Styles 2009 International Design Competition: Fill & Download for Free

I was a data scientist in the IBM T.J. Watson research lab for 6 years straight out of college (with a PhD) working in the Predictive Modeling group in the ‘Math department’ from 2004–2010. My official title was Research Staff Member - which sounds somewhat unimpressive but is the real deal.At the time (and this might have changed a bit since) every research job (not just data science) had a number of components - the first 3 being by far the most important and everybody was expected to participate in all of them, but maybe with different time allocation:fundamental research (as measured by publications in peer reviewed publications)internal project work (we called this the blue currency) with other IBM groupsexternal project work (for green dollars …) with some of the IBM consulting clientsvisibility in the field (organizing workshops, public speaking, etc)generating IP (patenting either your research or project work)some assortment of internal ‘stuff’ like participating in the design of the annual global technology outlook, interviewing candidates, supervising summer students, supporting academic relationshipsSo in terms of doing data science:Fundamental research: Basically anything you can publish in conferences like NIPS, ICML, KDD and alike. It could be purely theoretical or very applied based on your project work. I published about 3 paper per year in KDD and usually 2 were based on my projects and one could be a bit more abstract. I my case, most of this research was squarely in machine learning and predictive modeling.Project work: The main difference between the internal and external project work was mostly the duration of the project and how closely you got to work with the stakeholders. Internal projects could span anything from 2 weeks to 10 years. I work on such with many different groups: Market Intelligence, Software development, Server group, Chip production, (trading) Fraud detection, etc. The external ones were handled by the global consulting arm and we usually only got a dataset and some description of the problem without necessarily connecting directly to the customers (I cannot mention their names, but let’s say fortune 500).Visibility: Our group was infamous during 2007 and 2009 for participating and winning data mining competitions (KDD Cup 3 times, INFORMS twice, ILP challenge, etc). Later on we started organizing them.Technical work style: Contrary to what was answered by others, my experience with the computing environment was not quite as amazing (but to make it clear, I did not mind). The reality of my 6 years there was that I did 99% of my work on my laptop … Now admittedly this is slightly before the day and age of big data. Most datasets we had to work with were no more than 2–3 Gigs and I could handle this just fine. The UNIX machines I had (standard) access to were in fact much slower than my 2GHz laptop - so I did not miss it. On the upside - we have full flexibility in the choice of weapons - meaning we could use any (freeware) tool we liked and so much got done in R, Perl/Python, etc. Some of the members of our group got to work on GPU’s and the Blue Gene - but that was far from standard and support was rather limited.Access to IBM data was slow and involved excessive hurdles - as you would expect in a large and old organization. Likewise, finding an expert who truly understood the data was hard as many of the engineers who build it had moved on in their career. BTW: nothing I describe here is particularly bad - this is the reality in most companies with an IT infrastructure that is more than 10 years old. In fact, I am sure that it was far better than average.Overall work environment: I really enjoyed working at IBM research, the freedom to pick what I wanted to work on, the constantly changing challenges of different projects, the practical relevance of what we got to work on, the really collegial and non-political environment, the super smart people I got to work with. I clearly owe IBM my career - it was (and maybe still is) a great starting point for a life as a data scientist.

I'm glad that the top rated answer on this question quotes Paul Graham and Calvin Newport of Study Strategies, and another by someone who's put the rubber on the road and seen others do the same.I can reinforce those hypothesis here with actual examples from around you at IIT. Here's the point: it's not about finding an ephemeral quality lying deep within you, but being curious and involved with something that you have taken up.Case 1:Civil Engineering student, gets tired of Shaastra/Saarang hype (TechFest/CulFest) and decides to dive into finance and math modelling. No passion involved, just a possibility of getting good at something.Three years later, this summer, he's presenting at the MIT Sloan School of Management's Sports Analytics Conference ( Page on Sloansportsconference ). What is he presenting on? Player valuations at IPL Auctions.Started with: Intention to get good at something.Here is the interesting part: According to him, he is probably the only student who'll be presenting at the conference and suspects that it might be because Cricket is underrepresented.Remember this movie? Sports Analytics suddenly became a lot cooler now, didn't it?Here is Calvin Newport's (from Anubhav Agrawal's answer) hypothesis being justified: Don't search for passion, but acquire rare and valuable skills. To put it in more emotionally resonating terms, "Cultivate the craftsman mindset: How can I get even better at my own craft?".Case 2:Another guy, two years into his program at IIT, realizes that he is no longer an exceptional student. He finds no reason to think he is amongst the nation's best. Wants to do something awesome. Gets into a ton of activities only to be told by his father to pick just one.Around the same time, summer internship