Computer or Human

I watched Jeopardy with Watson on it with my husband. I thought it was really interesting, but I thought the most interesting thing is that we were rooting for different "species."

Alvin was rooting for the computer, and I was rooting for the humans. I feel like this decision is very telling.

Who would you root for, Watson or the humans?

Logo Knockoff

Starbucks recently released a corporate brand logo redesign. Oh sure, Howard Schultz says the new design seeks to reflect brand evolution by "honoring our deep coffee heritage while allowing us to grow in exciting new ways."

But we here in our city know the real truth. Starbucks was facing legal pressure for trademark infringement against our local boba tea shop. Way to go, Nine Street! Don't allow yourselves to be robbed of the fruit of your labors in creativity and innovation.

The Weird Kid in Class

Last week, after running around the university between our department for international students learning Chinese, the school administration building, and the Math and Computer Science department... I was finally able to get in to 2 computer classes as an auditing student. I chose Database Principles (数据库原理) and Software Requirements Design (软件需求设计). Fun fun fun!

So far, I have sat in on 3 sessions of my database class. Will be sitting in on the Software Requirements class for the first time this Thursday.

It is, however, already clear to me that I am... the weird kid in class.

The very first session, I sat in the back corner of the classroom and didn't know any of the 30+ other students. I introduced myself to the teacher at the break, who was very nice. The entire 90 minutes, I didn't talk to one classmate.

The second session, I decided to show up early and sit in the 3rd row, because that's where a whole bunch of students were sitting during the last class. There would be no avoiding me now! But, as the students came in... I noticed that they all sat with one chair's space distance from me. Stay away from the weird kid.

But then, at the break, the teacher introduced me to the class: "Hey, everybody, get to know so-and-so. He has only lived here since 2009, but he can already sit in this class and understand. He is a mei-ji-hua-ren." (美籍华人 means "Chinese American") All the students breathed a collective, "Oooohhh..." Silently, though, they all thought to themselves, "No wonder. He's kind of weird. He has his textbook out and takes notes during the lecture. And he's always looking things up on his phone. I bet that's his dictionary."

One guy did talk to me at the break though. We exchanged phone numbers and QQ numbers. I am making friends... yay!

And then today... the third session. And this time, I did my homework! Everybody passed their homework to the two girls sitting in front of me. I saw them sifting through the whole pile to make sure everybody had turned in homework. And then they got to mine. One of the girls said out loud, "味。。。 这个是谁写的？这么奇怪呀。。。" Translated, it means: "What the... who wrote this one? It's so... weird..."

So I said, "Umm... that's mine."

"Oh. What are you doing in this class again?"

"I'm just... auditing. I can do homework if I want to do it. Or not do it if I don't want to. I'm just... yeah... umm... auditing."

And... that was the end of the conversation.

So why does my homework look so weird? Well, if you grew up in the States and have ever turned in an assignment for school: where do you put your name? In the upper right hand corner. But... not here. Here, your name goes in the upper left hand corner. Oops. So, at first glance of my homework today, you would think that my name was "Database Principles" (which would actually be a pretty cool name). Weird.

In the States, when you're handwriting an assignment, do you copy the question down too? Of course not. That would just be busywork for the sake of busywork. This isn't a handwriting class. This is a database class. But... not in classes here. Everybody copies down the entire question (it was a whole paragraph) before they write out their answer. Who in their right mind would turn in an assignment with just a data model, but not include the paragraph-long question asking for the data model? Oh... it's the weird kid.

At least more people talked to me today. One of the students introduced herself to me. Then I introduced myself. And she said, "Wow, that's interesting. You talk like... somebody from Hong Kong." Sweet. I'll take that as a compliment. Before, I talked like a foreigner from the other side of the world. Then, I slowly made my way towards talking like someone from Japan or Korea. Now, I'm slowly making my way closer to the mainland.

Latte Art: Hook 'Em

I made a peppermint latte tonight (decaf). When I have the time, I continue to try to experiment with latte art. Different patterns come out, based on pour rate, position of the spout relative to the cup center, and height of the spout from the cup. After you get the initial base design poured in, you can use other tools to manipulate the crema/coffee in order to make more intricate designs.

This was not what I intended when I first began pouring my latte tonight. But I think I could replicate it if I tried to.

So, in honor of all my UT friends... hook 'em!

What Millions of People Hear at 5:50PM Every Day

Are you ready for this? It's... Kenny G.

