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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

#331

Post by [deleted] »

steego wrote: post #329
realradicalwash wrote: post #265

Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…

I hate it when news outlets and movie production companies focus on individuals and ignore the team effort and dynamic, and it's not because I care about distributing credit. I want them to tell more stories about teams and communities working together to build things, not more lone genius stories. I get it. I truly do. But consider the context: This picture of a blackhole is going around along with an iconic picture…

[deleted]

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

#332

Post by kaitai »

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?

Also, this is a few articles and a Facebook meme. There's no Nobel prize or anything. Why begrudge someone their 15 minutes of science fame for leading a cool effort, making cool science happen?

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

#333

Post by njepa »

realradicalwash wrote: post #265

Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…

> However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came about.

It doesn't say that though. It says she was behind the image. And as I understand she lead one of the teams responsible for creating the image from the data. So I don't think that is particularly inaccurate as far as headlines go.

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

#334

Post by kaitai »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #185
noonespecial wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you post your impossibly distant black hole images, I'm sure they'll consider your pull request cleaning it up...

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…

A lot of academic code is also written by students. For instance, I'm working on a project that ends up with code written by 6 masters' students. I'm trying desperately to get them to use Git or some other kind of version control rather than emailing me files, but it's only been partially successful. My last CS class per se was 18 years ago. They don't know (&(^ about programming -- at least I've been paid to do it in a production context in a company that has to make money to justify its existence -- and since they learned C++ first but we're programming in R or Python there are some ridiculous and unnecessary maneuvers and lots of for loops. I try to work through the code with them but I also don't have time for all of it, since I'm also teaching several classes etc. Sometimes it's easier to go with the crap I've got (that I've tested for correctness) than rewrite things.

If people have good resources I could pass to students about standards for Python code, for instance, let me know.

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

#335

Post by sodafountan »

njepa wrote: post #333
realradicalwash wrote: post #265

Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…

> However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came about. It doesn't say that though. It says she was behind the image. And as I understand she lead one of the teams responsible for creating the image from the data. So I don't think that is particularly inaccurate as far as headlines go.

Well luckily we can verify just how much code she actually committed to the project.

The Event Horizon Telescope Analysis Toolkit is a publicly available repository on Github: https://github.com/sao-eht/eat

according to Katie's profile klbouman, she was responsible for a subset of that toolkit known as hopstools - which is described in the readme as "tools to convert data from the HOPS format": https://github.com/klbouman/hopstools

Of the 259 commits to that project, klbouman is responsible for exactly 2. An initial commit - and a merge into the final toolkit: https://github.com/klbouman/hopstools/commits/master

Leaving sex out of it, is this a classic case of a project manager getting all of the credit for a development team's hard work? Because by the looks of it it certainly looks like she didn't commit very much code unless I'm missing something. I'd say at the very least giving Andrew Chael, Mareki Honma and the rest of the development team just as much credit as she got for such an historic accomplishment would be fair to say the least.

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

#336

Post by gdepuydt »

scraft wrote: post #137
dalemyers wrote: post #44

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 am glad she got credit and I am glad in that respect she got treated equally. I am a little sad that her gender is a 'thing', as in I think I have seen more comments on various news site comments, social media, etc. that are quick to specifically point out she is a woman. I get they are trying to be positive, but it also has this weird reverse side where it is like "An amazing feat in STEM has been achieved, but yo…

Spot on.

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

#337

Post by Gpetrium »

nardi wrote: post #309
Gpetrium wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ycombinator text doesn't say it, but the link does. I think a lot of the negative reaction in here comes from the way people have started to perceive the narrative created by the media and personal feelings of threat (which is often unfounded). I am all in for getting more people from all backgrounds into Computer & Sciences. I also agree that sometimes it is beneficial to have 'biological characteristics' added…

> The Ycombinator text doesn’t say it, but the link does. The title of the article as of this moment is, “Katie Bouman: The woman behind the first black hole image.” Saying, “the woman behind X” doesn’t emphasize gender any more than saying “the man behind X” does. Again, this is you projecting, perhaps because you think “normal” is male, and thus “woman” is somehow making a statement? I see nothing in the body of th…

Did you bother to read some of the comments people have written here and did you even read my whole text or just hand-picked something that triggered you and decided to argue?

Like I said before, based on OTHER PEOPLES COMMENTS, I recommended them to consider those guidelines. I still have no idea why it became about me projecting something.

Regardless, to cover your point, media companies use titles to instill something in the reader and emotion is often a tool. "The woman behind..." or "The man behind..." doesn't have any impact on the way I process the information, however, it does for others (positive and negative). For a children, it can be a source of inspiration, for someone else it can trigger something negative based on the current environment of things. This tool has been used to glorify astronauts, soldiers and many other areas. I didn't project anything, I read OTHER PEOPLES COMMENTS and thought it was important for them to consider what I said.

Hopefully in the future, everyone will stop putting so much emphasis in biological characteristics (READ OTHER COMMENTS HERE AND ELSEWHERE) and take it for what it is, a bright scientist gave us a snapshot of something we have been curious to see for decades. Regardless, you should re-read my comments to realize your points are null and you likely misconstrued my points based on your preconceived notion and current state of mind. If you are willing to have a healthy debate, I would be more than willing to dig into some of the topics you may have, including the amazing work Dr. Katie Bouman did. Now if your aim is to continue to attack me for something I didn't do, then I hope you have a good day.

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

#338

Post by frontloadpro »

kaitai wrote: post #332
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?

Also, this is a few articles and a Facebook meme. There's no Nobel prize or anything. Why begrudge someone their 15 minutes of science fame for leading a cool effort, making cool science happen?

Because we relate to this situation?

The team does work, but someone else gets the credit.

I sympathize.

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

#339

Post by rcruzeiro »

realradicalwash wrote: post #265

Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person, has been hard working, with great results, making a major contribution. The photo with her and the hard drives is amazing and I am sure she will inspire many to enter science. However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came ab…

Just like the Portuguese scientist involved is getting more coverage than her here in Portugal. It's just natural I guess. People want to find someone relatable.

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

#340

Post by alukima »

sodafountan wrote: post #335
njepa wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I think to call her "the woman behind the first black hole image" is a hyperbole. It makes it sound as if she was _the one person_ responsible that all this came about. It doesn't say that though. It says she was behind the image. And as I understand she lead one of the teams responsible for creating the image from the data. So I don't think that is particularly inaccurate as far as headlines go.

Well luckily we can verify just how much code she actually committed to the project. The Event Horizon Telescope Analysis Toolkit is a publicly available repository on Github: https://github.com/sao-eht/eat according to Katie's profile klbouman, she was responsible for a subset of that toolkit known as hopstools - which is described in the readme as "tools to convert data from the HOPS format": https://github.com/klb…

Lines of code is not, and will never be a metric for gauging project contribution.

Most of that 850,000 lines of code is likely boilerplate setup code.

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