It’s that time of year again—graduate-entrance exams have just wrapped up, and for many people around me it’s a moment of reflection (or panic) as they contemplate what comes next. Amidst the usual stress and sleepless nights, another topic has quietly stirred debates among the community of exam-takers: the rise of so-called IQ-booster pills. Yes I’m talking about Methylphenidate—aka Ritalin. Real Quick Fact Check: ADHD, Ritalin, and Neurotransmitters For those unfamiliar, Ritalin is a prescription-only medication primarily used to treat ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). It works by modulating dopamine and norepinephrine levels in specific parts of the brain, calming overactivity to help those with ADHD focus better. ...

if it doesn’t open click here An official upgraded version will be released soon. Or you can view a preliminary version here.

Right before Christmans, Ariana Grande released a live performance video of “Santa Tell Me” as part of the Eternal Sunshine live sessions. The song was originally released Nov. 24, 2014. So this is essentially the 10th year anniversary version. watch the performance here on YouTube

Nature’s take on poster design: snapshot of the article. toggle light mode on top left corder so that the text would be readable. read the full article here. https://aritang.github.io/files/ariana_tang_cv.pdf The scientific poster remains a crucial currency for communication and connection….Researchers now have access to an array of high-end graphics software — and the ‘how to make a poster’ conversation has been going on for years (see Nature 483, 113–115; 2012)…. Yet, researchers often slap posters together at the last minute instead of thinking about the best ways to deliver their message and engage their audience. ...

A well-designed poster is like a siren’s call for potential collaborators. Picture yourself strolling through a maze of posters during a conference tea break. Even with the best intentions to explore, you’re forced to make snap decisions. One poster catches your eye. You pause, then strike up a conversation with its creator. Mission accomplished—for both the poster and its owner. Posters actually pull double duty. First, they’re your sidekick during the pitch talk during the very poster session. Second—and often overlooked—they’re the academic wallpaper of conferences. Organizers love filling hallways with posters because they add that scholarly vibe. Attendees wander, glance, and absorb. This is where a stand-alone, easy-to-digest poster with clear contact info can work unexpected wonders. Who knows? You might land your next collaborator—or admirer—while they’re lost finding a bathroom. ...

The textbook Multi-armed Bandit Allocation Indices by John Gittins, Kevin Glazebrook, Richard Weber has a charming Chapter 6, titled “Restless bandits and Lagrangian relaxation”. But the authors skipped a step in the prove of how to go from the LP to Dual and to Whittle Index Policy. Prelims: An RMAB (Restless Multi-Armed Bandit) instance is defined through the tuple $$ \lang S, A, r_{i}, \mathcal P_{i} \rang_{i \in [N]} $$ where $S_i $ is the state space, $A_i = \lbrace 0, 1 \rbrace$ the action space, $r_{i}$ and $\mathcal P_{i}$ denote the reward and transition kernels arm $i$. ...

Happy weekend and winter solstice—if winter comes, will spring be far behind? Old CV is archived here.

Here’s a paper I read lately, Generative Social Choice Sara Fish, Paul Gölz, David Parkes, Ariel Procaccia, Gili Rusak, Itai Shapira, and Manual Wüthrich. link to one of the authors’ posted verison. Plus, link to ICML talk version. [Abstract] The mathematical study of voting, social choice theory, has traditionally only been applicable to choices among a few predetermined alternatives, but not to open-ended decisions such as collectively selecting a textual statement. We introduce generative social choice, a design methodology for open-ended democratic processes that combines the rigor of social choice theory with the capability of large language models to generate text and extrapolate preferences. Our framework divides the design of AI-augmented democratic processes into two components: first, proving that the process satisfies representation guarantees when given access to oracle queries; second, empirically validating that these queries can be approximately implemented using a large language model. We apply this framework to the problem of summarizing free-form opinions into a proportionally representative slate of opinion statements; specifically, we develop a democratic process with representation guarantees and use this process to portray the opinions of participants in a survey about abortion policy. In a trial with 100 representative US residents, we find that 84 out of 100 participants feel “excellently” or “exceptionally” represented by the slate of five statements we extracted. ...

The funny news (five years ago), original by Metro’s Basit Mahmood: Chinese businessman Tan Youhui was looking for a hitman to take out a competitor, Wei Mou, and was willing to pay 2 million yuan (£218,000) to get the job done. The hitman that Mr Youhui hired decided to offer the job to another hitman for half the original price. The second hitman then subcontracted to another hitman, who then subcontracted to a fourth, who gave the job to a fifth. ...

Two things that are notoriously slippery to pin down: fairness and democracy. Fairness—what is it, really? To me, fairness is just another way of thinking about efficiency. To elaborate, we often define efficiency as the sum of everyone’s value or surplus. But maybe that’s too simplistic. What if fairness is just a more complex version of that same idea? Instead of a straightforward sum, fairness might be a more intricate mapping of each participant’s value into the final outcome. In the end, achieving fairness feels a lot like maximizing some kind of welfare function—it’s just a matter of balancing competing interests and getting the best overall result. ...