NIPS 2017 Notes [pdf](cs.brown.edu)

cs.brown.edu

NIPS 2017 Notes [pdf]

https://cs.brown.edu/~dabel/blog/posts/misc/nips_2017.pdf

25 コメント

It's interesting that when asked about why we use hierarchical methods in RL, ML, and cogsci, people haven't talked about the circuit complexity and information-theoretic reasons for using hierarchies. IIRC, a "deeper" circuit can represent a given function with exponentially fewer units/gates than a "shallower" circuit, and hierarchical methods also narrow down only the predictive information in the (supervised) dataset, according to information-bottleneck methods.

DyslexicAtheist9 年前

The event has also been compared to a dumpster fire[0] due to "sexualized events & speeches", is this guy exaggerating or is it safe to go there for women? Pretty off-putting tbh

[0] https://twitter.com/haldaume3/status/939910697911066624

yamaneko9 年前

Smitha Milli gave a bit more of context about what happened. Link to her thread:

- https://twitter.com/SmithaMilli/status/940012716797739008

briga9 年前

This seems like a pretty harmless joke to me. I have difficulty imagining why anyone would be offended by this, unless there's more to the story

peoplewindow9 年前

Well, according to the notes there was an entire talk about bias where the example of a Turkish sentence that didn't contain gendered pronouns "X is a nurse, X is a doctor" gets translated to "She is a nurse, he is a doctor" by Google Translate. And apparently that's a problem that needs fixing rather than a reasonable translation, although we all know that Google Translate is trained on the work of human translators, where it presumably learned this (demographically correct) bias from. So I guess they need fixing too.

Seems like NIPS might have a systematic issue with hyper-sensitivity to perceived slights. But it's the intersection of academia and SV companies so is it really a surprise?

DyslexicAtheist9 年前

thanks, rather unspectacular then.

lemondrops9 年前

Also, this? https://twitter.com/SamiraEKahou/status/940085885101412352

I don't get why anyone but the wife herself should be offended by this.

fredmonroe9 年前

thanks for doing these, really appreciated

formalsystem9 年前

Wow can't appreciate this enough. You put this together really quickly!

hackandtrip9 年前

Wonderful content, appreciate those notes over usual videos that come out, really more usable. Is there a place where wonderful people usually share notes on conference like those?

Dangeranger9 年前

It makes me laugh thinking that these notes were probably written in LaTex and then exported.

The formatting for this overview is pretty great though. PDF with a TOC makes a very nice means of navigation.

Cyph0n9 年前

Is "exported" the correct term to use here? I would say the notes were written in LaTeX, and then compiled (in the software compiler sense) to a PDF.

Dangeranger9 年前

You are likely correct, exported is the wrong word, and my mind was within my personal org-mode workflow.

AlexCoventry9 年前

I was guessing org-mode -> LaTeX -> PDF. org-mode is much better for taking notes.

castle-bravo9 年前

It may have been done in org-mode and then exported to LaTeX. That's how I'd do it, anyway.

pdxdabel9 年前

(David/author here): I haven't actually seen org-mode before. I'll take a look!

I wrote these in sharelatex using a template and commands file I put together that help write notes quickly in latex (they're available here if anyone is interested: https://github.com/david-abel/latex_docs).

Dangeranger9 年前

Gary Schwartz[0] and Howard Abrams[1][2] both have nice explainers about org-mode which explain the advantages and how to get started.

There's also a nice discussion on the Emacs Reddit page[3] about "Why Org-Mode?"

[0] https://harryrschwartz.com/2016/04/29/getting-started-with-o...

[1] http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/learning-org-mode.h...

[2] http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/journaling-org.html

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/3nvmvr/why_orgmode/

[deleted]9 年前

emmelaich9 年前

NIPS stands for "Neural Information Processing Systems"

(took me a while but I found it!)

daferna9 年前

Somebody get this guy a PhD!

tuxguy9 年前

these are awesome !!! thanks a bunch David, @stablemap !

pdxdabel9 年前

Hi all! David (the author) here -- first, thanks for the kind words and thanks to @stablemap for sharing! I'm glad folks have found them useful.

I'm planning on putting these together to future conferences I attend, too (I'm currently a 3rd year Ph.D student so I should be attending a few in the coming years).

mi_lk9 年前

Hi David, very impressive of your notes, especially in this knowledge-intense machine learning conference, the way you organize diverse topics and have short summaries about them seems like a very useful skill to have. Do you have any methods/tips that you can share about your note-taking skills?

pdxdabel9 年前

Investing in a particular set of tools has been really critical for me -- once I found that I liked the flexibility and power of latex, I put effort into simplifying the process of using it.

So, for instance, I made some macros for commands that I use frequently, and a put together a latex template that includes the packages and basic structure of documents I write. Otherwise, just practice! I forced myself to write notes during class in latex when I took information theory earlier in grad school and that helped a lot.

Hope this helps. If I think of anything else I'll be sure to come back and post!

lustig9 年前

Hi David! Thanks for a great summary! I will keep an eye on your blog for notes from upcoming conferences.