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Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

bbc.com

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Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#231

Post by xiphias2 »

analog31 wrote: post #209
toomanybeersies wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who didn't realise above, I was being flippant. On a slightly serious note though, I wonder how much productivity is lost in the scientific community due to poorly written and documented code? I've heard stories of 40 year old Fortran code written by long deceased professors that was written to crunch physics numbers or whatever, and when it's come time to modify or add to it, nobody can make head nor tail…

I write that code. ;-) It's a toss-up. On the one hand, there's a loss due to dirty code, but a gain by a smaller group of people being able to do multidisciplinary work. In my own case, I'm a physicist outside academia, and in addition to code, I also do electronics and a variety of other things. When you're doing exploratory R&D, as I am, there are downsides to getting things done by domain specialists. First, you…

Don't worry about these comments. The worst thing in science is usually that the code is not published (and these comments on code quality don't help).

As long as it's published, if somebody wants to reuse it, reimplementing from the paper is the hardest part.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#232

Post by gnicholas »

bubblewrap wrote: post #94
threeseed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search for Elon Musk.

You would say that's the same thing? Seeing as Elon Musk initiated all the things himself (and raised/provided the money)? I don't think he is getting credit for constructing rockets, for example, but for making the project happen. There was, however, an extra article about his rocket engineer on HN. Mabye that is more like it.

Fun fact: Elon Musk is not the founder of Tesla. He became an investor and board member a year after the company was founded by two other people. His role grew and now he is synonymous with the company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#233

Post by nwsm »

aphextim wrote: post #213

Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png

Calling his contributions "850,000" lines of code is a little disingenuous..

Almost all of those lines committed to GitHub are numbers generated by the code and stored in text files in the "models" folder.

https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging

I'm not trying to diminish his work but saying big numbers because they sound impressive is stupid.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#234

Post by iron0013 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #159
scott_s wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Papers are routinely credited to their first author. Everyone understand the co-authors also took part. She also clearly credits the rest of the team in the posted BBC article.

Now we just need the BBC not to wet themselves because a woman #gasp# can do science.

you seem pretty eager to get upset about something!

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#235

Post by amai »

She also has a newer paper, which gives a glimpse on what the people of EHT are up next:

Reconstructing Video from Interferometric Measurements of Time-Varying Sources https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01357

So maybe we will also see a video of a black hole, soon.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#236

Post by sctb »

aphextim wrote: post #215
threeseed wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same on Reddit. The sheer toxicity of many of the comments is something I haven't seen for a long time. They really hate that a women is getting credit and that others aren't getting the same level of attention. I wonder how those same people think about Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. They had huge teams behind them as well.

https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png

Please stop spamming the thread with this link. This doesn't meet the bar for substantive discussion here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#237

Post by CydeWeys »

dvtrn wrote: post #227
ominous wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her name is Katie Bouman. She can also be addressed as Dr. Katie Bouman.

Sure. But in a published headline, one ought to be addressed by their formal title. Differences exist between casual conversation and publication. A distinction I shouldn’t have to point out as one that exists.

In the headline? They call her "Dr" just a few sentences into the article. The rule of headlines is to use as few words as possible, and every one of them should be necessary. I've never heard that formal titles MUST be used in headlines, and indeed in practice this doesn't seem to be the case. Shaquille O'Neal has a PhD and I've never seen him referenced as Dr. Shaquille O'Neal, in a headline or otherwise (and no, I'm not joking, this is apparently real).

I don't think this is an attempt to minimize her accomplishments, unlike many of the comments here in this very thread.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#239

Post by rovek »

cdelsolar wrote: post #219
aphextim wrote: post #213

Man who contributed 850 000 out of 900 000 lines of code vs woman who added other programmers' code. Guess who gets the credit? https://files.catbox.moe/tejoch.png

Nice 4chan-style image and completely uninformed and idiotic comment. the large majority of those 850K lines of code were machine generated, models, or docs. Go back to whatever alt-right hole you crawled out of.

It's been obvious from the beginning that the aggressive idealogues decided she was a mascot for progress, regardless of her willingness to participate.

It's a shame that the genuinely colossal achievements of Katie and her colleagues are being trivialised by this toxic "progressive" coverage.

Re: Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image

#240

Post by thecatspaw »

CydeWeys wrote: post #237
dvtrn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But in a published headline, one ought to be addressed by their formal title. Differences exist between casual conversation and publication. A distinction I shouldn’t have to point out as one that exists.

In the headline? They call her "Dr" just a few sentences into the article. The rule of headlines is to use as few words as possible, and every one of them should be necessary. I've never heard that formal titles MUST be used in headlines, and indeed in practice this doesn't seem to be the case. Shaquille O'Neal has a PhD and I've never seen him referenced as Dr. Shaquille O'Neal, in a headline or otherwise (and no, I…

I agree with you, however the difference is that her Dr is relevant to the article, and Shaq's Phd usually isnt.
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