The Spotty Thope Conference 2013
Jun. 10th, 2013 05:19 amThis is going to require some explanation.
Apparently this all started with a discussion between Heidi Soderstrom and Josh Zelinsky about how disorganized conferences tend to be. You couldn't do any better, said Josh. I bet you I could, said Heidi.
EDIT: Heidi informs me that this is inaccurate. See edit a few paragraphs down.
And so we ended up with the Spotty Thorpe Conference 2013. On... whatever the hell Heidi could get people to talk about.
OK, I'm going to keep this short. I don't really have a lot to say about this. I don't feel a lot like blogging these days -- since I'm currently refraining from speaking publicly about my work and that is easily the most interesting thing I have to talk about -- but Heidi insisted I write something.
Let's start with the pressing question: Was this actually better organized? Uh... so, thing is, I've never actually been to a "real" conference. Yeah, I just finished my fourth year in grad school, how did that happen? Well, I mean, it's just not something I would really think of, you know? That would require interrupting my routine, and, like, taking notice of the outside world. Not things I'm good at. Also, I've been either teaching or working the MathLab this whole time, so travel was definitely not on my mind, even if I guess I could have gotten a sub. (Also, I really do not like travelling. But that would be a reason why I wouldn't once I thought of it, not a reason why I wouldn't even think of it in the first place.)
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and say the answer to that question is "that seems distinctly unlikely". Not that it worked out badly in the end, but, y'know, nobody really knew what was going on. And when you only have like 10 people there, if half of them leave, well, guess you may as well wait for them to come back, right? So I don't think Heidi is winning this informal bet. (Though I gather she intends to try again, though she probably won't be living in Spotty Thorpe by then.)
Ideally Josh would have been there to settle the bet, but Heidi neglected to tell him about it because... I forget why? There was a reason.
EDIT: Heidi informs me that this is inaccurate: The bet wasn't that she could do better. It was that she could do at least as well with Josh's help. He couldn't help, so she didn't lose the bet; she just failed to provide strong evidence that she could win it. (Well, then she said neither she nor Josh were exactly clear on what the bet was, but that's how she remembers it.)
Since we had so few people, Heidi wanted people to speak on multiple things each. I could talk about integer complexity, of course. Have to largely leave out the well-ordering parts -- which are, I think, the coolest parts -- because this isn't an audience of mathematicians so most people won't really care about/understand that, but, oh well. What else? Well, uh, how about I give a quick intro to p-adic numbers? I think most people can understand that, and even if they don't totally get it, they'll probably think it's prety neat. And, uh, sandpiles? I spoke about those for student combinatorics seminar not too long ago, they're not hard to understand and they're pretty neat. Hell, I used to play a computer game based on them with my friends back in Glen Rock (hey Mickey, remember Atoms?).
Oh and apparently there's a request from Jeff Mason that I should talk about rationality. Uh, I'm not really the best person for that, but maybe I could talk about Savage's Theorem? That's related, and I wrote a post on it for Less Wrong. And apparently there's a request from Nassim that I talk about information theory. Well, I took a class on that once, I remember the basics, I guess I could do that. So now Heidi has me down for 5 things. Yay. Unsurprisingly, not all of those happened.
Let's back up a moment so I can say who Nassim is. Nassim is an old internet friend of Heidi's from many years ago who she recently got back in touch with. He also happens to be an old friend of Nathan Schulz. So when I was in Chicago not too long ago I tried to get Nathan to come, and he actually said that he might! He'd talk about Wagner, he said. How, y'know, now everyone thinks of him as just a composer, and also maybe a proto-Nazi, but in his day he was considered a serious thinker. Maybe some other things. Now that would have been good -- very different from anything anyone else was doing! Unfortunately Nathan ended up not showing up due to job interviews.
Quite a few people didn't show up, actually. Marc, from Truth House, was going to come, but didn't plan things out right and couldn't get there in time -- so it's a good thing I went separately rather than with him! At first people were blaming me, saying that Marc didn't show up because I didn't go with him. Natasha, a former Thorper who was going to be there, wasn't there but instead left a recording in her place.
