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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

#311

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nagVenkat wrote: post #160
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what you're seeing, I see news headlines and comments that are suggesting Dr Bouman worked alone. They just need "a" instead of "the", or "lead" if she's responsible as leader of a team. For me, I am slightly primed by the "Apollo code" story: the claim was (paraphrasing) "this programmer created all the code for the Apollo programme" with an image of a person standing with folders of printouts stacked up…

I can not believe you have written the last sentence without any sense of irony. We are just discussing about how stupid the LOC metric is and how most of the LOC Andrew write were machine generated. People were also saying that her commits were more math heavy. Anyway if you actually believe that there is a secret feminist agenda, I don’t think I can say anything that will change your mind.

You've misunderstood me slightly. You're absolutely right about the loc metric -- seems reasonable to me that she'd design the/some algos and let others do boiler plate and implementation of [other] algo's. That's why I emphasised "appears", as in "someone naively approaches the subject, sees that and thinks 'her contribution was really small'".

I don't think there is a "secret feminist agenda" as such, but news outlets do over-egg the situation to try and create "women heroes of science". The way it's done appears to be sexist in an attempt at, so-called, positive discrimination; rather than being equalist.

You seem to consider my analysis to be abjectly errant, I would appreciate hearing why?

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

#312

Post by wallace_f »

Rooster61 wrote: post #310
wallace_f wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I read the Wiki on the matter; should have gone straight there instead of asking. After understanding what it is, angular resolution does make perfect sense a term, but at first glance was certainly a bit counterintuitive.

I think the reason it's confusing is that the way that bit in the article is worded does little to imply that you want a LOW angular resolution, and it doesn't directly mention resolution in and of itself (which is understood to have an inverse relationship with angular resolution, as it is directly affected by diameter). It took me several rereads and reading the comments here to understand that we want low numbers…

Yea. Measured in radians/degrees a lower number is a "higher pixel resolution."

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

#314

Post by njepa »

telesilla wrote: post #169
hurryskurry wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in most of STEM there are already an equal number of women. As soon as the baby boomers retire itll be obvious. Women get more PhDs than men, and have been for a while.

Do you work in an office with low-level programmers and hardware designers? I do, and I'm one of a handful of women in the building. Actually at the moment, I'm the only one and I'm lobbying for our new hire of managing director to be a woman but it's likely not going to happen because I can't find someone qualified. When I teach in the field at my university, I'm the only woman. And I live in a very popular, large c…

EE is from what I have seen one of the most, if not the most, male dominated field in STEM though. I am not sure why, but it could be that it is not old enough to be traditional, but not new enough to be accessible. Wouldn't surprise me if there are more women in EE research than in EE.

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

#315

Post by wallace_f »

CydeWeys wrote: post #181
billfruit wrote: post #171

Was making a photographic image the main aim of the project? Or is the image just a byproduct? I mean hard to imagine such a large project being taken up, for the benefit of public being able to see a picture of the black hole. Would this kind of multi telescope effort be capable of producing surface images of extra solar planets for example?

It wasn't a photographic image (they're using radio waves, not visible light). This is a visual representation of the radio waves. And yes, this is one way of representing the data. I'm not sure exactly what your question is though, as actually getting this data is really important to confirm a variety of theories and also to potentially open up new avenues for investigation. And this cost orders of magnitude less th…

>The point was to demonstrate that this technique is feasible.

Is it wrong to say this is a logical improvement, extension of radio interferometry?

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

#316

Post by Frost1x »

Gpetrium wrote: post #248
Frost1x wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Although I agree with the point you have raised, it can sometimes be a little tricky to draw the line. Should we have Microsoft cited for projects completed using their software or system? Should we always cite Newton when using calculus? I think society implicitly assumes that there has been a tone of people backing up a single individual towards their main achievements and that the individual is humble enough to kn…

That's why I said "actively."

From my perspective, if in order to accomplish your work, you need consult or active collaboration with a computer scientist and otherwise could not develop/test your theory or conduct your experiment, then they almost certainly should be cited as an author/collaborator.

If you utilize something OTS outside the project that just works for you and don't need a computer scientist, then whatever entity created that OTS IP isn't really an author/collaborator, but it's likely their work should be cited/referenced if it's part of the critical methodology (as part of disclosure and repeatability).

If your project used Microsoft Word to write up a report, it's not important to the underlying science you conducted. You could have substituted it with TeX, other Word processors, or pen/paper and it wouldn't change the outcome of the underlying theory/experiment you developed. If you used an Ansys package to perform analysis for some purpose, you should probably mention that out of rigor but Ansys isn't an author or collaborator.

If on the other hand you need someone to architect a solution to handle processing your massive dataset, needed someone to write custom code because nothing could do what you needed, needed a new algorithm because you had no clue how to approach the problem, or even needed someone to modify source code significantly to something that existed but couldn't do what you needed, then they are certainly an author/collaborator. If you took existing code/algorithm and made it more efficient in order to accomplish a task that would have taken too long otherwise, you're a contributor/collaborator and should be listed as an author.

This has been a huge issue in academic research but it's been getting a bit better and researchers are starting even more to acknowledge/credit computing professionals as crucial contributors and authors, as they rightfully should be.

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

#317

Post by tropo »

streb-lo wrote: post #313

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

Do you think a man in a similar position would be elevated on a pedestal, to the exclusion of the algorithm designer (Mareki Honma) and the primary software author (Andrew Chael)?

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

#318

Post by adventured »

streb-lo wrote: post #313

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

I think people get consistently annoyed when blanket credit is given to eg Elon Musk regarding SpaceX (as though he's an aerospace god that did it all by himself), and when far too much credit was given to Steve Jobs regarding the iPhone. SpaceX is a case where Gwynne Shotwell deserves a chunk of the credit that is typically thrown at Musk by the media (because his stardom sells).

It's not that they don't deserve their fair share of credit, to be clear. It's that they do not deserve the level of overwhelming credit the media intentionally tries to bestow upon them, to create an idol that sells / generates clicks.

You pretty well see it in every thread regarding those two people. The hype train tries to give them credit, whether the media or fans, and other people get annoyed by it and call it out because it's obviously ridiculous to so overly credit such vast accomplishments requiring thousands of contributors to a given individual.

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

#319

Post by streb-lo »

tropo wrote: post #317
streb-lo wrote: post #313

Serious question HN: If Katie was a man do you think people would be going through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is being over-credited for her achievements?

Do you think a man in a similar position would be elevated on a pedestal, to the exclusion of the algorithm designer (Mareki Honma) and the primary software author (Andrew Chael)?

Yes I think the world would be interested to meet the person behind viewing the first black hole regardless of their gender.

>to the exclusion of the algorithm designer and the primary software author?

How can you possibly infer that from a git history?

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