applications start. This guy gets the balls to apply to Dr. Robert Weinberg's (Dr. Weinberg's wiki page - Robert Weinberg) Cancer Research lab at MIT (he was a seven pointer.). He lands it, riding on the back of the work he'd been doing during the second year.One Renegade Cell is on my To Read List.Comes back with enlightenment, and spends his time at IIT as if he was a doctoral candidate, acquiring lots of laboratory skills and experience. Result? He has the luxury of applying to top European programs with a sub-8 CGPA. The interviews are on location and paid for by the University. Then there's the call he received from Sea6 Energy (Sea6 Energy | Seaweed Biotechnology) - a high tech startup with investors who have been Biocon's upper management and has collaboration with Denmark's Pharma giant Novozymes.Sea6 Energy is a startup that started in IIT Madras, in the same department that the person in question studies. As Navin Kabra said, keep in touch with the misfits/unusual/outliers.The startup doesn't make apps built on top of Facebook. It grows its own see weed and converts it to Biodiesel. A bunch of 24 year olds. What got this person an offer when the startup needed people? Rare valuable skills and a reputation amongst his peers.Case 3:A metallurgy student finds himself uninterested in his branch. Yet, he wants to do something technical. Well, at IIT Madras, you have CFI - Centre For Innovation. You could call it an open workshop/lab for students, operated by students.He heads out over there, but finds that there are just too many "Stud" people in the Robocon team and rethinks about where this might put him. Goes back to the planning board and decides to work on Computer Vision. The CVG group starts in CFI. A few months later, IIT Madras competes at the International Aerial Robotics Challenge in 2009, and is recognized as the best computer vision team.I needed to keep people interested now, didn't I? A random robot that has cameras which require supplementation with computer vision.The computer vision group goes on to become the first group from the student run CFI to get industrial consultancy projects. (Computer Vision Club - Centre For Innovation )At the same time, he joins a robotics startup, and across a space of two years make revenues in excess of Rs. 20 Lacs. ( http://educationtimes.com/index.aspx?page=article&secid=69&conid=2011061320110610144940509b7deb065 )After finishing his B. Tech., he's still on campus, runs the robotics start-up (the other co founders will join him later) and is actively engaged with the Computer Vision Group. Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research - IC&SR - at IIT Madras has acted as a sort of liaison between them (represented and guaranteed by a faculty member) and industry.Reinforcing our hypothesis: He chose to get good at something. Furthermore, because it was his instinct, he chose something that he'd be the best at in his peer group. Rare, Valuable. At the same time, he didn't think about passion, but more about the quality of work. Or perhaps the joy of work was passion.By now, it must have become absolutely clear that no one starts out by figuring out what they really want to do with their lives. They start with something that interests them and decide to get good at it. The craftsman mindset.Case 4:A few students get interested in Design while they work in student teams for the festivals. A year down the line, we have Desto. (How did Desto begin, and more importantly, what can students learn about student life and opportunities at IIT-M from their story?).Moral of the story: They stumbled into work they liked, and decided to get good at it. So good at it that they make their living from it. No one asked themselves what their passion was, they did a bunch of things and decided they had fun doing design.Case 5:A confused freshman has nothing to do during the summers. He contacts a faculty for a project, and works on networks in systems biology. He later gets to present his work at a nationwide conference. This, while he was in his third semester.Again, and again, search for good work comes up. No one started with passion.Case 6:A wing mate decides he likes Rock music a little too much. Picks up the Acoustic guitar in his third year. Now approaching his fifth year, he practices regularly on the electric guitar. Dim lights, old school music on and full concentration on the playing.Case 7:I decide to get work on an IRP (Industry Relevant Problem) statement during Shaastra. My work is miserable, but I start throwing around phrases like data mining and machine learning a lot too often after that.But hey, wait, I was interested in Education. I liked teaching. I would love to work on the IIT JEE problem. So?I get to mix data with education. Perhaps not so rare, but still valuable enough. I am just getting started on this though, so no success stories for you.The Knowledge graph has topics as nodes, and the data is the time spent, streaks of right and wrong and the path taken. From The Khan Academy.