După 20 de ani

Acetst post l-am început anul trecut, dar pe parcurs m-am luat cu altele și nu am reușit să îl mai termin atunci. Dar știți vorba aia: niciodata nu e prea târziu, așa că uite că îl termin acum. În 2015 s-au împlinit 20 de când am terminat liceul. În iunie am organizat o întâlnire cu foștii colegi de clasă și profesorii de la Liceul Mircea cel Bătrân. Ne-am simțit foarte bine împreună, am depănat amintiri, am povestit ce am făcut in viață și am realizat încă o dată cât de frumoasă și importantă a fost acea perioadă pentru formarea noastră ca oameni. Cum am amintiri de la toate materiile și cu toți profesorii pe care i-am avut țn liceu, m-am gândit să fac un serial cu unele din aceste amintiri.

Am să încep cu economia, o materie nouă pe vremea aia, care se studia pentru un an în clasa a XI-a. Profesorul de economie nu prea relaționa cu elevii, nu știu exact din ce motiv, dar îmi amintesc foarte clar despre el cum ne povestea lecția uitându-se mai mult pe geam în loc să se uite la noi. De altfel și la întâlnirea de 20 l-am regăsit pe domnul Fulea tot stingher. A venit în fața liceului, l-am salutat mai mulți dintre noi și am vorbit puțin cu dânsul, dar când ne-am strâns în clasă am constatat că între timp dispăruse. Manualul de economie era primul făcut dupa revoluție, de un anume Coșea, care avea să ajungă un politician de succes, iar ”succesul” în politica românească se masoară și prin numărul de partide prin care treci, căci și domnul Coșea e un traseist notoriu. Colegii mei care urmau să dea examen de admitere la ASE au învățat efectiv pe de rost acel manual, îmi amintesc că o colegă era în stare să recite fraze întregi din el. Eu am decis să dau bacul la economie, așa că învățasem și eu destul de bine conceptele de acolo, dar cel mai mult m-a frapat o frază din introducere sau prima lecție. Se vorbea acolo despre tipuri de oameni și cum unii nu se gandesc decât la ei, altora le pasă de ei și de familia lor, altora și de cei din orașul sau poate țara lor, iar altora le pasă de toți oamenii de pe Pământ. Și cum in funcție de cum ești iei decizii economice într-un fel sau altul. Atunci inevitabil m-am întrebat și eu: oare ce fel de om sunt eu? Îmi pasă numai de mine sau și de rude sau și de cei pe care îi cunosc sau poate de toți oamenii în general? Nu are rost să vă spun ce mi-am răspuns atunci, știm cu toții de la cei cu filosofia că mai importante sunt întrebările pe care ți le pui decât răspunsurile la care ajungi :) Dar cert e că într-un fel acel moment de la începutul clasei a XI-a m-a schimbat.

How to Bootstrap Education

I read recently an article (link here) in The Economist about behavioural economics and how it can be applied in development policies. The main point of behavioural economics is to challenge the assumption of classical economics that people always make rational decisions that are best for them. There are many reasons for people not to take the best decision for them: peer pressure, impulse or rushing to take a decision and so on. This approach to economics turns out to be very successful and it is now incorporated in many other theories. The development programs like the ones funded by the World Bank now take into account behavioural aspects when designing their policies. One good example is education. We know for sure how important is education to boost a child's chances to be successful in life. So many people invest heavily in the education of their children. But exactly the poorest people many times miss this point and neglect or sometimes are even against the education of  their children. So to give them a chance to escape poverty you have to actually design some incentives to make sure children actually go to school and learn something. I recently heard about two such programs in Romania:
- one is aiming to get every 3-5 years old child from poor families to attend kindergarten by giving to families a monthly stipend on the condition that the children do actually go to kindergarten. You can read more details here.
- the second is called Teach for Romania and aims to recruit, train and send teachers to impoverished communities; the training focuses on education techniques, but also on leadership, so that those teachers would also change the schools and communities where they will be teaching.

