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Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

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Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#21

Post by mattkrause »

bjourne wrote: post #12
marricks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

Why? For all the automatic academic score tracking systems it doesn't matter one bit if it is Wulf et al. or Wulf and McKee.

The automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia.

I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#22

Post by trvz »

setgree wrote: post #16
marricks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

It’s also not correct; et al. is conventionally applied to three or more authors (it means “and others,” plural)

No, plural can’t be deduced from how it is written.

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#23

Post by bjourne »

mattkrause wrote: post #21
bjourne wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? For all the automatic academic score tracking systems it doesn't matter one bit if it is Wulf et al. or Wulf and McKee.

The automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia. I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.

What "informal credit assignment"? It's automated and it runs entirely on quantitative data.

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#26

Post by swyx »

DespairYeMighty wrote: post #3

She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588 on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

bit ironic i guess but unintentionally fitting

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

deater wrote: post #4
DespairYeMighty wrote: post #3

She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588 on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee" I notice these things a bit more as she was my PhD thesis advisor

> you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"

    Wulf et al.
    Wulf and McKee
35% less isn't usually described as "practically more".

It'd be interesting to see someone use the unabbreviated form; I have a hunch they wouldn't know to say "et alia".

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#28

Post by seanmcdirmid »

b473a wrote: post #8
DespairYeMighty wrote: post #3

She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588 on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

Yeah tenure is nice but there's just a hint of mystery behind the title "itinerant professor." Like a wizard that just pops up in places to work computer science magic.

I was a phd student when sally was a professor at Utah. I get the feeling that a lot of people came together for an interesting project (systems/memory related, I can’t even remember the name ATM) and dispersed when the project was at its later stages. I think it’s common in our field for many phds to work as professors for just a few years and not commit to it as a career.

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#29

Post by remexre »

bjourne wrote: post #23
mattkrause wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia. I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.

What "informal credit assignment"? It's automated and it runs entirely on quantitative data.

the one where i think of a particular piece of work, and i know who did it, then tell a student "oh, see if $author's group published anything else about this."

i'm not using software for this if this is off the top of my head, and it's the sort of thing that, at scale, hurts the forgotten author and their students

Re: Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

#30

Post by cperciva »

setgree wrote: post #16
marricks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

It’s also not correct; et al. is conventionally applied to three or more authors (it means “and others,” plural)

"et alia" usually means "and others", but technically in Latin "alia" can be either plural neuter or singular female!
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