My proposal defence was this morning. Feeling quite tired out by it. I am told that it went well and I have nothing to worry about. I did feel a bit beaten up by the process, but I have been told that is part of the territory. There was one detail that I hoped would be easily put to bed that is still up in the air, so that is of some slight concern. However, all in all it seemed to go OK. I have not been asked to revise the proposal, and the work proposed has been deemed satisfactory for the degree if completed as promised.

 › school     2007-11-23 13:40   ...0 comments

It is done.

It is almost as long as a thesis… Here are some stats: 58 single spaced pages, 27 604 words, 171 422 characters, 584 paragraphs, 2 201 lines. I wrote it over 23 days which is an average of 2.5 pages per day, or 1200 words per day. Of course, I didn’t write every day, but probably did something most days in that period.

Automated readability tests are quite funny. The fairly standard Flesch score is 24.37 (anything below 30 requires a college education). The grade is 17. The amusingly named Gunning fog index scores at 42, meaning the document requires 42 years of formal schooling to understand. Of course, I hope these are wrong as I tried to write clearly, but I guess it’s a hazard of the document type.

 › school     2007-09-20 23:47   ...3 comments

For those of you following along at home, the university with no notice determined that I am out of time on my degree.

The upshot of this is that I have probably got an extension for one year, but I must finish by then. Also, to have a hope of that I really need to formally propose the thesis by the end of the month. This means that I am writing really really fast, work all day at work and write at night when I get home. I’m recently starting to write before work too. Write write write write write.

Who knows if I am writing anything good, but it will likely be in the neighbourhood of 60 single spaced pages by the time I’m done. (On a side note I hate that everyone thinks in terms of double spaced pages. Double spaced pages look dumb and are hard to read.)

I believe that everyone must grapple with some aspect of their personality in order to complete a Ph.D., and I think that in some ways this grappling is what you really learn from doing one. I am grappling with perfectionism, and — at least for me — perfectionism comes from a fear that I will attacked for imperfect ideas, and that people will think my stuff is no good.

I found a list of suggestions for writing fast, and many of them are good. I’m trying not to let myself proofread or re-read as I go along… It’s tough, but it seems to be working.

 › school     2007-09-07 22:43   ...0 comments

I have several bookmarks concerning writing an academic thesis, be it a Masters or Ph.D. The best one of these is by a prof at Carleton called John Chinnek. A quick google search will reveal tons more reference documents, but Chinnek’s is my favorite because he tells you in plain language what each section means to the reader. This gives you a real idea of why things are in the thesis. Also, you get a free outline and some tips along the way.

How to organize your thesis

 › school     2007-08-23 17:40   ...0 comments

Well, that’s what they say. At least it’s what I say as I sit here in the middle of the night making run after run of my model to get some results ready for this paper.

I’m writing up the crowd work I’ve been doing for a workshop to be held at the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Simulations conference, better known as AAMAS 04.

The paper is supposed to be 10 pages, and I’ve got 10 pages, but haven’t finished yet, so there is going to be some major surgery there. The paper is due on April 1, and it still needs a lot of work… hence my late blog entry. Anyway, I think I’m going to go to bed now, I may have to take tomorrow off to really get this paper cleared away.

 › school     2004-03-30 01:30   ...0 comments

Well, I delivered my talk on crowds to the departmental research seminar this week. I was very pleased by the talk. First of all it was very well attended. Second of all I felt confident and good in the material. Third of all several people that I didn’t know showed up, and I hope will turn out to be very important contacts for the future. I have no idea how they found out about the talk.

Three important people came. First, a Carleton prof in Sociology (Charles Gordon) who had many interesting perspectives on this and who worked with a crowd researcher earlier in his career. Second, a Civil engineering prof, George Hadjisophocleous, who I didn’t get to talk to before he had to go (to see a student of his give a crowd talk). Very exciting was a researcher from NRC (Guylène Proulx) who works in the Fire Risk Assessment group in the Institute for Research in Construction at the NRC. She is part of a team investigating the world trade centre.

Dr. Hadjisophocleous actually teaches a course on people in fires. I need to get the syllabus for this and figure out what’s going on there. Also, he just got a big CFI grant to build a burnination palace.

An interdisciplinary look at people in crowds will require lots of expert help. Meeting these people is a very good start, and I hope they will be willing to advise me as I go along.

So, all in all, a very successful day for me.

 › school     2004-03-12 21:01   ...0 comments

Things are super-busy these days. The pressure is on as I am giving the talk this week in the Cognitive Science seminar series. I had to do this in October as well, but this talk is more important to me as I will be presenting research that I actually might want to pursue for a thesis.

The work I’m going to be talking about concerns a popular model of crowd movement, specifically a model that looks at what happens when lots of people try to leave a room at the same time.

More than that I’m not willing to post to the internet these days, I am paranoid about people stealing ideas. Especially ideas that I might propose for a thesis that has to be original work. Yes, I know it is arrogant to believe that the world is scouring my blog for my latest tip on the perfect experiment, but this is an irrational fear.

Anyway, I am stalling. I have an outline, so now I must go and start making slides. But not until I have found the power adaptor for my Mac, found the perfect CD to listen to, have grazed in the kitchen, have grazed (again) on Google News, etc.

p.s. The talk is this Friday, March 12. 1:30 in room 2203 of Dunton Tower. Feel free to drop by.

 › school     2004-03-07 09:58   ...1 comment