I like both these programs and from what I read they achieved a lot already, so I'll try to support them as much as I can in the future. This is one of the reasons I wrote this post: to let you know about them :)

Playful Parenting

I always liked to play, even when I was at school or afterwards in my adult life, I found learning or doing something is always easier when playing with/around/about it. So when someone gave me this book about Playful Parenting I thought that this is what I wanna do with my child. The book is much more than a list of games, the author is a psychologist and explains how you can approach various difficult situations like getting close, communicating feelings, confronting fears through playing. Or you can simply explore the world and consume some energy :)

So if you want to be part of the most important part of your kid's life, her playing, and enjoy yourself while doing it go ahead and read this book. You can find more resources on this topic on the author's website here.

Cheryl's Birthday

People are talking on the internet about a problem given at a math contest in Singapore, the problem even has a name now, "Cheryl's Birthday". Some were shocked that such a problem was given to 11 years old students (in fact it was given to 15 years old children), but actually there is nothing that would prevent a 4th or 5th grade student to solve it. You need to know only basic logic operations, nothing more, so it is reasonable for an 11 years old child who is good at math to solve such a problem. |Actually when I was in 4th grade I started attending a math circle at  my school and we were doing exactly this kind of problems. I remember even today how happy I was when I solved one of the first of those logic problems and of course I remember that problem too: There was a kingdom having capital punishment. Before execution each convicted person was allowed to appear in front of the king and say a statement. If the statement was false he would be beheaded and if the statement was true he would be hanged. How can a man escape execution in these circumstances?

Many years after I was attending a job interview in Bucharest. It was in those years when people found out that Google and Microsoft gave logic problems at interviews and the fashion spread to other companies. They gave me one problem which I solved and then they gave me a second one which I knew from the math circle. They asked me where do I know it and when I told them that I know it from the 4th grade and I used to solve this kind of problems every week they decided to skip that part of the interview :)

Now don't imagine that I attended some privileged private school. I was raised in Mangalia, a small town in communist Romania, and I went to the nearest school from my house which was still half an hour walk. It was the dedication of some passionate math teachers (Mr. Dinu, Craciunescu and Henny) who were willing to spend their week-ends teaching some extra hours of math for free to some little kids like me and many others. You know, I have to thank them once again here for their effort.

Is TV good for children?

Well, we all know that TV is bad for children, but this guy actually proved it using a scientific method. He replicated such an environment for mice and studied their behavior afterwards. On the other hand, the lack of interaction with a child can affect him badly too and the sad part is that the example in this case is from a Romanian orphan house.



So you'd better turn off that TV and play with your children!

Se habla espagñol

"Se habla espagñol" is the poster I saw in many store windows in U.S., indicating to non-English speakers that they can be served in Spanish inside. That's what I'll try to do myself, for those who would want to talk with me in Spanish, and not in Romanian or English. I've been trying to learn Spanish for a long time, as I like very much the sound of this language (probably because I have problems pronouncing the sound "s" and I sound similar to how it is pronounced in Spanish). I also like many writers of Spanish language, like Llosa or Marquez and it would be nice to read their novels in original one day. The problem with foreign languages is that you need to make a sustained effort over a long period of time in order to become proficient and as I will do it for fun, I may become easily distracted into something else. Not to mention that I would also like to learn a million of other things, but my time resources are more and more constrained lately :) So what makes me so confident that I will manage to learn Spanish this time? Well, it's a site called Duolingo that I discovered recently (via this blog post). Their approach is very interactive, it covers all aspects of communication (reading, writing, hearing and speaking). They also have a track record, and levels that can be unlocked only if you get a certain number of points, so it's like a quest game. And they also have a mobile application, so you can do a lesson or some exercises every time you have a few spare minutes. All this content is free and even if you are not into Spanish, they also offer lessons for German, French, Italian or Portuguese.
After all the computer languages I've studied since finishing high school (Java, C, C++, Prolog, Lisp, OCaml, Python, SQL, PL/SQL, XML, HTML, BPEL and probably more) it's nice to study a human language again :)

