Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#11

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:17 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #3

It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant. The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups: 1. People who ask questions; 2. People who answer questions; and 3. People who edit/moderate questions. Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been…

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks.

I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially talk about "What are the pros and cons of Gorillas vs Sharks?"

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/

> Database development mistakes made by application developers

This is a discussion, not a question. The entire text of said "question" is, quite literally, "What are common database development mistakes made by application developers?" If it can have infinite answers, is it really a question?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/621884/database-developme...

Great post, indeed, but it belongs on your blog.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Stack Exchange is this idea that discussion is, in and of itself, a net good to the world -- and therefore we are monsters for not allowing discussion. I do not believe this to be true. There is, and will always be, an infinity of discussion. Like Jay Leno once said about Doritos, "type all you want, we'll make more". If something can be had in infinite amounts, what is its value?

Stack Exchange supports only the minimal subset of discussion necessary to get practical, useful answers to specific questions. The goal is not discussion, but science-in-the-small. Back up your claims. Show us references. Show us data. Share your specific experiences.

Otherwise you end up with Quora, a system where everything is a discussion, and all answers are opinions. Thus they can only be evaluated based on how famous the poster is, or how compelling a yarn they can spin.

Nothing against Robert Scoble and great storytelling (I used to work with Joel Spolsky, after all), but I've seen where that system leads. Given a choice, I'll always take tiny science. You should too.

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#12

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #8

teh_klev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does every Stack Exchange post need to be hijacked by yet another whine about site policy and moderation activities?

No, but it's particularly apposite on this post, as SE is asking for a machine learning algorithm is to assist in moderating questions: an algorithm that predicts whether (and for what reason) a question will be closed. which raises all sorts of questions as to what the reasons are for which questions [should][1] be closed - this is a grey area, and there is much argument on SE itself over what sort of questions are…

Worth a try in the name of science, but I'm pessimistic about the ability of machine learning to measure subjective "quality" of a question.

In the best case you'll end up with a txtspeak and Proper English detector. But I knew that already.

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#13

Post by grey-area » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:32 PM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #11

cletus wrote: post #3

It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant. The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups: 1. People who ask questions; 2. People who answer questions; and 3. People who edit/moderate questions. Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been…

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks. I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially…

What are common database development mistakes made by application developers?

It is a question, an open question intended to provoke debate and teach about a subject, in effect it's a request for an FAQ. Now perhaps SO is not intended to be for that sort of question, and that is of course for SO to decide.

I suppose the reason many people come to SO to read questions is that they'd like to learn about a subject area, and the reason many people come is write answers is that they'd like to teach a little about a subject, and this sort of open-ended questions offer the opportunity for someone to answer questions the asker didn't even know they had - like should I add an index to my db, if so when? Should I use natural keys? etc. To in effect tell them to unask all those questions they would otherwise have asked in groping their way to familiarity with the subject. It functions as an FAQ for that particular subject, to prevent beginners from making the same mistakes/asking the same questions over and over.

So that sort of question can be very useful for someone starting out, for the kind of person your site targets. Maybe that sort of question belongs on some other site though, a sort of training site rather than a question/answer site, or maybe SO should just expand to encompass that sort of FAQ function?

I'm not so convinced that for this category of question there is a clear line between 'db x breaks when I do y, what should I do?', 'Do I need to use db transactions in db x?', and 'What are the common db mistakes?', and that one sort of question/answer is rational, and another narrative - is the division really that clear? Are there not many many borderline questions which solicit opinion (of someone who knows more about the subject), and yet are useful for others too? Are not many of these smaller 'science-in-the-small' questions actually answerable in many different ways, each of which may be somewhat valid and none of which is actually 'right' in some categorical way?

For example this question, which is equally open-ended, remains open (rightly so I think as it could be a useful discussion :)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/327199/what-will-we-do-af...

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#14

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:37 PM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #11

cletus wrote: post #3

It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant. The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups: 1. People who ask questions; 2. People who answer questions; and 3. People who edit/moderate questions. Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been…

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks. I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#15

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #14

codinghorror wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks. I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#16

Post by codinghorror » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #13

codinghorror wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks. I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially…

What are common database development mistakes made by application developers? It is a question, an open question intended to provoke debate and teach about a subject, in effect it's a request for an FAQ. Now perhaps SO is not intended to be for that sort of question, and that is of course for SO to decide. I suppose the reason many people come to SO to read questions is that they'd like to learn about a subject area,…

> or maybe SO should just expand to encompass that sort of FAQ function?

Some of the tag wikis do this:

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/java/info

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/c%23/info

So Cletus' post might make more sense as the tag wiki for, say:

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/database/info

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#17

Post by mej10 » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #6

If you're someone who's interested in ML/datamining but haven't had a chance to put your ideas to any hard/interesting problems I strongly recommend a kaggle contest. It's one thing to plug some data into a random forest and go "oh cool, I guess that did okay" and entirely another to see how other competitors are comparing. one of the biggest challenges I've found in implementing ML projects is I don't have a great s…

I am really interesting in ML, but have only recently been diving into it. I have watched all of the videos for Andrew Ng's Coursera course (and most of the programming exercises), but just looking over some of the Kaggle contests I think I would be quickly out of my depth.

Would I be wasting my time attempting these with such a basic level of knowledge?

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#18

Post by bnegreve » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:04 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #4

cletus wrote: post #3

It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant. The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups: 1. People who ask questions; 2. People who answer questions; and 3. People who edit/moderate questions. Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been…

Does every Stack Exchange post need to be hijacked by yet another whine about site policy and moderation activities?

This particular post is about replacing human moderators with bots, whining about SE moderation policy is actually quite related to the post.

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#19

Post by tocomment » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:10 PM UTC

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #6

If you're someone who's interested in ML/datamining but haven't had a chance to put your ideas to any hard/interesting problems I strongly recommend a kaggle contest. It's one thing to plug some data into a random forest and go "oh cool, I guess that did okay" and entirely another to see how other competitors are comparing. one of the biggest challenges I've found in implementing ML projects is I don't have a great s…

This is a great idea! I just signed up.

So let me ask you, where do you read up on how past winners have won?

How did you decide on algorithms to try out on a contest? How did you find promising academic papers?

Re: Stack Exchange Machine Learning Contest

#20

Post by pc86 » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:11 PM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #11

cletus wrote: post #3

It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant. The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups: 1. People who ask questions; 2. People who answer questions; and 3. People who edit/moderate questions. Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been…

> But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks. I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially…

> I guess, but Zookeepers could also potentially talk about "What are the pros and cons of Gorillas vs Sharks?"

And on an appropriate forum with as many readers as SO/SE you'd likely get well-thought out responses going far into detail regarding purchase cost, habitat maintenance, prevalence of skilled keepers, etc. Someone who actually was deciding whether to add a Gorilla enclosure or a shark aquarium would find it a very enlightening post.

I understand you created SO/SE and want to see it move in a certain direction, but closing and deleting questions you don't like because it threatens your "science-in-the-small" goal is, I think, a terrible way to go about it.

(FTR, I understand Jeff is not personally going around deleting stuff on the site)