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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

#181

Post by CydeWeys »

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 than Hubble, whose purpose was also to generate photographs, seeing as how they simply connected together existing radio telescopes.

The point was to demonstrate that this technique is feasible. Now they can use it to image all sorts of other stuff and learn lots more.

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

#182

Post by CydeWeys »

sorenjan wrote: post #106
melling wrote: post #17

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

It's a TEDx talk. In this case it's an interesting one by an expert in her field, but TEDx have a lot lower demands for participating, so try to keep the distinction clear.

I don't see TEDx anywhere on that.

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

#183

Post by glangdale »

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…

Yes, quite a number of big academic, scientific or industry figures have had stories about their achievements without any major reference to their (obviously necessary) team. No-one felt moved to point out there were contributions from the graduate students and staff that worked with Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio in the HN story about the latter three's Turing Award.

I don't think I've ever seen so many people suddenly desperately concerned that the Little People get a mention, and I'm at least part-way convinced that gender (and maybe youth? she's 29...) has a good deal to do with it (apparently the other thing that triggers the "harrumph, what about the team" crowd are stories about child prodigies, according to another thread).

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

#184

Post by dave84 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #182
sorenjan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a TEDx talk. In this case it's an interesting one by an expert in her field, but TEDx have a lot lower demands for participating, so try to keep the distinction clear.

I don't see TEDx anywhere on that.

She’s literally standing in front of a sign on the stage that says TEDxBeaconStreet.

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

#185

Post by toomanybeersies »

noonespecial wrote: post #178
toomanybeersies wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That code definitely wouldn't pass code review by me. Terrible commit messages too.

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 of it and they have to write it from scratch.

There's a reason why in the non-academic world we have coding standards and code review. Code isn't written in a bubble, other people will look at it and work on it.

That's not to belittle or criticise the work done in the slightest. Cleanliness of code is orthogonal to functionality. You can have beautifully written, clean and documented code that doesn't do what it's meant to, and likewise you can have a complete mess of code that performs some genius function perfectly.

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

#186

Post by nvr219 »

dave84 wrote: post #184
CydeWeys wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see TEDx anywhere on that.

She’s literally standing in front of a sign on the stage that says TEDxBeaconStreet.

My eyes are closed that's why I didn't see it.

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

#187

Post by njepa »

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.

There is actually nothing really in the BBC story about being a women other than in the context of her getting attention on twitter, but barely that. I think whoever changed the title might have been confused as well. It doesn't refer to woman as gender but woman as subject as in e.g. "the man walked his dog".

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

#188

Post by Frost1x »

black_puppydog wrote: post #129
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 6 authors for that paper, the way you linked it suggested it's solely by her; are the other authors listed honorarily? Similarly the title suggests she worked alone on the project. Which seems exceedingly unlikely given the need for telescope time and computing time and the wide range of disciplines I imagine the project covers ... did she work alone. That must be almost unique in experimentalism nowadays?

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 such contributions (typically, though they can,) lay groundwork for an experiment or theory in another domain, but I am saying active CS involvement/expertise is typically critical to many scientific endeavors' success these days. If a project is interdiscipinary, there's probably a computer scientist on the team helping out.

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

#189

Post by CydeWeys »

dave84 wrote: post #184
CydeWeys wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see TEDx anywhere on that.

She’s literally standing in front of a sign on the stage that says TEDxBeaconStreet.

I meant on the channel branding, intro, etc. Usually when these things are TEDx they say so really obviously. Did this talk's status get upgraded?
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