Patrick

The Search for Number 17

by Patrick on May 20, 2012

in Uncategorized

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

In the end, it wasn’t all that hard. As a member of the search committee, the hardest thing I had to do was attend meetings of various constituencies to seek out advice about the challenges facing the new president. That was hard because I had to shut up and listen.

President-elect L. Rafael Reif saved us a lot of trouble, because without him among the candidates, we would have had a difficult time deciding among the rest of the strong candidates.

We might have divided up into camps, fighting, but we did not. As far as I could tell, there was complete harmony and consensus among the twenty-two search committee members, ten from the faculty and twelve from the Corporation.

If you find yourself ever doing this sort of thing, you need to develop some deflection mechanisms because reporters may try to trick you into revealing something you should not. They might ask: “Is it true that x is on the short list?”

X is generally an implausible but not ridiculously implausible candidate, meant to get you talking. Jim Champy, our experienced chairmain, instructed us in how to answer all questions: “I can neither conform nor deny anything.”

With increasing frequency, your friends will stop you in the hall:

“Well, the search is pretty far along. What’s happening?”

Eventually, I settled on a stock answer:

“Oh, didn’t you hear? We gave up. Couldn’t find anyone.”

Then, after it was announced that there would be an announcement, but before the announcement, into my office they poured:

“Aw, come on. Is it Rafael?”

My response:

“Actually, I think you will be surprised; it’s a bold move on our part. Head of Disney. The search committee foresees entertainment and education coming together, so who could be better?”

One seemed to believe, so I finished with:

“Of course we will have to dump the beaver in favor of the other rodent…”

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The Infinite Connection Advisor

by Patrick on April 1, 2012

in Alumni Life,Prof. Winston's Ideas

Photograph courtesy of Patrica Sampson

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

These days, whenever you you walk down the Student Street in the Stata Center, you are likely to see students, sitting alone, staring at computer screens, jabbering away with friends and family in myriad foreign tongues, via Skype.

When I was a kid, my parents and I had awkward, monthly, expensive feeling, long-distance telephone calls. Now, I use Skype to work with collegues from California to Istanbul.

For me, Skype is a great enabler, far superior to telephones and email. Somehow, seeing adds a powerful social dimension.

So why not use Skype to help fix MIT’s undergraduate advising problem.

There are points of light, of course. Some departments have effective associate advisor programs; the Alumni Association offers a career-guidance service to alumni; and many FSILGs have alum-engaging mechanisms of various sorts.

Still, the advising problem has been admired, sometimes mitigated, but never fixed, for decades. Not all advisors have been in the nonacademic workforce recently; not all get to know their advisees. Many are spread too thin.

Among those who complain are seniors, soon to become young alumni. So, let’s put together a Skype-based system to create a connection between our students and on-line young alumni, thus putting the young alumni to work on the problem they have been complaining about:

Skype × Alum = Infinite Connection Advisor

By making systematic and intentional connections we might get a highly non-linear return on investment. A systematic and intentional connection is one that involves definite, mediated assignment of students to volunteer alumni, with contact proactively initiated by the alum, rather than a passive offering of a find-it-and-opt-in service.

Infinite Connection Advisors would provide career advice that complements other MIT sources. Young alums are well positioned to describe how they like working in their fields in general; to relate how they like the organizations they work for in particular; to suggest how they have made use of their MIT degrees in both obvious and nonobvious career paths; and to recommend organizations friendly to interns and attractive as long-term employers. A successful program could contribute to lifelong bonds between advisor and advisee, strengthening the alumni interpersonal network.

The idea still sounded good the day after I thought it up, so I tried it on a few people in the obvious places.

Alas, interest, but no traction. So, off to the Arcosanti file it goes, the place on my computer where I put ideas I write up just for discussion and fun.

Editor’s note: Some of the 3,000+ MIT graduates signed up as Institute Career Assistant Network (ICAN) advisors may be using Skype—it’s certainly a great idea. Alumni and students can search the Online Alumni Directory for an ICAN advisor. Interested in sharing your experience? Learn how to become an advisor.

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Here’s to you, World Wide Web

by Patrick on February 19, 2012

in Uncategorized

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

I was drinking a glass of wine the other day, while ordering some stuff over the web, when I reflected on a curious incident a long time ago.

It was back in the early 70s, when I was a young laboratory director, just as the ARPANET was getting off the ground.

The ARPA office that funded the laboratory was directed by Colonel David Russell, just out of service in Viet Nam. I imagine he viewed me as a kind of junior officer.

He called me up one day, and asked, with acid in his voice, “Do you know that someone in your laboratory has posted a wine list on the ARPANET?”

“Oh, oh,” I said to myself. Back in those days, everyone was concerned about the Golden Fleece Award, presented by Senator Proxmire, to those who did useless, frivolous, taxpayer-funded research. “Ugh, gee, what?” I said, knowing that John Hollerbach, our local oenophile, had done it. “I’ll make sure it comes down right away,” I said, stupidly.

