Monomania refers to a mental disorder where one pathologically focuses on a single thing (naturally, at the expense of others, as one’s attention is limited). To some extent, I may have experienced this in my second year at Imperial, where for some reason I became fixated on my academic performance. I remember studying almost 100 hours per week when preparing for my exams then (typically achieved by a very strict 9am-11pm schedule everyday for about five to six weeks). I’m not sure how I managed at the time. In terms of grades, I think one should aim at 60 + epsilon, 70 + epsilon or 100, and I chose the last of these.
Things have changed since. I now evaluate how things have changed over a variety of facets. Even professionally, the metrics are a bit more multi-dimensional now. I’m not sure if it was the Palantir internship or something else, but in fourth year I made some decisions that clearly weren’t optimal as far as academic performance was concerned (working 15-20 hours a week). At that time, my main goals were get an average of 90% and submit twenty pull requests as a part-time software engineer. After I graduated the metrics became writing papers and pull requests; the latter quickly changed to patents as, all other things held equal, I find developing two or three innovative systems far more interesting and probably more meaningful than fifty rudimentary changes.
In terms of development, I’ve certainly found my recent work to be challenging (which is a good thing!). I’ve been continuing my focus on performance work, though now that many easy wins have been taken the features are getting more complex. I’m also starting to have more clarity on the kind of work that motivates me (and discussing this with my lead and others); having such discussions feels relevant and good.
I presented the LDLK on finite traces paper at AAMAS’18 (and it seems I now have a h-index of 2). It’s unlikely there’ll be another conference paper for a while though, as I’m currently diverting my computer-science energies towards writing a journal paper which summarises and extends the three conference papers to some extent.
A highlight of the quarter was receiving the VCLA award for an outstanding Masters’ thesis as well (Imperial article). In terms of raw computer science difficulty, MCMAS-Dynamic is probably the most complicated project I’ve delivered (there are a couple I’ve done since that I’m also proud of, but I’m pretty sure MCMAS still wins). Some recognition is always nice; too much ego-stroking can be unhealthy, but the odd bit is enjoyable.
In terms of finance, I didn’t really pay much attention to things this quarter. I was aware of the Turkish and Argentinian currency troubles as well as the US-China trade spat, but things on my end are still largely business-as-usual. In fact I thought this quarter was not going to be good, but looking at things it’s largely an effect of recency bias; while performance in September was indeed weak, July and August were actually very good.
The high expenses of Q2 have actually snowballed further in Q3, though most of this is explainable by six-month periodic expenses and booking travel for the end of the year. Discretionary expenses have actually fallen a fair amount, which is unsurprising as Q2 expenses included Stockholm travel as well as renewing my web server. Savings rate is down, though still on track to be in a good place this year.
Work on dealing with logical puzzles has continued, and I think I’ve managed to find a source of metrics; Logic Masters India has a good selection of past contests along with a rating system. Based on a few of these, my Puzzle skills are currently around the low to middle 600s, while my Sudoku skills are in the high 700s. Individual contests may vary in difficulty, so normalisation is used. Interestingly, this is done on two axes, comparing both one’s score relative to the top scorer and one’s ranking relative to all participants.
I’ve also started to take an interest in cryptic crosswords, though I’m certainly nowhere as competitive at these; my general knowledge is not sufficiently broad. “Logical puzzles” are designed with the intention of being culture-neutral; these often demand a wide vocabulary (which I think I have) and broad general knowledge (less so). It helps that there is a group at Palantir that attempts these recreationally; I’m not aware of a similar group for general logic puzzles.
When one is investigating a search problem, one typically needs to balance exploration (searching prospectively for additional solutions) and exploitation (locally refining good known solutions). Historically when managing my own decisions I’ve largely been pushing exploitation for quite some time. I first discovered an interest in mathematics when I was around six; while this isn’t quite computer science or software engineering, that was near-by. I started programming at 15, and when choosing my degree looked at CS which I felt balanced my interests, skills and prospects well. When I was at university, I had the aforementioned monomaniac episode; since then I’ve branched out a little.
I’ve been behind the times (the song was released in 2017, apparently), but I’ve been listening to Meant to Be (Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line) a fair bit this quarter. I don’t particularly enjoy the vocals in the original, but it’s been covered well; this one is better polished, while this one has the approach I go for when I try to sing it!
It’s enjoyable for me to (try to) sing along to, including the high vocal line in the chorus; it quickly becomes a question of hitting the tenor Bb4 repeatedly. Listening to the song certainly does make me thing of search space exploration problems, specifically genetic/evolutionary algorithms. The lyrics in the chorus sound very much like evaluating a fitness function on a candidate solution and then deciding whether to accept it:
So won’t you ride with me, ride with me?
See where this thing goes?
If it’s meant to be, it’ll be, it’ll be; baby if it’s meant to be.
The first verse has elements of not being too pressured with exploitation as well, and thematically echoes bits of Good Things Come To Those Who Wait which I looked at last quarter. The second verse reflects a degree of caution after being burned by poor approaches in the past. As I plan for what I might want to try to achieve (God willing) on a timescale of months or years, it’s important to not index too heavily on past experiences or initial reads of how a given path may turn out.
