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Referendums and sovereignty
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Referendums and sovereignty

In a few weeks, the Scots will get to vote to determine whether Scotland becomes its own country. As a middle aged Quebecker, I spent much of my youth hearing about...

Transemployment: creating jobs out of thin air
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Transemployment: creating jobs out of thin air

Back in the eighties, half of the 16-year-old teenagers were licensed drivers in the US. Evidently, things have changed. Driving is still important, but other activities...

Paper books are the new vinyl records
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Paper books are the new vinyl records

I have always loved reading. But it is a love that has been constantly frustrated. As a young teenager, I would spend days in the library, but I quickly exhausted...

Though unrefereed, arXiv has a better h-index than most journals…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Though unrefereed, arXiv has a better h-index than most journals…

Google provides a ranking of research venue per domain. For databases and information systems, they provide the top 20 venues according to their h-index. As part...

Expert performance and training: what we really know
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Expert performance and training: what we really know

Movies such as Good Will Hunting tell beautiful stories about young people able to instantly master difficult topics, without any effort on their part. That performance...

Should we train more people as programmers?
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Should we train more people as programmers?

Lately, the top salaries for computer science graduates have been increasing. Companies like Google are willing to pay what it takes to get their hands on the best...

A culture of envy
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

A culture of envy

Many people are worried about their social status and inequality. We live in what I call a culture of envy. Matt Welsh, a software engineer who previously was a...

The insanity of research grant proposals
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

The insanity of research grant proposals

Most people will never have to write a research grant. That is a good thing. How do you write a successful grant application? Your work should follow established...

Predicting your future performance
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Predicting your future performance

The Matthew effect says that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. With this sole principle in mind, you would think that the future is easily predicted...

Potentially bogus freelancing advice
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Potentially bogus freelancing advice

For nearly 20 years, I have been freelancing: selling my skills as a free agent. I do very little freelancing these days, but I still regularly give advice to students...

Extrinsic motivations are harmful…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Extrinsic motivations are harmful…

I have argued that when seeking professional success, it is best to avoid zero-sum games (e.g., compete for one prestigious slot). It is more fun, less distracting...

True success is more than winning a zero-sum game
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

True success is more than winning a zero-sum game

Fiction writers used to have to submit their manuscripts to 6 or 7 big corporations. Only these corporations could seriously publish a book. Room on library stacks...

Toys on my desk (June 2014)
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Toys on my desk (June 2014)

We all have mobile phones or tablets with lightning or micro-USB plugs, and we all have laptops with USB ports. Sure, you can easily find a USB-to-micro-USB cable...

Software performance is… counterintuitive
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Software performance is… counterintuitive

There is a long tradition among computer scientists of counting the number of operations as a way to estimate the running cost of an algorithm. Many computer scientists...

Books on my desk (May 2014)
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Books on my desk (May 2014)

Manning sent me the second edition of their Hello World: Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners. At less than $25 on Amazon, this 450-page color book...

You shouldn’t use a spreadsheet for important work (I mean it)
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

You shouldn’t use a spreadsheet for important work (I mean it)

I envy economists. Unlike computer scientists, they seem to be able to publish best-seller books with innovative research. One such book is Piketty’s Capital. The...

Why I still play video games
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Why I still play video games

Video games are getting flashier, faster, shinier. It has gotten to the point that many of these games make me nauseous—literally. I honestly do not care very much...

Decoding over 4 billion integers per second in C
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Decoding over 4 billion integers per second in C

Programmers routinely work with lists of integers. We recently showed how to compress such lists of integers close to their entropy, while being able to decompress...

Does moving to a better university make you a better researcher?
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Does moving to a better university make you a better researcher?

Deville et al. studied the performance of physics professors as they moved from one job to another. They found that moving to a lesser school lowered the impact...

Have Americans reached peak scholarship?
From Daniel Lemire's Blog

Have Americans reached peak scholarship?

Bryan Alexander conjectured that Americans might be reaching peak scholarship. That is, whereas we are used to science as an ever expanding industry… it could be...
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