Despre copiat si alti demoni

Se vorbeste foarte mult in aceste zile despre copiat si plagiat. La bacalaureat s-au pus camere de supraveghere pentru al doilea an consecutiv si consecinta a fost si anul acesta o rata de promovabilitate sub 50% si mult sub cele de acum cativa ani. Asa ca o sa va povestesc acum despre experienta mea in domeniu, caci ar fi o minciuna sa spun ca nu am copiat niciodata. Da, recunosc deschis ca am copiat uneori sau am dat altora sa copieze dupa mine, dar per total am invatat niste lectii importante dupa cum veti vedea in continuare:

- prima intamplare vine din clasa a cincea cand la o lucrare de control la geografie mi-am scris niste date despre lectie pe sugativa (pe vremea aceea fiecare elev avea o sugativa mare cat foaia de caiet, caci se scria cu cerneala care se usca greu si te puteai murdari); totul a decurs conform planului, doar ca in pauza de dupa ora de geografie un coleg a venit si a vazut sugativa-fituica; a luat-o si a inceput sa strige indignat prin clasa cum ca Bogdan a copiat, si cum e posibil ca unul care ia premiul intai sa faca asa ceva; nu-i treaba ca si el copiase la acea lucrare ca si la multe altele, dar ce am invatat atunci e ca daca ai un anumit statut (in clasa atunci sau in societate in general) cresc si pretentiile de la tine (chestie pe care domnul Ponta nu o intelege nici azi);

- tot in clasa a cincea, dar de data asta la matematica am avut o experienta la fel de dura; Craciunescu, proful de mate, ne muta tot timpul pe patru dintre noi care eram mai buni la mate in primele doua banci si ne dadea de lucru separat; la una din lectii el tocmai asculta pe cineva la tabla, cand a batut cineva la usa si l-a intrerupt; a iesit sa vorbeasca cu persoana respectiva, iar eu observand ca solutia colegului meu era gresita i-am zis ce sa corecteze; cand s-a intors a vazut ca tipul de la tabla isi modificase solutia si s-a prins imediat ca cineva ii suflase; asa ca a zis ca el nu continua ora pana nu zicem cine a suflat; in clasa s-a lasat o liniste mormantala, iar dupa cateva secunde sau minute care au fost foarte, foarte lungi m-am ridicat in picioare si am recunoscut ca eu ii suflasem colegului meu; nu am patit nimic concret in urma acestor evenimente, dar se pare totusi ca acea clasa a cincea a fost foarte grea pentru mine, nu-i asa? :)

- trecem acum la clasa a noua, unde la fizica am avut un prof cu adevarat revolutionar: caci la nivelul anului 1991 el ne dadea lucrari de control cu cartile pe banca si chiar ne incuraja sa ne facem fituici, caci el zicea ca macar trecem o data prin materie; si iata-ne la una din primele lucrari de control cu toata lumea din clasa stresata de problemele grele pe care ni le servise Bararu; a venit si pauza si toata lumea a insistat in cor sa ne mai lase 5 minute, caci nimeni nu terminase; la care profu si-a luat catalogul si ne-a zis ca el se duce in cancelarie si ii aducem noi lucrarile cand suntem gata; cum a plecat proful am inceput sa discutam intre noi problema cea mai grea; eram vreo trei-patru care ne contraziceam pe doua solutii alternative, plus inca altii care ne asteptau pe noi sa ne hotaram care ar fi solutia corecta; pana la urma i-am convins ca solutia mea e corecta si toata lumea a scris ca mine; am dat noi lucrarile, iar in urmatoarea ora (caci aveam doua ore legate) proful ne-a prezentat solutiile corecte; iar solutia corecta era cealalta, drept care multi dintre colegi s-au jurat sa nu mai copieze dupa mine la fizica :)

- in final ne oprim in facultate, la un examen de bazele informaticii unde printre altele am avut o problema cu masini Turing; imi rezolv eu subiectele, iar doi colegi de langa mine ma abordeaza sa le zic cum am rezolvat acea problema; le-am zis ideea in doua vorbe si mi-am vazut de treaba; cand intru la oral il vad pe asistent ca ma ia la bani marunti: sa ii zic definitii, sa ii explic in detaliu ce am scris si tot asa; acuma eram si eu mirat, caci ma intelegeam bine cu asistentul respectiv, chiar jucam si bridge impreuna uneori; dupa ce ma freaca asta bine, iar proful imi da si el cea mai grea teorema din curs sa i-o demonstrez, ajung ei la concluzia ca stiu despre ce e vorba la materia aia si imi dau 9 (aveam 8 la laborator, asa ca oricum nu aveam cum sa iau 10); iar la sfarsit ma intreaba in fata cine a rezolvat de fapt problema respectiva, caci din toata grupa toti facusera solutia standard, mai putin 3 oameni care dadusera o alta solutie;

