學習動力與方向 (2/2)

如同如何準備研究所中所言，不一定要念研究所。在網路時代，知識的取得已經非常方便，例如 edX 或 Coursera，所以大學部的基礎知識和自學的動力很重要 (1)。以 The Analytics Edge 而言，是 MIT 商業分析 (Business Analytics) 碩士的必修課，該碩士學費一年七萬美金，所以此線上免費課程價值一萬美金。

Software Engineering at Google

Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google, O'Reilly Media, March 2020. (Read online)

The Software Engineering at Google book (“SWE Book”) is not about programming, per se, but about the engineering practices utilized at Google to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. (These practices are paramount for common infrastructural code such as Abseil.)

The Effective Executive

Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, HarperCollins Publishers, January 3, 2006.

齊若蘭譯，杜拉克談高效能的5個習慣，遠流，2009

The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.

Yoshua Bengio joins Host Pieter Abbeel

The Robot Brains Podcast, S3 E1 Yoshua Bengio joins Host Pieter Abbeel: LLMs, Cognition, Causality, Responsible AI, Creativity

01:17:50 - brain is more creative when walking

2022 Franz Edelman Award

 2022 Edelman Competition (videos)

Leonardo J. Basso et al., Analytics Saves Lives During the COVID-19 Crisis in Chile, INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 2023, 53(1):9-31. (2022 Franz Edelman Award) (statistical analysis, integer programming, regression)

During the COVID-19 crisis, the Chilean Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Sciences, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation partnered with the Instituto Sistemas Complejos de Ingeniería (ISCI) and the telecommunications company ENTEL, to develop innovative methodologies and tools that placed operations research (OR) and analytics at the forefront of the battle against the pandemic. These innovations have been used in key decision aspects that helped shape a comprehensive strategy against the virus, including tools that (1) provided data on the actual effects of lockdowns in different municipalities and over time; (2) helped allocate limited intensive care unit (ICU) capacity; (3) significantly increased the testing capacity and provided on-the-ground strategies for active screening of asymptomatic cases; and (4) implemented a nationwide serology surveillance program that significantly influenced Chile’s decisions regarding vaccine booster doses and that also provided information of global relevance. Significant challenges during the execution of the project included the coordination of large teams of engineers, data scientists, and healthcare professionals in the field; the effective communication of information to the population; and the handling and use of sensitive data. The initiatives generated significant press coverage and, by providing scientific evidence supporting the decision making behind the Chilean strategy to address the pandemic, they helped provide transparency and objectivity to decision makers and the general population. According to highly conservative estimates, the number of lives saved by all the initiatives combined is close to 3,000, equivalent to more than 5% of the total death toll in Chile associated with the pandemic until January 2022. The saved resources associated with testing, ICU beds, and working days amount to more than 300 million USD.

AI 溝通師

邱韞蓁編譯，不寫程式，也能拿千萬年薪！AI大浪催生新職業「AI溝通師」，商周頭條，2023.03.03 

1. AI 大戰鳴槍，催生熱門職業：「AI 溝通師 (prompt engineer)」。由 OpenAI 前員工創立的新創公司 Anthropic，不要求應徵者有電腦科學學位，還開出上看33萬美元 (折合新台幣約1010萬) 的高薪。
2. AI 溝通師不僅要具備機器學習、自然語言處理等技術面硬實力，創造力、清楚表達、合作等軟實力也不可少。他們負責創造或改善輸入給 AI 的指令 (prompt)，讓結果更好。
3. 除了科技業，連醫療、法律、遊戲業都開始徵才！對於一般人而言，也能到 PromptBase、Fiverr 等線上平台，花2美元購買 AI 指令集。

Exploring the Whole Rashomon Set of Sparse Decision Trees

Rui Xin, Chudi Zhong, Zhi Chen, Takuya Takagi, Margo Seltzer, Cynthia Rudin, Exploring the Whole Rashomon Set of Sparse Decision Trees, NeurIPS (oral), 2022. (code) | (bib) | (5 min video)

In any given machine learning problem, there may be many models that could explain the data almost equally well. However, most learning algorithms return only one of these models, leaving practitioners with no practical way to explore alternative models that might have desirable properties beyond what could be expressed within a loss function. The Rashomon set is the set of these all almost-optimal models. Rashomon sets can be extremely complicated, particularly for highly nonlinear function classes that allow complex interaction terms, such as decision trees. We provide the first technique for completely enumerating the Rashomon set for sparse decision trees; in fact, our work provides the first complete enumeration of any Rashomon set for a non-trivial problem with a highly nonlinear discrete function class. This allows the user an unprecedented level of control over model choice among all models that are approximately equally good. We represent the Rashomon set in a specialized data structure that supports efficient querying and sampling. We show three applications of the Rashomon set: 1) it can be used to study variable importance for the set of almost-optimal trees (as opposed to a single tree), 2) the Rashomon set for accuracy enables enumeration of the Rashomon sets for balanced accuracy and F1-score, and 3) the Rashomon set for a full dataset can be used to produce Rashomon sets constructed with only subsets of the data set. Thus, we are able to examine Rashomon sets across problems with a new lens, enabling users to choose models rather than be at the mercy of an algorithm that produces only a single model.

關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事

恐同男警吳明翰 (許光漢 飾) ，誤撿地上紅包，沒想到紅包裡的對象是個男的 (林柏宏 飾) ！被迫男男冥婚的明翰，一路衰到底，不但甩不掉冥婚對象，就連警花林子晴 (王淨 飾) 埋線已久的緝毒案，都被他搞砸。為了挽救危機，恐同又怕鬼的明翰，別無選擇，即使人鬼殊途也要和鬼老公毛毛攜手跨界追兇，一場荒謬絕倫、笑中帶淚的旅程就此展開！

台灣經濟史四百年

 吳聰敏，台灣經濟史四百年，春山出版，2023。

本書講述台灣經濟400年的故事，我所選擇的議題主要是以往我曾經做過研究的。毫無疑問，400年來還有很多重要的議題，但限於我個人的能力有限，本書並沒有講到。例如，晚清到日治初期的高山原住民，晚清的茶業發展，閩南人與客家人在經濟發展中的角色，日治時期在台日本人的發展，戰後的土地改革，黨國資本主義等。我期待未來有人能從經濟的角度，把這些故事寫出來。

大三機器學習的教學評量

身分證檢查程式

無論是程式設計課程或是畢業專題，我都會用這一個程式 (*)，請同學們實作；可以貫穿控制結構和多種資料結構。順便說明，我的朋友如何利用檢查和 (checksum) 的概念，賣一套一百多萬的加油換點數資訊系統，希望激起同學們的學習動機。