Anyway I was afraid that without Nathan the whole thing would be pretty math-heavy. As it turned out it was just kind of... nothing-heavy? Eh. A lot of it felt kind of insubstantial, to be honest.
I wonder if I should have invited Hunter? Like, I mentioned it to him, but didn't go saying "Also you should come to this!". Of course, at the time, I was worried it would end up math-heavy, but it didn't. May have already been a bit math-heavy for the non-math people, though. But then, if Hunter were there, presumably I would have been speaking less.
(Sandpiles I ended up cutting because, while the notion of sandpiles are certainly accessible to a general audience, the things I wanted to say about them probably would not be. Savage's Theorem I ended up cutting because it would have been just boring and technical. Not many people were around for my information theory talk, but really it seemed only Brian and Nassim and Heidi were really interested, and Brian had to leave halfway through. I'm pretty sure nobody but Heidi would have been able to make it through Savage's Theorem.)
Another point of confusion: How long should things go?
I was assuming about an hour apiece. Other people seemed to have assumed considerably shorter? Heidi had said she thought most talks would only be about 10 minutes long since most people would overestimate how much they had to say. My experience is that people instead tend to underestimate how long a talk takes -- well, I do, anyway. So my approach to the talks was "Pick a topic you know, have some bare-bones notes for guides, and just start talking". That easily filled up most of an hour each time. Of course, my presentations were in that way pretty flexible -- I did at one point plug my computer in to the projector to show a plot of the set of defects, but other than that I was whiteboard-only. Most other people were using pre-made slides.
Well, I think most of them were longer than 10 minutes, but they weren't long. I think I definitely caught some annoyed looks when I asked the person with the timer (was it Heidi or Kasih?), "Just make sure I don't go over an hour" at the beginning of my information theory talk.
So, the conference was... OK I guess? Well, I certainly had a great time staying at the Thorpe for a week and getting to see Heidi again, but I'm keeping this entry a bit more narrowly focused than that. But we did go on the roof! We can't do that here at Truth House! OK. Back on focus now. Which I think means I'm done speaking for now.
-Harry
Apparently this all started with a discussion between Heidi Soderstrom and Josh Zelinsky about how disorganized conferences tend to be. You couldn't do any better, said Josh. I bet you I could, said Heidi.
EDIT: Heidi informs me that this is inaccurate. See edit a few paragraphs down.
And so we ended up with the Spotty Thorpe Conference 2013. On... whatever the hell Heidi could get people to talk about.
OK, I'm going to keep this short. I don't really have a lot to say about this. I don't feel a lot like blogging these days -- since I'm currently refraining from speaking publicly about my work and that is easily the most interesting thing I have to talk about -- but Heidi insisted I write something.
Let's start with the pressing question: Was this actually better organized? Uh... so, thing is, I've never actually been to a "real" conference. Yeah, I just finished my fourth year in grad school, how did that happen? Well, I mean, it's just not something I would really think of, you know? That would require interrupting my routine, and, like, taking notice of the outside world. Not things I'm good at. Also, I've been either teaching or working the MathLab this whole time, so travel was definitely not on my mind, even if I guess I could have gotten a sub. (Also, I really do not like travelling. But that would be a reason why I wouldn't once I thought of it, not a reason why I wouldn't even think of it in the first place.)
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and say the answer to that question is "that seems distinctly unlikely". Not that it worked out badly in the end, but, y'know, nobody really knew what was going on. And when you only have like 10 people there, if half of them leave, well, guess you may as well wait for them to come back, right? So I don't think Heidi is winning this informal bet. (Though I gather she intends to try again, though she probably won't be living in Spotty Thorpe by then.)
Ideally Josh would have been there to settle the bet, but Heidi neglected to tell him about it because... I forget why? There was a reason.
EDIT: Heidi informs me that this is inaccurate: The bet wasn't that she could do better. It was that she could do at least as well with Josh's help. He couldn't help, so she didn't lose the bet; she just failed to provide strong evidence that she could win it. (Well, then she said neither she nor Josh were exactly clear on what the bet was, but that's how she remembers it.)