Concluzia: ma bucur inca o data ca am avut niste profesori foarte buni, care m-au invatat mult mai mult decat matematica, fizica sau informatica, iar din punctul meu de vedere pana la urma copiatul asta nu renteaza nici cand esti destinatia, nici cand esti sursa. Caci in ambele cazuri poti foarte usor sa ajungi in situatii nasoale.

An education. Which one?

In the domain which I studied and I practice now, computer science, there are four universities that are constantly ranked (often with an equal score) the best in the world: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California - Berkeley and Stanford University. Last week I was in Silicon Valley, on a business trip to Oracle head quarters and I took this opportunity to visit the campus of Stanford University which is nearby.
Let me give you a few facts about the Computer Science Department at Stanford:

•  one of the emeritus professors they have is Donald Knuth, the author of one of the most influential books in this field, "The Art of Computer Programming"; on the cover of one of the editions of this book there is this quote from Bill Gates: “If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."; 
• here studied the founders of Google and got the idea of the page ranking algorithm that transformed the on-line world in the last 10 years; you can read their paper here; 
• a team from this department build the first self driving car (which I think it will transform our lives in the future) and won a contest organized by the US army research labs (DARPA); watch a presentation of the concept here; 
• on the other hand this department is taking part in an experiment of distributed high quality education by offering to anyone in the world who is interested free on-line classes on various topics, like this one which I attended a few months ago, or these listed here; 

Bellow are a few pictures from campus where you can notice that all this is made possible partly by the donations of people and companies who truly believe in the value of education.
Campus entrance on Palm Drive:

Computer Science Department's building named after the biggest donor who helped to its building, Bill Gates:

The list of people and companies that donated for the new building of the Computer Science Department:

Now I'm back in Romania and here are some other facts that you might know about if you are around:

•  two months ago a person nominated for the Romanian Ministry of Education was forced to skip the nomination after it was discovered that she lied about having a degree from Stanford University (the name of the university was actually miss-spelled as Standford in her CV); 
• the next nominee, with a degree in computer engineering, was forced to resign after proofs of plagiarism in at least three of his published papers; 
•  last week the prime minister of Romania was also accused of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis where he copied more than 100 pages from other books and papers; 

You should ask yourself in what kind of society do you want you and your children to live: one in which education is valued and can lead to advances in science and a better life for all of us, or one in which education is just mocked? And if you care you should act every time you can.

As for myself, I know what I stand for.

Back to school

For the fall semester I enrolled in an online class of artificial intelligence taught in parallel with the live class offered at Stanford University. I have about 170.000 classmates and some 46.000 of them are even doing homework and taking exams. So far it's fine, as they don't just put online video recordings of the live class, but prepare special videos and quizzes in an effort to make it interactive and have you thinking into the subject even at late night hours. I'm doing all this effort mainly for my laptop, I expect that by the end of the class the machine will become much smarter and it will be able to answer the quizzes by itself :)

Computer science on paper

Blogger changed its interface and templates and when I tried to migrate I lost some of the settings I had on the old one, so I decided to use a new template. The new one it's a tribute to the good old days when we did computer science on paper. You just had to think carefully on the algorithm, write it down on paper, run it in your head again and then eventually get your turn to work on a computer to implement it (punch card or even keyboard version cause we were kind of short on computers). I think that being able to write down the algorithm and run through it really makes one understand it better, so actually in the year when I was a teaching assistant at University of Bucharest I asked many of my students to explain a few steps of their basic algorithms (back-tracking, divide et impera and the like) on paper in order to make sure they understood them and didn't just copy the project from a coleague. Some of them even liked it :)

Funky business and funky bac

I'm reading "Funky Business" a book written around 2000 that tries to describe the new business model that will take over all of us as the use of technology continues to rise. I have some mixed feelings about this book: on one hand I totally agree with their vision of empowered individuals that will challenge more and more all sorts of institutions of our society. The description of internet use and the possibilities it opens look already outdated today, after only a few years since they wrote the book. On the other hand, I don't like the extreme consumerism ideas they induce, where sky is the limit and the consumer is king. I guess the severe recession we still experience in Europe and U.S. and the prices of oil and other raw materials just show to all of us that we don't have unlimited resources and unlimited supply of money.

