Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

  • Shop
  • Subscribe to BMG
  • Contact
  • Log In
  • Front Page
  • All Posts
  • About
  • Rules
  • Events
  • Register on BMG

Trolling BMG for some positive vibes

May 21, 2010 By stomv

UPDATE: I PASSED!  Details posted in the comments

Holy jeez.  My PhD thesis defense is in one hour: “Effective Algorithms for Discovering Degree Constrained Spanning Trees in Sparsely Connected Graphs”

It’s just like American Idol, only it’s four Simons and no Paulas — and I’ve been perfecting the same routine for the 7+ eight years.

The talk is an hour, then Q&A, private Q&A, and then the committee discusses things amongst themselves.  By about 2:30 I’ll know if I’ll be allowed to submit my thesis or if I’ll utter the famous words of Bluto Blutarsky.

Wish me luck!

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0
0

Filed Under: User

Comments

  1. peter-porcupine says

    May 21, 2010 at 11:10 am

    (GOOD LUCK!)

  2. eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says

    May 21, 2010 at 11:12 am

    when it comes to algorithms for trees in connected graphs subtrees can be explored in parallel with every cut on the tree having a size 1.

    <

    p>Go get em Euclid.  

  3. jasiu says

    May 21, 2010 at 11:13 am

    I haven’t had to think about spanning trees in years. Better you than me. đŸ™‚

  4. realitybased says

    May 21, 2010 at 11:42 am

    Your dissertation must be a thousand pages! (Or is there an inverse law in effect here?) Good luck!  Though by this stage I think your degree of highest education is probably in the bag, as you most likely know more about the subject than anybody on your panel.  
    As chief Brody said, “You’re gonna need a bigger chainsaw”    

  5. bob-neer says

    May 21, 2010 at 11:42 am

    Knock ’em dead.

  6. billxi says

    May 21, 2010 at 12:10 pm

  7. afertig says

    May 21, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    It’s finally here!

  8. cmoore1 says

    May 21, 2010 at 12:48 pm

  9. mizjones says

    May 21, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    The title sure sounds impressive. Maybe the committee will learn something.

  10. dave-from-hvad says

    May 21, 2010 at 1:27 pm

    but could you take just a couple of minutes to explain your thesis here?  Just enough so we can all understand it!  Best of luck.

    • marcus-graly says

      May 21, 2010 at 1:57 pm

      Obviously I don’t know what stromv’s thesis is, but I’ll explain some of the terms in the title.

      <

      p>Graph:  A graph, in this sense, is just a bunch of points, called vertices, and lines connecting them, called edges.  It’s a useful abstraction for any number of real world phenomena, cities and the highways between them, computers and fiber optic cables, the power grid, social networks like Facebook, etc.

      <

      p>Sparsely Connected Graph: This means there aren’t very many edges in the graph relative to the number of vertices.  To use our analogies, it’s a nation with many cities but only a few highways, or a social network where no one has very many friends.

      <

      p>Tree: A tree is a set of edges that are all connected to each other, but contains no loops. (Imagine like a real life tree, you have a bunch of limbs branching out, but you never see any branches reconnect with each other)

      <

      p>Spanning Tree: A tree that contains every vertex in the graph.  To use our highway analogy, a spanning tree would be a set of highways that connects every city in the country without containing a loop.

      <

      p>Degree: This refers to the number of edges that connect to a single vertex.  The number of “friends” a person has in our social networking example.

      <

      p>Degree Constrained Spanning Trees: In addition the restriction that there be no loops, we restrict the maximum degree any vertix can have.  To use our highway analogy, we now want to find a set of highways that connects all the cities in the country without any loops and we went no city to have more than 5 highways from our set leading directly to other cities.

      <

      p>Effective Algorithms: Finding Degree Constrained Spanning Trees is a known to be an NP-complete problem, which means its very unlikely that there’s an easy way to solve it all cases.  By limiting it to only sparsely connected graphs, Stomv has presumably invented algorithms that can find these spanning trees in a reasonable amount of time.

      • dave-from-hvad says

        May 22, 2010 at 8:38 am

  11. ryepower12 says

    May 21, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    You’re one of the smartest people I know and have had a huge impact on my writing (a good thing, I think :P), so I know you’ll do well… but I understand how nerve-wracking something like that can be.

    <

    p>Here’s a little Adam Lambert for some positive vibes to be sent your way. (I don’t like American Idol, but have to admit I like some of Lambert’s songs, now that he’s off Idol).

    <

    p>

  12. smadin says

    May 21, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    I’m actually pretty interested in reading yer diss.!

  13. mr-lynne says

    May 21, 2010 at 1:45 pm

    On a side note, I once had a friend do a defense for his BioChem PhD.  I came close to buying him a set of boxing gloves, mouth guard, and spit bucket as a gag.

    <

    p>(Also, look at the bright side – it’s a technical subject.  Technical subject defenses are a little more cut and dry because you either did the work and considered everything or you didn’t.  By comparison someone doing a liberal arts defense could wind up arguing a point of conjecture and opinion (with suitable backup, one assumes) that is antithetical to a reviewer’s entire career.  One thing I love about science is that when you prove another scientist wrong, they say ‘thank you’.  Liberal arts not so much.)  

    <

    p>Seriously, knock ’em dead.

  14. johnk says

    May 21, 2010 at 1:46 pm

  15. sabutai says

    May 21, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    I thought theses were required to have a colon.

    <

    p>You’re a punctuative rebel.

