DISCLAIMER:
"Most quotes are misattributed, especially on the Internet"
— Abraham Lincoln
"AI won't replace all _______________ (factory workers, doctors, farmers, …) but ____________ (factory workers, doctors, farmers, …) who don't use AI will be replace by all those that do."
"Question: What is more expensive to a business than people?"
"Answer: Downtime! (Hire the right people)"
"Question: What is cheaper than more hardware?"
"Answer: Math! (Apply the right math)"
"I don't spend my time wishing for a light pack,
I train for a strong back."
"Metrics are like swimsuits. They show some things, but they don't show everything."
"Accuracy is the pie chart of performance metrics."
"My time is linear. Analysis ideas are combinatorial. Training state-of-the-art models is exponential."
"I rather delete code than write code."
"Management: A Pie Eating Contest Where First Prize is More Pie."
"In Silicon Valley, you either write code or write emails. Choose wisely."
"Data is the world's best regularizer."
"Most problems in Data Science can be solved with a hashtable, a database, and Bayes Theorem."
"Dockerized is the new serialized."
"Python 2 is the new COBOL."
"Algorithms are king; Implementations are queen."
"First, prioritize writing code quickly.
Second, prioritize writing quick code."
"Never confuse the brilliant performance with the drudgery of practice."
"Computer Science is a thinking class, not a typing class."
"This assignment requires you to write 2 lines of code that will be ~100 characters. Like all computer science challenges, it will require more thinking than writing."
"The best coding solutions are simple and elegant. Writing those solutions is often complex and messy."
"Algorithms are mostly simple. The final code is often simple. Finding the proper algorithm and writing the final code can be surprisingly complex."
"Similar to physical architecture, you make computing infrastructure first.
After creation, infrastructure defines limiting patterns of movement and thought."
"Life is too short for manual looping - use vectorized operations or optimized functions."
"My aim is not to be novel; My aim is to be correct."
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with finding your shoes."
"At some point, I just realized that this will always be hard for me.
Once I made my peace with that, I stopped getting frustrated or surprised when something was hard for me, and now I can just get to work."
— A former student
"Create systems that:
Make easy things automated.
Make hard things easy.
Make impossible things possible."
— Intentionally misquoting Larry Wall
"A knowledge worker adds value to information."
— Peter Drucker
"A data scientist adds value to data."
— Brian Spiering
"Be creative. Men only learnt how to fly when they stopped imitating birds." — Paulo Coelho
"Be creative. Humanity will only learn how to create intelligence we stop imitating biological brains" — Brian Spiering
"Do not be the person who has practiced 10,000 things once, but be the person who has practiced one thing 10,000 times."
— Intentially misquoting Bruce Lee
When I'm asked about learning computer programming from first principles I share this story…
I started to play drums a while back. It was fun. I went and bought a used drum set and just started banging on it. I made a joyful noise.
I wanted to play with others so I learned the forms of music so we could collaborate.
Then I was told to really understand drums I had to learn other player's style. So I listened to their music.
Next I was told to really understand drums I had to read music. So I read books.
Next I was told to really understand drums I had to get a degree. So I took classes.
Next I was told to really understand drums I have to build my own drum kit. So I went bought all the individual pieces and assembled in my own kit.
Next I was told to really understand drums I had to build my own drums from scratch. So I went and bought some goats to make my own drum heads.
Now I spend most of my time raising goats and don't have much time to bang on the drums.
However, the goats make their own joyful noise.