(But hey, we did make it to IIM-A's B-Plan competition's final 10. Does that count? Also, earned some money online, freelancing and invested it in webspace, domain name, and prototypes. It never really worked out, but that's the story for whatever it's worth.)So how did it start? An innocent decision to participate in a competition triggered this chain of events. No passion/wassion.Case 8:Me again. During the IIT JEE days, I loved to help around my friends. Sometimes that resulted into long sessions that were virtually lectures. I suck at Organic Chemistry, so I teach myself that rigorously and I find it interesting. Later on, I teach it to a friend or two in Kota, a dear friend the next year and then while at IIT, I was perhaps the only person who was available in the NSS program to teach Chemistry.Next year, I cash in on this after my summer intern and teach at a local tuition center. I have loads of fun during this entire time and further decide that teaching can be an option for me. (Some vids are on Youtube, search for TheSoleYankee if you want.)Yup, that's me. Hydration of alkynes. It was always an interesting read in Morrison Boyd.I would obviously not want to confine myself to the IIT JEE industry, but I'll keep the fun I had all this while in mind when the chance comes - maybe in a corporate setting, maybe in a startup as a workshop over something.Again, no passion. No figuring out. Simple flow of life that introduced the person in question to something interesting.Case 9:Calvin Newport wants to start a company, but doesn't know what kind of work he would do. After all, he was a teenager. Reluctantly, they "settle" for web designing. He and his partner end up making a few grands and get featured in the media and Cal Newport earns himself an interesting phase in life, along with a good college application that would pave the way for his M.I.T. doctorate and his career as a Computer Science professor.Prof. Calvin Newport of Georgetown University.Moral: Doing unglamorous things like web designing ended up making someone's life interesting. It also shook his belief in the "Passion Hypothesis" and later on he never used it to make a decision.Summing it all up:There's no "Passion" waiting for you. You do something that catches your attention and then decide to get better at it. (People in the workforce might want to add reality bites in the comments.)It's even better if what you do is rare and valuable.Read Calvin Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You.Amazon.com: So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love eBook: Cal Newport: Kindle StoreThe one reason I recommend it is that it is so very different from all the career/motivation books out there. This one doesn't make you feel that the world is full of possibilities. This one makes you feel that you have to get your ass off the chair. It features multiple case studies, including a multi-millionaire, a Rhodes Scholar who went on to be a MIT Researcher and an investment banker turned farmer.Plus Calvin Newport's style of writing in which he "makes claims" and "presents arguments" seems so tongue-in-cheek and fitting, coming in from an Academic.PS : Careless typos and omissions expected. Please suggest edits if any of them comes to your attention.PPS: I leave it on the more experienced to point out cases where the person has found "passion" later in life.

Take this from the guy who writes 1000-word tactical analyses on Quora: as important as tactics and playing philosophies can be, football belongs to the players, not the coaches nor the analysts. The current Real Madrid may not have a well-defined playing philosophy and complex tactics, but they have the most talented and mentally tough players in the world.As Rinsey Kong and Abhilash Jena have already explained in their answers, a simple tactical idea internalized by an entire team will always be more powerful than a complex idea with several gaps in execution. This is why Zidane, who probably lacks the experience and willingness to implement more complex ideas, has preferred to stick to simpler game plans. And with such a talented group of players, simple ideas are enough to win titles, especially in a competition like the Champions League that doesn’t require as much consistency as the league.This is a good chance to share the following article, written by Spanish journalist Alberto Egea from the The Last Journo. Alberto is a wonderful writer, and I thought this piece—in which Alberto discusses why Real Madrid has dominated Europe and Guardiola teams haven’t—was worth translating so that English-speaking fans could read his insights. The original article in Spanish is here. Hope you enjoy it!Shearing Real MadridIn a controversial statement that didn’t go too deep into the subject, Guardiola declared a few days ago that the league is the most difficult and important competition, even above the Champions League. This could sound like sour grapes at first, but taking into account that only Bob Paisley and Carlo Ancelotti have won more European Cups than Pep, the most likely explanation for this opinion stems from what kind of manager Guardiola is.Guardiola—-like Mourinho, Conte, Klopp or Simeone—aims to create teams that work like machines. Machines that are based on a complex and well-defined style of play with noticeable patterns and automatic movements that are repeated until they form a collective identity that is tweaked throughout the season. Once these inner workings are perfected, these teams reach a very high baseline performance that can even endure negative dynamics. In other words, these teams end up doing many things well without depending directly on inspiration or outstanding individual form, because they have internalized their tasks and can now carry them out without thinking, as if breathing.The format of a league tournament benefits these teams who work like industrial machines, because their high baseline performances allow them to consistently win games against average and strong rivals throughout the season. That’s why Guardiola has won 7 out of his last 9 leagues or Conte 4 out of his last 5. That’s why Simeone’s Atletico could compete against Barca and Real through 38 games despite having an inferior squad. That’s why Messi has won 7 out of his last 10 leagues, since Messi is the industrial machine that has wrecked all the parameters that could explain football.On the opposite side of the spectrum is the Champions League. The design of this tournament allows challengers to be vulgar teams during the first 5–6 months of the season (Chelsea 2011/12, Barca 2014/15, Real 2015/16), but once the knockout rounds start, the tournament seldom tolerates mistakes. Each tie should not be seen as two independent matches but as a single 