So once one understands the importance of education, it may be a good idea to try to improve the education system. An important part of any kind of improvement process is in my opinion a way to measure the results of your efforts. In the case of education the best way to measure the results of the system are national (or even international) tests, that's why I'm glad that this year the widespread fraud that plagued the high-school graduation exam (aka bacalaureat) was stopped. The results were not good at all, less then 50% of the students took the exam, but unless we face the truth of what the education system in Romania produces at this moment there is no chance to ever improve it.

Update: Gabi pointed out one of the best quotes from the book: "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance"

An education, but which one?

An education is the social movie of this year. It tells the story of a girl who is seduced out of school and into the easy life of her playboy lover. In the end she returns to the school kind of education. Nevertheless, it is worth questioning the traditional education ans seeking ways of improving it. Probably the worst part about going to school is when it is not fun. Well, the breaks might be fun, but if you sit for an hour and the teacher is boring and you don't understand why do you have to study that subject it can become very annoying.
Here is an alternative view about what the education system should be about:

Excellence in education prizes

I don't like the way Patriciu made his fortune and his political actions, but I do appreciate that he is using some of his money to sponsor education related projects. One of these projects is the prizes for excellence in education that are offered each year. Last week the awards for this year were announced and I was glad to find out that Mihai Dimian, one of my friends from University of Maryland won the third place in the researcher of the year section. Congratulations Mihai!

As for Mr. Patriciu, I hope he will finance a university in the near future, a real one, not another diploma factory like Spiru Haret University. A famous example is one of best universities in the world Carnegie Mellon University which was founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie, a steel tycoon at that time.

Universities in Europe

A very interesting article in The Economist about the universities in Europe in the context of the Bologna process. Apparently everybody understood and implemented what they want out of this process. The article also argues that the difference in performance between European and U.S. universities can be explained by the amount of private funding a university gets. Basically, the more private funding you have the more likely a university is to produce better research. The article can be read here.

Where do Romanian universities fit in this picture? They implemented the 3/2/3 years cycles, but on the other hand they are plagued by nepotism and plagiarism, so should we even count them as European universities?

Skills you need to succeed

In a column I read on BBC Bill Gates talks about the skills you need to succeed in the current society. The ones that I find very significant are ongoing learning and having a "curiosity about the world". Note that it's not guaranteed you will succeed if you have these skills :)

Nevertheless I keep trying improving on them: I started the fifth book from Harry Potter series (you learn a lot of magic from there :) and this one is in English (I read the first four in Romanian). Now I have to match all the funny translations of names (for example Snipes = Plezneala, Muglers = Incuiati).

Another event that attracted my attention recently was the Bali summit on global warming. The good thing is the talks there didn't collapse, but the bad thing is the progress is minimal. The arguing between U.S., E.U. and developing countries continue. Are we running out of time here?

Comments on the interview with Bill Gates

This interview reveiled an interesting person. He realizes the importance of education, and I strongly agree with him on this issue. As important as education is the health system. And he seems very active in taking and funding initiatives in these areas.

My question is why do you have to break the law so many times (as Microsoft did) if you are, after all, a good and sensible person? One possible answer is that one may prefere to get rich, and then spend his money on noble causes. If he would have paid more taxes to the goverment for example, those money would probably have been spent less eficient. This goes down to the Machiaveli saying that "the goal excuses the means", and I don't think this is the right way to go.

So I hope Microsoft will be pressured further to play fair in the market (I guess the open standards will play a huge role for this), and eventually we will get there. Of course that would lead to a loss of revenue for Mr. Gates, but I'm not worried about him.