In the last 18 months, Bethany and I only made a minor mental note of this whenever we were in shopping centers here in China near closing time. I remember when we were buying furniture in a giant warehouse. Right around 10 minutes to 6, we heard that familiar soprano saxophone. Another time, I was in a department store mall just before closing. And sure enough, there was Kenny G again. We would look at each other, puzzled, and think to ourselves, "That's weird. Isn't that the same song we heard over at... when they were closing for the day too?"

This last Sunday, we went to check out the city public library. It's a 4-story, well-lit but somewhat sterile-feeling library with book stack rooms, lots of reading rooms, free wifi, and electrical outlets. It has a large and open center atrium, and all of the rooms are separated by glass. We spent about 4 hours there - Bethany did some Chinese studying while I setup a local Rails development environment on my machine.

At 5:45, we said to each other, "Do you think this place closes at 6? Oh well, I guess we'll wait and see." Then, 5 minutes later... the loudspeakers began blaring that familiar song.

Before shutting down, I quickly wikipedia'ed Kenny G. I needed to find out more. Why does everybody play this song?

It turns out that "Going Home" is a very popular song in China, played at many public places when they're about to close. The article goes on to say that in Shanghai and Tianjin, the subway even plays this song when the train is nearing the final station for the line.

We also noticed just how ingrained this song is in the minds of Chinese people. As soon as the song started to play, the people around us just naturally began to pack up their things to go. It was almost like a Pavlovian conditioned response. Kenny G = time to go.

We decided that we are going to keep an mp3 of this song handy in our home. If we have guests over and they're beginning to overstay their welcome, we're going to play this song on the stereo and see what happens.

3 Days of Watson (spoilers)

(caution! spoilers below!)

Last week's 3-day Jeopardy challenge - pitting IBM's latest A.I. research project, "Watson" against two of Jeopardy's most celebrated players - has come to an end. And Watson blew it out.

At the end of the 2-game competition which ran over 3 days, Watson ended with a final score of $77,147, beating his two human opponents each by more than $50,000. For a little while (a very short little while), it looked like human opponent Ken Jennings might actually make some headway in the 2nd game, after Watson missed a question on a Daily Double. But in the end... chalk up another win for computers.

IBM decided, before the match, that it would donate its winnings ($1 million) to charity. Half of their winnings went to World Vision, and the other half went to World Community Grid.

Below are a few of the interesting articles I read about this challenge:
"How Watson 'sees,' 'hears,' and 'speaks' to play Jeopardy"
"The Confusion Over an Airport Clue"
"Watson's Wagering Strategies"
"Ken Jennings on Playing Jeopardy against Watson"

It's the Name of the Computer Winning Jeopardy

What is Watson?

In the last two days, I've been paying attention to an IBM artificial intelligence project that has a computer playing Jeopardy against the two best Jeopardy champions ever (Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings) over the course of 3 days (Feb. 14-16). The intriguing aspect of this project is not that a computer can hold a wealth of knowledge and find answers to clues. No, the really cool part is that Watson is designed to process natural language - Jeopardy clues make sense to people because we can pick up on clever word play and puns, etc. This is different than a computer playing chess, because that's about weighing best moves and possible outcomes. Processing natural language is an incredibly difficult task. I was just thinking about how, whenever I have to call the customer service department of a bank or an airline, I immediately try to go to the "agent" option because it's a lot easier to talk (natural language) to a person than to "say out loud one of the following options," to which the computer usually responds, "I'm sorry. I didn't get that. Please say out loud one of the following options..."

This hasn't made big news here where we are, but I was still able to read some news articles and watch the Jeopardy episodes online.

As a language learner, this has me even more intrigued. We are able to communicate so much through how we phrase a statement, or through our tone of voice, or even through intentionally unspoken words that rely on the context of the situation. These are things that the a.i. field, I'm sure, is still many years away from being able to tackle. (Watson is unable to see or hear, but is fed the clues as text.)

Also, reading up on Watson adds to my fascination with the complexity of the human mind. Watson is made up of a cluster of 90 servers with a total of 720 core processors, holding 16 TB of RAM. Watson is not connected to the internet, but has been provided a massive amount of reference material to serve as its knowledge-base. Granted, Watson is beating Rutter/Jennings after 2 days - but still, that's the amount of computing power needed to process language and retrieve information somewhat like humans do.

On the side, I'm also curious about IBM's algorithm for Watson's wagering. The best part of Day 2 was when Watson, leading his opponents by $10K, hits a Daily Double and wagers $6435. How did he come up with that number? And then, in Final Jeopardy (where Watson got the answer wrong), Watson wagered only $947, safely maintaining the lead over his opponents, who got the answer right. But, why $947?

Looking forward to Day 3 of the challenge.