Two or three hours later, Colonel Russell’s deputy called. “I hear someone in your laboratory has posted a wine list on the ARPANET.” “Oh, oh,” I said to myself. “Here we go again.”

“Colonel Russell has already talked to me about that,” I said, getting a little testy.

Then, a few seconds of silence, and he said, somewhat sheepishly, “Well, ok, I guess Colonel Russell can tell me how to get to it.”

Colonel Russell should have suggested we put a nice graphical interface in front of Hollerbach’s list. I should have offered to put together some sort of front end so he could buy a bottle from Hollerbach. Then, we would have been the ones who changed the world.

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Laser pointers, viewed as a bad idea

by Patrick on February 5, 2012

in Uncategorized

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

I was casting about for something new to put into my traditional IAP How to Speak talk when I remembered a talk I had seen recently. The speaker liked to point at his projections with a laser pointer. He was addicted to it.

A student pointed out to me that during extended stretches, all of us in the audience could have left, and the speaker wouldn’t have known.

I don’t like to look at the back of the speaker’s head. It drives me nuts because I think projections ought to decorate a conversation between the speaker and the audience, and without eye contact, there is no conversation. I would throw away my laser pointer, except that I use it as a prop when I demonstrate why using a laser pointer is a bad idea. It think is better to point with words (the second equation) or stick arrows into your projections (the white arrow points at the culprit).

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Anytime, anywhere, any pace, any age

by Patrick on January 1, 2012

in Classroom,In the News,Prof. Winston's Ideas

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

Like all years, it was the best of years and the worst of years. People of future influence were born; people of past influence died. Companies started up; countries almost went broke.

At MIT, it was a special year because we made it to our 150th birthday, and all the celebrating encouraged us to think about the next 150 years. Here is my prediction: MIT will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the past 100. We have to. Our students learn differently. They have the web. They have Skype. They are on line. We have an obligation and an opportunity to change the way we engage with them.

Many of our successes will be exportable. So, I’m betting that if MIT lasts another 150 years, 2011 will be known as the year when the Provost Rafael Reif launched MITx. Here is what he had to say:

Many members of the MIT faculty have been experimenting with integrating online tools into the campus education. We will facilitate those efforts, many of which will lead to novel learning technologies that offer the best possible online educational experience to non-residential learners. Both parts of this new initiative are extremely important to the future of high-quality, affordable, accessible education.

We are going global, and, eventually, you will be able to earn certificates for completing subjects from MIT, anytime, anywhere, at any pace, at any age, and it won’t cost $50,000/year. And perhaps the best part is that we are doing it all open source and inviting other universities to join with us.

Of course, distance education has been around for a long time. What’s new is that technical advances have just about reached a threshold where on-line is not just a poor shadow of the real thing but rather a different thing with relative advantages and disadvantages, just as movies are different from live theater, with relative advantages and disadvantages.

No one has a crystal ball good enough to see what lies on the other side of the coming education revolution. Are we talking about adjustments or starting over? Are we freeing faculty to spend more time with students one-on-one or are we automating the faculty out of work? And of course it is easier to predict the future than it is to predict when it will happen.

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The Studio 360 Story

by Patrick on December 18, 2011

in In the News,Prof. Winston's Ideas

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

I hear my Studio 360 inteview turned out ok.  I attribute that to a sort of aural cosmetology. Jonathan Mitchell came into my office about a month ago, chatted me up for an hour or so, and somehow he and the other geniuses at Public Radio International and WNYC found a few coherent sentences on the tape about my group’s research on story understanding.

Here is the story: As a species, we became symbolic and different from other primates a little more than 50,000 years ago; becoming symbolic meant that we could describe events. Once we strung events together into sequences, we could tell stories. Mastering story telling meant we could teach through case studies, ranging from fairy tales to blogs. Finally, by learning to blend stories together to make new stories, we developed one highly useful kind of creativity. So, if we are to understand intellligence, we need to put a lot of effort into understanding story understanding.

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Blunders, viewed as aids to memory

by Patrick on December 4, 2011

in Classroom,Learning,Prof. Winston's Ideas,Remember When...

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

I was rummaging around in the attic when I stumbled across my notes and quizzes from my first term, fifty years ago. I opened up the binder and there it was: the dreaded 8.01 quiz #2.

When I was a freshman, I always wrote down F = Ma, force is equal to mass times acceleration, as the first step toward solving 8.01 problems. Writing it down got the formula into my visual field, which generaly is a good idea, because visual problem solving is an important contributor to problem solving.

Alas, on that 8.01 quiz #2, writing F = Ma got me into big trouble.

This was the problem: an open railroad car rolls along a frictionless track at constant speed, v. Then, it starts to rain into the car. What force is required to keep the car going at constant speed?

I concluded that each drop went from zero horizontal velocity to v instantaneously, but then I was baffled, not knowing yet about impulses.

I should written F = d mv/dt, because force is equal to the derivative of momentum, mv. Usually, mass is fixed and velocity changes, so F = m dv/dt = ma; but in the quiz problem, velocity is constant, but the mass is changing, so F = v dm/dt.