Since we had so few people, Heidi wanted people to speak on multiple things each. I could talk about integer complexity, of course. Have to largely leave out the well-ordering parts -- which are, I think, the coolest parts -- because this isn't an audience of mathematicians so most people won't really care about/understand that, but, oh well. What else? Well, uh, how about I give a quick intro to p-adic numbers? I think most people can understand that, and even if they don't totally get it, they'll probably think it's prety neat. And, uh, sandpiles? I spoke about those for student combinatorics seminar not too long ago, they're not hard to understand and they're pretty neat. Hell, I used to play a computer game based on them with my friends back in Glen Rock (hey Mickey, remember Atoms?).
Oh and apparently there's a request from Jeff Mason that I should talk about rationality. Uh, I'm not really the best person for that, but maybe I could talk about Savage's Theorem? That's related, and I wrote a post on it for Less Wrong. And apparently there's a request from Nassim that I talk about information theory. Well, I took a class on that once, I remember the basics, I guess I could do that. So now Heidi has me down for 5 things. Yay. Unsurprisingly, not all of those happened.
Let's back up a moment so I can say who Nassim is. Nassim is an old internet friend of Heidi's from many years ago who she recently got back in touch with. He also happens to be an old friend of Nathan Schulz. So when I was in Chicago not too long ago I tried to get Nathan to come, and he actually said that he might! He'd talk about Wagner, he said. How, y'know, now everyone thinks of him as just a composer, and also maybe a proto-Nazi, but in his day he was considered a serious thinker. Maybe some other things. Now that would have been good -- very different from anything anyone else was doing! Unfortunately Nathan ended up not showing up due to job interviews.
Quite a few people didn't show up, actually. Marc, from Truth House, was going to come, but didn't plan things out right and couldn't get there in time -- so it's a good thing I went separately rather than with him! At first people were blaming me, saying that Marc didn't show up because I didn't go with him. Natasha, a former Thorper who was going to be there, wasn't there but instead left a recording in her place.
Anyway I was afraid that without Nathan the whole thing would be pretty math-heavy. As it turned out it was just kind of... nothing-heavy? Eh. A lot of it felt kind of insubstantial, to be honest.
I wonder if I should have invited Hunter? Like, I mentioned it to him, but didn't go saying "Also you should come to this!". Of course, at the time, I was worried it would end up math-heavy, but it didn't. May have already been a bit math-heavy for the non-math people, though. But then, if Hunter were there, presumably I would have been speaking less.
(Sandpiles I ended up cutting because, while the notion of sandpiles are certainly accessible to a general audience, the things I wanted to say about them probably would not be. Savage's Theorem I ended up cutting because it would have been just boring and technical. Not many people were around for my information theory talk, but really it seemed only Brian and Nassim and Heidi were really interested, and Brian had to leave halfway through. I'm pretty sure nobody but Heidi would have been able to make it through Savage's Theorem.)
Another point of confusion: How long should things go?
I was assuming about an hour apiece. Other people seemed to have assumed considerably shorter? Heidi had said she thought most talks would only be about 10 minutes long since most people would overestimate how much they had to say. My experience is that people instead tend to underestimate how long a talk takes -- well, I do, anyway. So my approach to the talks was "Pick a topic you know, have some bare-bones notes for guides, and just start talking". That easily filled up most of an hour each time. Of course, my presentations were in that way pretty flexible -- I did at one point plug my computer in to the projector to show a plot of the set of defects, but other than that I was whiteboard-only. Most other people were using pre-made slides.
Well, I think most of them were longer than 10 minutes, but they weren't long. I think I definitely caught some annoyed looks when I asked the person with the timer (was it Heidi or Kasih?), "Just make sure I don't go over an hour" at the beginning of my information theory talk.
So, the conference was... OK I guess? Well, I certainly had a great time staying at the Thorpe for a week and getting to see Heidi again, but I'm keeping this entry a bit more narrowly focused than that. But we did go on the roof! We can't do that here at Truth House! OK. Back on focus now. Which I think means I'm done speaking for now.
-Harry
