Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Most of us have been through our formative years. How about doing it again? The formative years are… we walk in new we soak in things we are growing without realizing it This may be high school, may be college, may be our first job, may be our first professional job. We […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips A speaker can lead an accepting or friendly audience just about anywhere. Hostile audiences, however, can uncover holes in thought. I recommend the questioning group—especially when the stakes are high. It was a senior-level course in Electrical Engineering. The teacher, I can’t recall his name, but I do remember that he didn’t […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips A problem with being right is that learning tends to cease. There is a problem with being right or being on the right side in many senses of the phrase: learning tends to cease or at least greatly decrease. Consider what I used to tell boys when I coached them in various […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips The best schools: do they teach any better or simply ruin fewer students? Ah, here is yet another list of the best schools (this one is about computer science). I didn’t attend any of these as I could not afford it. Rich kids go to these schools. Their rich parents’ extraordinary tuition […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips In which I consider what happens in a kitchen and ask, “what was it those guys with the manifesto invented?” For years, my wife has managed kitchens in all-volunteer organizations. For years before that, my wife’s mother did the same. Consider the situation: There is unprepared food There is an end-state—prepared food […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I realize that my plea won’t do any good, but could we please use the right terms in describing “artificial intelligence?” Everybody is doing artificial intelligence (AI) these days. Really? Consider… Artificial intelligence Deep Learning Machine Learning Neural Networks Pattern Recognition The vast majority of what people call AI today is really […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Somteimes I miss the analog days. They covered a lot of my mistakes. Handwritten notes let me fudge and smudge and avoid mistakes—like spelling. I could smudge the “i” and the “e” together and put the dot of the “i” somewhere in the middle, and no one could tell that I didn’t […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips O’Reilly creates a large section of “free” books on technology. Once again, they have raised expectations of other publishers. I have long liked O’Reilly publishing. At first, the books with the excellent sketches of animals caught my eye. The content was usually as good or better than the covers. I attended a […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I complete yet another certificate program. This time it is in Data Science and from Microsoft and EdX. I just finished the Microsoft Professional Program in Data Science. This took about 12 weeks and cost me about $500. The Good: I learned… cool tricks with MS Excel how to write SQL queries […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips If you are a successful college professor, and someone asks you to turn your course into a MOOC, proceed with great care. These things are not the same. I am currently taking a series of online courses or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course or is it Massive Online Open Course or is […]

[Read more →]