  16. liveandletlive says

    May 21, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    Sounds interesting.  So your studying tempurature variations from tree to tree in a sparce forest.  How exciting! : ) Please share with us when you’re done.
    Good luck Stomv!

    • smadin says

      May 21, 2010 at 2:47 pm

      • liveandletlive says

        May 21, 2010 at 2:53 pm

  17. trickle-up says

    May 21, 2010 at 2:56 pm

  18. mark-bail says

    May 21, 2010 at 3:24 pm

    clever to say that hasn’t been said. Hard to say anything not clever to say that hasn’t been said either.

    <

    p>Uncleverly wishing that you do your best and your committee realizes it.

  19. kate says

    May 21, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Is it bad news that you haven’t posted an update?  

    <

    p>When I was in seventh or eighth grade my high school aged brother was relating a story at dinner.  He said that his math teacher had asked for the defintion of a circle.  His classmate responded with, “The set of all points, an equal distance from a given point.”  He and his classmates were all impressed!  

    <

    p>”Wrong!” says the teacher.  “You have just defined a sphere.  A circle is ‘The set of all points, an equal distance from a given point on a plane.'”

    <

    p>Well the next day my teacher asks, can anyone define a circle.  The students are all giving imprecise definitions.  I remembered the previous night’s dinner conversation and gave a letter perfect answer.  No wonder all my classmates hated me.  Boy was I a teachers pet back then.  

    • mark-bail says

      May 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm

      he’s got an off-line life (unlike me) and he’s out celebrating.

  20. peter-dolan says

    May 21, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    As the author of “Spanning Structures and Undecidability in Random Graphs”, I’d love a copy.

    <

    p>You should have told us sooner.  I might have been able to pop over and ask some good questions…

    <

    p>Congratulations.  Enjoy the weekend – you’ve earned it.

  21. mak says

    May 21, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    Dr. V!

  22. jarstar says

    May 22, 2010 at 7:33 am

    I join those here who believe your absence in the last 20 hours is due to your on-going celebration of both being done and the positive experience of your defense. I expect this morning we can call you Doctor.  

  23. centralmassdad says

    May 22, 2010 at 10:09 am

    that your defense was successful

  24. tblade says

    May 22, 2010 at 1:44 pm

  25. goldsteingonewild says

    May 22, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    “private Q+A” sounds scary!

  26. stomv says

    May 23, 2010 at 7:41 am

    First, apologies on not responding sooner.

    <

    p>11:30-12:00 set up slides, etc.
    12:00-1:00 public lecture, few interruptions by the committee with questions
    1:00-1:30 public questions, few from the crowd, mostly from the committee, nothing too hard.  better still, the first two questions allowed me to pull up my first two “backup slides” which had more complete answers
    1:30-2:15 private questions.  The audience is asked to leave.  Now, they ask the tough ones… both related to my thesis and about anything else.  They also wonder why I didn’t fully develop the third component of my thesis (the discrete time extension to the polychromatic degree constrained spanning tree problem).  They then decided that instead of merely posing that problem and suggesting an algorithm, I ought to simulate the problem and solve it so I can show results.  Ugh.
    2:15-2:45 private discussion.  They ask me to leave, and talk junk behind my back for a half hour.

    <

    p>3:00: Congratulations!

    <

    p>So, I’ve passed the defense.  I have until July 1 to make any and all changes to the thesis, and it needed lots of work before the committee decided to add all this extra work.

    <

    p>

    <

    p>After the defense, went and had a beer with my wife (who I had seen for three hours over the past 14 days), took a nap, got some dinner, slept a whole bunch, dug ditches for 8 hours yesterday as part of the community service project, ate dinner and went to bed.  This is the first timeI’ve seen the Internets in 44 hours.

    <

    p>Thanks for all your well wishes, and I’m not technically a PhD until July 1.

    • sco says

      May 23, 2010 at 12:49 pm

      Glad things went as well as they did.

  27. 4scoreand7 says

    May 24, 2010 at 9:25 am

    Just finished a defense myself – feels so good to be done, huh?

    <

    p>Now we have more time to read BMG!  

Recommended Posts

  • No posts liked yet.

Recent User Posts

Predictions Open Thread

December 22, 2022 By jconway

This is why I love Joe Biden

December 21, 2022 By fredrichlariccia

Garland’s Word

December 19, 2022 By terrymcginty

Some Parting Thoughts

December 19, 2022 By jconway

Beware the latest grift

December 16, 2022 By fredrichlariccia

Thank you, Blue Mass Group!

December 15, 2022 By methuenprogressive

Recent Comments

  • blueeyes on Beware the latest griftSo where to, then??
  • Christopher on Some Parting ThoughtsI've enjoyed our discussions as well (but we have yet to…
  • Christopher on Beware the latest griftI can't imagine anyone of our ilk not already on Twitter…
  • blueeyes on Beware the latest griftI will miss this site. Where are people going? Twitter?…
  • chrismatth on A valedictoryI joined BMG late - 13 years ago next month and three da…
  • SomervilleTom on Geopolitics of FusionEVERY un-designed, un-built, and un-tested technology is…
  • Charley on the MTA on A valedictoryThat’s a great idea, and I’ll be there on Sunday. It’s a…

Archive

@bluemassgroup on Twitter

Twitter feed is not available at the moment.

From our sponsors




Google Calendar







Search

Archives

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter




Copyright © 2025 Owned and operated by BMG Media Empire LLC. Read the terms of use. Some rights reserved.