. In fact, there are additional things like course wiki, which students happily contribute to.
- Novelty :P
- The courses also run for external audience. So anyone in the world can learn the subject sitting at his/her home for FREE! Yes, you don't even have to pay Stanford's hefty tuition fees and housing rents like me :P
Downsides:
You don't get to meet the like-minded people face-to-face which you would have otherwise. People posting on facebook about the joke instructor cracked in the video lecture and ending it with :D does not match the classroom full of laughter.
Agreed that it's much more efficient way to learn the course material, but is that the only reason we go to school? Classrooms are fun! Remember BGF? who says "Are you with me?" and then claps three times :D How about paro? who will never be the same if we watch her lectures at 0.7x :P Remember those HSS lectures? where we used to count the number of times prof uses "so", "what" and "only". Damn, cellphones can't ring in Manjunath's video lectures!! How about the sheer joy of clapping in Chandorkar's classes? Where will the thunder of 'surprise quizzes' go?! Gota's "Sir sir sir, I have a question" will be missed thoroughly :D There will be no back-benchers, no late comers :D Noooo, I can't imagine going to such a boring school :P
Anyhow, can't help it. The very concept that you can learn a subject from the best person in the field who may be thousands of miles away or probably retired or even dead is revolutionary for sure. 'Books' of new era, so to say!
Monday, February 20, 2012
Dear Professor
Just to give you a bit of background as to what I am talking about, here is a dissection of couple of mails which two first year Indian grad students here have received. Yes, barely first year grads, forget having a professorship or even a doctorate. Rest of the grads (including me) are all J and whining that they want these kinda mails too! :D
Stating the obvious, both these guys and probably more (Ref: this)
a. seem to be using some extensively standard format for their mails (reminds me of TOEFL :P)
b. are mailing authors of research papers in their interest areas (?) without even checking if the person is a prof!!!
c. are idiots
I happened to call and talk to one of these kids. I asked him if he applied to professor so and so. The guy isn't sure, his reply, "Yeah, I think so, I think I had sent him a mail". Next question, "What are your research interests?". Hesitated, perhaps trying to recall what he wrote in the mail and then gave a safe answer, "Umm. Signal Processing and Communications" !!! (For non-EEs, that's essentially everything under the sun!!) Then I told him that the person he thinks is a prof is just a grad student, followed by a long lecture on how his school seniors (and probably, Indians in general) are being ridiculed here because of his blunder.
True story! Moral? You know it! I don't want to sound too grandparentish repeating it. All I'll say is, use your brains!! You don't want your mail to appear on someone's facebook wall next day :D
Stating the obvious, both these guys and probably more (Ref: this)
a. seem to be using some extensively standard format for their mails (reminds me of TOEFL :P)
b. are mailing authors of research papers in their interest areas (?) without even checking if the person is a prof!!!
c. are idiots
I happened to call and talk to one of these kids. I asked him if he applied to professor so and so. The guy isn't sure, his reply, "Yeah, I think so, I think I had sent him a mail". Next question, "What are your research interests?". Hesitated, perhaps trying to recall what he wrote in the mail and then gave a safe answer, "Umm. Signal Processing and Communications" !!! (For non-EEs, that's essentially everything under the sun!!) Then I told him that the person he thinks is a prof is just a grad student, followed by a long lecture on how his school seniors (and probably, Indians in general) are being ridiculed here because of his blunder.
True story! Moral? You know it! I don't want to sound too grandparentish repeating it. All I'll say is, use your brains!! You don't want your mail to appear on someone's facebook wall next day :D
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