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

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251–260 of 547 posts

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

#251
post #212

Title ought to reflect the fact that this woman has a doctorate from MIT and should rightfully be addressed as Dr. Katie Bouman.

Gross double standard. Would you write: > the fact that this man has a doctorate ... No, you would not. We are a long way from equality if the fact that she happens to have a vagina becomes a huge talking point. Everyone defines her as a girl or woman, but this is a scientist. Dr. Bouman is enough.

Can I ask how you know what I would or wouldn’t do and what my sensibilities are on this topic?

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

#252
post #17

Katie gave a TED talk: https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs

It is an interesting presentation, but I do NOT understand Katie's explanation about how they were going to minimize the bias [to "see" already predicted black hole visualization] while creatively interpreting inputs from sparsely placed telescopes around the earth. Do you understand Katie's explanation?

I wondered this as well. It seems like a significant problem when doing this sort of thing.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a PhD in astrophysics and isn't typically referred to as "Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson" in headlines either. Same for Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and many others. Titles simply tend to be dropped in headlines and casual conversations; they certainly aren't universally used, or even close to it.

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

#254
post #17

Katie gave a TED talk: https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs

It is an interesting presentation, but I do NOT understand Katie's explanation about how they were going to minimize the bias [to "see" already predicted black hole visualization] while creatively interpreting inputs from sparsely placed telescopes around the earth. Do you understand Katie's explanation?

Disclaimer: this is based on watching the talk and some basic machine learning knowledge. Im no expert.

They have a sparse set of data that is part of an image. They have trained a model to look at the sparse set and make an educated guess about what the full image looks like. They do this by feeding it full images.

The full images you feed into the model thus have an effect on the final image generated. In order to see how large that effect is, they trained different versions of the model with different sets of complete images. Some were images of what we thought a black hole looked like. There is potential that this heavily influences the model and ensures that the output looks like what we expect it to, even if that isnt actually true.

They also trained the model with non-blackhole images. Since the output of the model was approximately the same, this indicates that the resulting output picture doesnt look like what we think a black hole looks like just because it was trained with black hole images. It likely really looks like that.

The model doesn't need to be told what a black hole looks like. The sparse measurements combined with knowledge of how sparse data can be combined to form a generic image is enough. The model learned that the sparse data is not likely pure noise, instead there are shapes and lines and gradients that relate the sparse data points to each other.

Her analogy of sketch artists is good. If you have a functionally complete description and give it to 3 sketch artists from different cultures who are used to different looking people, they will still draw the same person. However if your description isnt actually detailed enough, their sketches will significantly differ as they use their existing knowledge and bias to fill in the gaps with what they think is likely.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a bit on the scientific field, but in mine (computer vision, which this was also published in) the first author is the "main" author, usually doing most if not all the "ground work", then you have collaborators and co-authors, and finally the supervisors (in the case of the PhD student that she was at the time). It is becoming more common to see papers with "Author1 , Author2 , Author3..." lists, where the…

I've found that CS contributions in academia are often poorly credited (sometimes even entirely neglected) to endeavors not purely executed within CS itself. It's interesting considering how many modern scientific endeavors are dependent on new innovative algorithms, software, and computing techniques in both experimental and theoretical work then its frequently just hand-waved away as "technology." I'm not saying su…

Not just CS, but depending on the discipline, math and statistics more generally.

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

#256
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb attitude. For every extraordinarily recognized academic/professional person, there’s always going to be many times more people who are never publicly recognized for their achievements. Maybe they fly under the radar, maybe they picked the wrong subject to focus on or industry for career, maybe their timing is bad, maybe there’s nothing wrong with them. I’m proud of this (stranger to me) girl for accomplishing so…

Agreed with you that her accomplishment is great. As in engineering, it's helpful to use proper terminology with people: if using a gender is necessary for the narrative … - under 13: girl - 13 – 18: girl / teenager / young woman (depends on context; 16? – 25?) - 18 or over: woman

it's important not to allow age-based vocab to drift when you are talking about a woman vs. a man, but I think it's more contextual than you present it. there are plenty of males over the age of eighteen whom I would not refer to as "men". if you changed only the gender of these people, I would probably not refer to them as "women" either.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 'role model' is someone who shares your background and is successful in an area of interest where you would like to participate/contribute (science, art, sports, politics, ...) . It's someone who demonstrates that 'someone like you' can be successful, too. Therefore, the closer this role model is to your inherent and unchangeable properties (age, sex/gender, origin, social class), the more it can inspire you. Surel…

I'd say that is just toxic feminism telling women they can't have men as role models. Why not? Would they say women can not achieve what men can (at least in science, if not in physical endeavors)? Because if they say women can do that, then why shouldn't they take men as role models? "Someone like you" - is for example a white man from a middle class background more like a white woman from a middle class background,…

This is exactly the kind of comment that make these threads toxic.

Gender, like it or not, shapes the life experience of an individual. Why would you not want to have a role model that had a similar life experience to your own?

Except, inevitably, when a woman expresses that desire, it gets called "toxic feminism", and the justification is, wait for it: the personal anecdotes and experiences of a male.

I am shocked that in 2019 there is still so little self-awareness around this.

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

#258

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 agree with you that the scientific community is way behind industry standards, but the reason for that is much less of their code is actually designed for reuse. The overwhelming majority of their work is just "let me try writing this code and see what results I get." Industry professionals are forced to take the approach of "I need to write this code to be as maintainable and flexible as possible" because they hav…

A lot of industry code is also glue logic which doesn't express any original idea which makes it inherently easier to document. Code expressing a novel algorithm is never going to be as easy to document and maintain as code plugging standard libraries together. Notably, code in "industry" which does express novel algorithms is often also not so easy to read, there just isn't that much of it on most projects.

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

#259

I've read comments on Hacker News for many years, often finding them a useful source of additional information and insight into details from whatever the linked piece is. Sometimes these threads are full of only subtly veiled hatred and leave me with a feeling of disgust. This thread is one of those. There have been countless threads over the years where a man gets the credit for something a team has worked on and th…

I think this might be one of those cases where we just have to agree to disagree, but I, well, disagree with the premise that the reaction to men is any different on this point.

There are regularly posts here linking to articles about misattribution of credit in science and technology, the problem with the "great man theory," laments about the role of social media in creating hype, and there are plenty of male figures discussed here who engender bitter discussions about how credit should be assigned. I honestly don't see any difference between this discussion and any other discussion. I seem to remember similar discussions emerging about discovery of the Meltdown and Spectre hardware vulnerabilities, and many other physics discoveries involving large teams of researchers, just to take a few examples.

The way credit is assigned in science is a significant moral crisis in my opinion (as it is in work in general; cf. rampant income inequality), and it really doesn't matter what the genders of the individuals involved are. Strangely enough, I think attention is being paid to this argument here because of her gender. It's one of these unfortunate circumstances where I think two competing ethical goals are kind of conflicting, one being the better representation of women and minorities in science, the other being lack of fair representation for all in credit.

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

#260

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 agree with you that the scientific community is way behind industry standards, but the reason for that is much less of their code is actually designed for reuse. The overwhelming majority of their work is just "let me try writing this code and see what results I get." Industry professionals are forced to take the approach of "I need to write this code to be as maintainable and flexible as possible" because they hav…

>I agree with you that the scientific community is way behind industry standards

You could say the same about academic CS code which is arguably far more egregious since this is their field. I don't think most reasonable people expect Physicists or Biologists to write production level code for their work, nor do they need to.

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