180-minute match divided in two, in which the second game is heavily conditioned by the first. Real Madrid’s basketball team lost the first game of their Euroleague quarterfinal series against Panathinaikos by 28 points. The format of this best-of-five series allowed Real to forget that game, accept the defeat and then show that they were a better team than the Greeks. The Champions League format would have never allowed that.Champions League knockout stages are the reduction of football to its purest essence, that which makes the game so confusing: being the continuously superior team doesn’t matter as much as doing the most damage whenever your team is superior and suffering the least damage when your rival is superior. This context highlights as a decisive virtue the ability to absorb disturbances without losing the team’s identity and confidence.Guardiola teams have struggled to find such virtue ever since Pep left Barca. In 2014, Ramos’ first goal in the Allianz Arena became a 0–3 eighteen minutes later; a year later, Messi’s 1–0 in the 77th minute became a 3–0 by the end of the game; last season, Monaco came back from a 1–0 in eight minutes and soon after, Falcao missed a penalty that could have made it into a 1–3. A few weeks ago, Salah’s goal in the 12th minute became a 3–0 in the 31st minute; and we shouldn’t forget the initial bottling against Porto in the 1st leg of the 2015 QF—when the team was losing 2–0 in the first nine minutes of the game thanks to two infantile mistakes—or when they bottled a 0–2 lead in twelve minutes against Juventus, in a tie that Bayern should have sealed after a world-class collective performance in the 1st leg but that ultimately forced them to win in extra time three weeks later.While the emotional impact of a goal against, a sending off, or even a disallowed goal—like the one that led to Guardiola’s sending off during the 2nd leg against Liverpool—could be devastating for any team in Champions League, Real Madrid’s self-esteem barely deteriorates in these circumstances. Such resilience is hard to train throughout the season because league tournaments rarely demand it, since the league’s gut punches are never so painful. The league’s format is more forgiving in this regard, and gives teams more time to prevent or recover from such hits.Real has smashed the “natural” progression of teams like Atlético or Juventus, who have fulfilled all the traditional requirements to reign in Europe. They have denied Bayern THREE times a second Champions League title that could finally reflect what Robben and Ribery have achieved in this decade. They have prevented the nouveaux riche superclubs—Man. City 2016 and PSG 2018—from growing more quickly and acquiring the greatness and experience that they lacked in this competition. Real has changed the destiny of every Champions League contender not named Barcelona (who already take care of blowing themselves up before semifinals). Poker legend Amarillo Slim said that You can shear a sheep a hundred times, but skin it only once. And one gets the feeling that for the past 5 years, Real has skinned all those who could have someday overshadowed them.In the future, we’ll have to find a way to explain how this monster of Europe and living history of the Champions League only won 1 league out of 5 and collected just 15 out of 57 possible points against Barca and Atlético. Sergio Ramos stated that “winning the Champions League has a bonus that equals or even surpasses the domestic league - cup double”, and that is a dangerous message which reinforces the impression that Real hasn’t internalized football as a job but as a bohemian boxer who thinks he is the best and only shows it when he wants to, when fighting for the title or pushing for glory. The Champions League clearly provides the perfect ring for this boxer, but it’s a slippery terrain even if Real feels they are levitating over it at the moment. This feeling of control over an uncontrollable tournament is a magnificent virtue that makes a difference in this competition, but problems could arise if the Real board and coaching staff plan for next season while embracing these feelings of control or facing the league tournament with a similar mentality.CommentsTo summarize, Real Madrid has dominated UCL because they have the individual talent and mental toughness to capitalize on their phases of superiority to a degree that no other European team can match. This is best symbolized by their core of veteran monsters—Marcelo, Ramos, Modric and Ronaldo—who have consistently carried the team in the toughest moments.Alberto has forced me to rethink the stance I expressed in this answer, and actually consider that Pep teams post-Barca do have a chronic problem when it comes to controlling matches in Champions League. Could it be that his players are so committed to the game plan that they can’t think outside the box and improvise when facing adversity in Europe?I’ve talked before about the fact that the 17/18 Real Madrid squad is more focused on midfield control than goal-scoring, and how this decision was beneficial for UCL but detrimental for the league. Real Madrid is already suffering from (unconsciously) prioritizing Champions League over La Liga in their squad planning.I’ve also talked before about how I don’t really agree with this obsession with tactical philosophies and ideologies as some kind of panacea that magically cures all maladies of football clubs. For global superclubs like Bayern and Real Madrid, building a long-term tactical ideology is insanely hard, because the trophy expectations of fans and media on these clubs are unreasonably high. The short-term decision making of club management and coaches is simply a reflection of these insane expectations. Even Barca themselves have not stuck to their philosophy, as the 2015 treble was won on very different footballing principles to the 2009 one.