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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

#401

Post by bartimus »

InitialLastName wrote: post #194
billfruit wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question is, what did the project aim to achieve? Take a picture of the black hole? Or gather data that will help us study blackholes? Because the press is largely focusing on the picture and not telling much else detail. And is Boumans contributions to do with the making of this image?

I'm confused. Given that "images" are just data, how is taking a bunch of data about a black hole and combining it into a single "picture" of a black hole not also gathering data to help us study black holes? As I understand it, the notability of the project is that it found a novel way to process data from coordinated data collectors scattered around the earth into a single coherent data set (with more resolution th…

It also appears to have confirmed some of Einstein's theories (from what I understood)

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

#403

Post by bigger_cheese »

kaitai wrote: post #334
toomanybeersies wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is an issue in my field (Engineering) as well.

Most people in my field (materials engineering) are not programmers either they are lucky if they've done one intro course 10 years ago (which was probably done in a language like Java or Visual Basic).

Even then what gets taught in an intro course at university is not the type of code that is written "on the job". I did two semesters of programming courses when I was at uni (as electives) my courses were taught in Java and focused on stuff like object oriented programming and memorizing stuff about "the waterfall model"

There is a pretty big gap between this and my first experience which was being sat down in front of some 30 year old Fortran code which had no objects, no classes etc.

The goto at least in my org when people are trying to understand scientific code - write their own algorithms etc is the 30 year old "Numerical Recipes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes) textbook. The explanations in this textbook are best and simplest I have come across by far.

I know I personally referenced this book heavily when I was writing code in C to do Spline interpolation/smoothing. I am unaware of any other reference for a lot of algorithms/techniques than this book.

Only other thing I am aware of is the GNU GSL library which in my experience is harder to understand for beginners - even it's example code is "for loop based"

For example: https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/doc/html/bspline.html

If I had to convert this code to R (which I do know) or python (which I've never written) I'd probably write it this loop based style as well it's what I know and what makes sense to do me and the people in my org I'd expect to be interacting with my code. (the "Engineers can write Fortran in any language meme" is a real issue).

Maybe someone should write a new textbook on "modern" way to solve these sorts of problems if such a thing exists I am unaware of it but would certainly be welcome.

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

#404

Post by old_rot »

Mega Science projects are always huge collaborative efforts. This remarkable scientific achievement is now unfairly focused on an individual. Lets compare this with a couple of other mega science discoveries. The gravitational waves detection discovery was not attributed to any single individual. The collaboration got the credit for it. Back in 2012 when ATLAS experiment at CERN announced the discovery of Higgs boson, the collaboration spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti made the announcement through quite an impressive presentation of the results. Yet the discovery was attributed to the whole collaboration. In both these occasions no Eureka moment photographs were publicized and stole the credit.

In particle physics, these practices evolved over decades, when specific individuals tried to claim credits for discoveries in an unfair way(Nobel dream by Gary Taubes gives a beautiful account of this). Many particle physics collaborations now have detailed constitution and guidelines on what images/graphs they can show to the public. Someone who first made the first Higgs mass plot which shows a 5 sigma evidence of Higgs observation could not have leaked that plot on social media.

However this narrative is inspiring and perhaps motivate many young woman to take up careers in science and promote a more welcoming atmosphere for women in STEM.

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

#405

Post by Blaisorblade0 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #290
dvtrn wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I take it with me to the grave. I think someone who is, in fact, a doctor ought to be addressed as such. Regardless of their gender. Apparently that is a problem for some in this community which is a damn shame.

Eh, I think it's kind of pretentious to demand using a special title when referring to people like this. It's just a degree. I don't demand people refer to me by using my work title in front of my name and I've been doing this for a lot longer than 5-7 years. The people I've met who correct you on how to address them by their title invariably come off as (and usually are) arrogant assholes. Titles in general seem qua…

The title of Doctor witnesses that the owner advanced humanity’s knowledge, and often turned the impossible into possible (as here). It’s not “just” a degree. It’s also not inherited. That you compare work titles with that suggests you have no idea on what you’re talking about.

One can make intelligent arguments about the use of such titles. These aren’t.

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

#406

Post by Blaisorblade0 »

hurryskurry wrote: post #173
ralusek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

She obviously deserves some credit, and you can see she got some for her hard work and skills, i.e., she already has a tenure track position set up at Caltech. But rarely do post-docs actually get credit. The credit they get is usually by PIs in seminars where they mention their students or try to get their students jobs. The person who provides the funding for the project, not the one actually doing the work is the…

Citation needed? I’m a postdoc, and that doesn’t ring remotely true. At least in CS, authors get most of the scientific credit all the time, and not just in citations to “FirstAuthorSurname et al.”, or in giving talks about the work (especially in CS). They’re the ones doing most of the hard work and thinking.

Advisors often range from consultants/consulents to managers. Not because they’re not smart, but because they seldom have months of uninterrupted time to focus on a problem intensely enough.

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

#408

Post by Not_a_pizza »

anonytrary wrote: post #371
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?

People are already doing this on Reddit[0][1], and it's pretty silly because they obviously have no idea how Github or scientific research works. There's an effort underway to undermine Katie Bouman's contributions and it's absolutely ridiculous. Edit: I just checked Twitter, apparently there are thousands of idiots who believe this "850,000/900,000 lines written by Andrew, therefore he wrote the algorithm" narrative…

At the same time, it's totally common for professors to ride on the efforts of research students under their direction, to the point of being ethically questionable.

You might as well credit the Linux operating system to only a single man, whose effort is certainly largely responsible, but for who also does not in any way represent the whole of effort.

It's the ship of Theseus all over again.

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

#409

Post by Not_a_pizza »

ikeyany wrote: post #321
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?

Absolutely not. That said, if Katie was a man, her story would not be as groundbreaking in a social context, and thus she would not be as celebrated.

It's an asinine premise to say that the sex or race of a person makes an accomplishment more or less praiseworthy. If you really believe all are created equal, then you should be willing to praise equally for the same accomplishment regardless. If you don't, then what you are stating is that a sex or race is normally quite incompetent at such things and that it had to be a greater effort.

Individuals do have different circumstances to overcome to reach success, but you won't measure that simply by stating that someone is woman, so she's had things hard.

(Edit) It would be totally ridiculous in nearly any society to say that the richest women in society are as disadvantaged as the poorest of men, so we can say that typical SJW habits are totally insignificant at leveling any real playing field.

Some women feel threatened by their societies. Then there are some societies that feel threatened by their women. Putting women on some pedestal because you feel they can't normally do something, frankly is insulting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih

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

#410

Post by Not_a_pizza »

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?

If Katie was a man, there would still be a large question as whether to praise one person, except as the leader of the effort.
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