A Tale of Crowdsourcing and Diversity

Crowdsourcing is a hot topic recently, and I think it is a promising paradigm for solving a lot of problems. Diversity is an important phenomenon in complex systems such as the human society, and I am very interested in understanding the nature of it. Some of my previous blog posts, such as The Amazing Diversity is dedicated to this topic. In addition, our recent paper on a vulnerability disclosure program is also inspired by these two keywords. But how are these two concepts connected?

In the summer, I have read a famous Chinese Wuxia book called the Ode to Gallantry (侠客行). I found that the tale in the book serves as a perfect example for understanding crowdsourcing and diversity. I will very briefly introduce the story here, and please stop reading if you don't want to see this spoiler.

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Sometime during the ancient China, many kongfu masters will be hijacked to a mysterious island every 10 years by some mysterious guys. These masters never return. It turns out that two top kongfu masters have obtained an old martial art book with undeciphered text. They have tried hard to understand the meaning of the book, but failed. Therefore, they decide to invite (or hijack) kongfu masters and ask them to decipher it (crowdsourcing). These masters, unwilling to go to the remote island at first, will soon be attracted by the book and concentrate entirely on the decipher task. However, many years have passed and still no one has figured it out.

It is not surprise that the protagonist of this story solves the problem. The unique advantages of him are:

• He is illiterate. Therefore, he tends to understand the writing as graphs.
• He has seen a graph-based kongfu book before, and this further guides him to interpret the text as graph.
• He has little knowledge of kongfu before, and therefore does not have much prejudices and biases (the Einstellung effect).

Then, the protagonist learns the super kongfu in the book and become invincible in the world.

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We can see that the initial crowdsourcing effort fails because there is a bias. And this bias is overcame by increasing the diversity of the crowd. Here, the protagonist is drastically different from the rest and thus significantly increases the diversity of the pool. This is one reason why diversity is important to crowdsourcing.

In general, crowdsourcing is still in its infancy and we are still exploring the meaning of diversity. There are many questions to be answered.

Reference:

[1] The picture. http://pjh568.gotoip2.com/data/attachment/forum/201207/28/101235i5w4ir1hj4ik2g45.jpg

On Academic Presentation

(v0.1)

I will present our paper at a CCS workshop next Friday. Then I will present my thesis proposal in the comprehensive exam next next Friday. Facing these two important occasions, I decide to summarize my current understanding on presentation. This is NOT a collection of advises, because I am far from a good academic speaker. I simply hope this article may raise some discussions and help you think about what will lead to a good academic presentation.

Here I have several points to share:

(1) A clear story flow in the presentation is of top priority. The flow can grasp the attention of the audience. As others have said [1], the flow is much more important in slides than in paper, because the audio channel is more brittle. In addition, a good flow will also help the presenter to remember what to say.

I think there are at least two types of flows:

• The logic flow of research. The audiences should know the natural transition between research steps. Thus they will appreciate the work. 
• The knowledge flow. We need to introduce enough background before going into details. Also, make sure that terms etc. are understandable.

In addition, try to only have one story line. It is true that a research project usually expands to several branches. But they will interrupt the flow and confuse the listeners.

(2) Presentation is a process of convincing others. The listeners will be convinced if the study is rigorous and the language is accurate. Do not over claim.

(3) Make the presentation tight. Try to connect things together. Try to refer back to previous important points. This actually improves the complexity of the presentation structure, and people enjoys complexity. Similar strategies have often being used in movies. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a perfect example.

(4) Presentation is also a form of teaching. Try to think what the audience will learn from it.

(5) We have our own styles in presentation. I feel it is in general hard to copy other's style. For example, native-English-speakers can talk about jokes and funny pictures (e.g. the one used in this blog), which are sometime hard to understand, not to mention to speak, by non-native speakers. Nonetheless, even without these funny elements one can still make a good talk. I sometime think too much "fun" will actually have negative effects, i.e.,  "amuse to death".

Here are general steps I take for preparing a presentation. Please feel free to comment on them and provide your own opinions:

(1). Have a rough story line first.

(2). Turn the story line into slides. Focus more on the completeness of the information.

(3). Practice lightly and then update the slides. At this stage don't expect them to be perfect. Also take a look at similar talks to "steal" good presentation ideas.

(4). Write the scripts for all slides. At least write outlines for each slide. You don't need to read them, but you need them to remind you about the story line. Also, written text is easy to be studied and improved.

(5). Practice seriously.

(6). Present to others. Your adviser or research collaborators are the best choices. They know your research, but they are not trapped by myriad of details like you. So they can give very good suggestions on improving the story line! People with enough knowledge background (e.g. your lab mates) are also good. They can tell you which part is unclear or confusing. Also, try to collect creative ideas of presentation from others.

(7). Improve slides, practice, improve slides, ....

In general, you will feel unconfident and uncomfortable in the beginning, because the quality of your taste is always ahead of the quality of your work [2]. However, as long as you keep improving it, the final version will be very good. Furthermore after a well preparation, you will not only have a great talk, but also find new research ideas!





References:

[1] 博士五年总结（三）, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_946b64360101dych.html

[2] Ira Glass on Storytelling, http://vimeo.com/24715531

[3] The picture. http://assets.diylol.com/hfs/ae1/38e/525/resized/business-cat-meme-generator-boss-wished-me-luck-on-the-presentation-like-i-need-it-52c717.jpg