Simple, but I muffed it, and because it was simple, and because I was extremely sore at myself for muffing it, I couldn’t ever forget it, so I would never make that kind of mistake again.

Curiously, this year’s 8.01 quiz #2 also featured rail cars moving along a frictionless track.

I wonder if any of the freshmen will remember the problem 50 years from now. Probably just the ones who got it wrong.

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Boot Camp

by Patrick on November 20, 2011

in Campus Culture,Prof. Winston's Ideas

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

Our new Dean of Engineering, Ian Waitz, came to the EE&CS lunch the other day, talking about exciting new School of Engineering initiatives. He also reported a sobering survey statistic: MIT students arrive as freshman with extremely high self esteem; they leave with greatly diminished self esteem.

Of course, there are a lot of monster brains around here, in all ranks, and that takes some getting used to for ordinary geniuses.

Enter Vikash Mansinghka ’05, MEng ’09, PhD ’09, a graduated student of mine, who wandered into my office a while back when he was in town. Because I had just read Making the Corps, a terrific book about Parris Island, by Thomas Ricks, we started comparing MIT to boot camp. Much is the same: not much sleep, bonding through working and suffering together, demanding authority figures, and occasional humiliation (in our case, via quizzes).

The difference is, the Marines don’t just take the recruits apart; they put them back together such that they end up with increased self esteem. They seem to know what they are doing down there in South Carolina. Their vision, conspicuously displayed on their website, is:

We are a cohesive team of Marines, Sailors, and Civilians committed to upholding the legacy and operational relevance of the Corps by attracting qualified young men and women and transforming them mentally, physically and morally into U.S. Marines.

 

So, “Vikash,” I said, “they pound duty, honor, country, and that sort of thing into the recruits. What should we pound into our students?  Without hesitation, he replied,

You can do it

Only you can do it

You can’t do it alone

Pretty good, I think. Now we just have to figure out how to get a message like that across, along with Newton’s laws and Maxwell’s equations.

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The MIT 100

by Patrick on October 23, 2011

in Prof. Winston's Ideas


Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

Some say that the United States has a second diplomatic corps that is sometimes more effective than the official one.

Its origins are at places such as the Naval War College, the Air War College, and the Army War College, which are interesting to visit, in part, because of the variety of foreign uniforms you see on campus.

Most of the foreign military-school students are carefully selected by their home countries and most are on a fast track toward positions of high influence and responsibility. Having learned our values and bonded with people in our military, foreign graduates of our military schools provide a back-channel way of getting messages through.

During the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, American Officers who knew Egyptian Officers were getting in touch and reminding their Egyptian friends about some important principles.*

So, why not have MIT create an analog of what happens in our military schools, an analog aimed at educating the next generation of world leaders both technically and culturally. Each year, we would welcome to the campus 100 seniors nominated by 100 universities from 100 countries all over the world. We would embed them in MIT dormitories and FSILGs for a senior year and perhaps a fifth year master’s degree.

Sure, we have a lot of foreign students already, and we have a demonstrated appetite for deals with foreign universities that involve large financial packages. A big deal with Russia’s government-funded Skolkovo Foundation is nearly final.** But few students come from poor countries and none of our deals are with universities in poor countries or universities in the Western Hemisphere or especially universities in poor countries in the Western Hemisphere, such as, say, Haiti.

I waited a day and the idea still seemed interesting, so I started it off on a shakedown cruise, as I generally do, by writing up a prospectus, complete with possible solutions to a dozen obvious problems. I calculated it would cost a visionary donor about $10 million per year.

Of course, it might not work, and it certainly would not work at a place other than MIT, and perhaps the place up the street, and three or four other universities. On the other hand, if it worked, it would have a nice ring to it: the MIT 100, a corps of future world leaders all bonding together with MIT students headed in important directions.

* Economist 24 February 2011.

** Agreement announced 26 October 2011.

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How to make yourself smarter

by Patrick on October 9, 2011

in Prof. Winston's Ideas

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

It happened again. Marvin Minsky guessed my idea before I had half explained it.

I was talking with him about what would happen if smart computers took over. The subject comes around like a comet, every 20 years or so, this time stimulated by this year’s Watson and next year’s 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth.

“Well,” I said, “really smart robots could be incrediby dangerous; we better not turn any of them loose before we do a lot of simulation.”

“Oh,” he said, “and we’re the simulation?”

One or two decades ago, Danny Hillis wandered into my office and said, “Marvin has a short attention span.”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Have you noted that he will often guess your idea before you’re half through?”

“Yes, generally,” I agreed.

“And his guess is often better than the idea you were trying to explain?”

“Just about always,” I regretted.

“Do you talk to yourself when you solve problems?” he asked.

“Yes, certainly.”

“Well,” Danny said, “maybe that inner conversation does what talking to Marvin does—the words and phrases uncover a sequence of improving ideas.”

We agreed that it is good to talk to yourself, and even better to talk to someone else. It makes your ideas better. Be careful about talking with yourself out loud though. Unless you are wearing a Bluetooth device, people may think you’re strange.


 

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