Path: news.mathworks.com!not-for-mail
From: "Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: ML spring 09 contest is bothersome and offensive
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 11:48:16 -0400
Organization: The MathWorks, Inc.
Lines: 118
Message-ID: <grfsit$84f$1@fred.mathworks.com>
References: <gr137d$lts$1@fred.mathworks.com>
Reply-To: "Steven Lord" <slord@mathworks.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lords.dhcp.mathworks.com
X-Trace: fred.mathworks.com 1239119261 8335 144.212.105.187 (7 Apr 2009 15:47:41 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: news@mathworks.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 15:47:41 +0000 (UTC)
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5512
X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5579
Xref: news.mathworks.com comp.soft-sys.matlab:531081



"us " <us@neurol.unizh.ch> wrote in message 
news:gr137d$lts$1@fred.mathworks.com...
>i am well aware that i am not going to make a lot of friends with this 
>post...
>
> however, i am extremely  annoyed and - offended - by the blueprint of this 
> contest and cannot but utter the utmost disappointment:
>
> 1) this is a mere (and scientifically as well as conceptually completely 
> useless) beauty contest; apparently due to some hardware not up and 
> running (WHAT! we are talking TMW...); so, why bother...
>
> 2) the FEX is heavily abused(!) to serve as a (convenient...) vehicle to 
> convey information, which is in NO way asked for and clearly shall be 
> perceived as an impertinent intrusion by the company&#8230;
>
> i shall  referee all such submissions with this one-star comment:
>
> this submission is a) NOT suitable for and b) clearly does NOT live up to 
> the goals and expectations of the FEX by which other authors are 
> relentlessly judged by fellow MLers...
> frankly, submitting stuff related to a (rather insignificant) ML-beauty 
> contest to the FEX is an abuse of this (already heavily) taxed site and 
> should be moved to another place...
> please remove it...
> urs
>
> just my anger...
> us

I've read through this thread and the other threads about the contest and I 
must say I'm not happy with the situation myself.  Some of this post may not 
seem so relevant at first, but please bear with me.

Here at The MathWorks, one of our core values is titled "Continuous 
Improvement and Pursuit of Excellence".  You can read a little bit about it 
here:

http://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/mission_values/values/continuous.html

One of the ways we practice this core value is by taking "at bats" -- trying 
new things, with the knowledge that they won't always be right or work out 
well.  This contest is an "at bat" -- an attempt to come up with a different 
type of MATLAB contest.  From the reaction of some of the CSSM regulars, 
it's obvious that this was in no way a home run.  But I'm not sure what it 
was, so I'd like to ask a few questions to figure out if it was a single 
(good), a foul ball (okay), or a triple play (very bad).  Even though I'm 
asking them in response to us's post, anyone please feel free to offer your 
own opinions.



us, if we had released this contest data and asked people to post their own 
analysis on the File Exchange, without putting it in the context of a 
contest, would you have been more or less angry than you are now?  [Are you 
angry that we asked people to post contest entries to the File Exchange?]


If we had released this contest data and someone had posted their analysis 
to the File Exchange without anyone asking them to do so, would you have 
been more or less angry than you are now?  [Are you angry about the fact 
that people are posting submissions analyzing a data set to the File 
Exchange?]


If we had released this contest data and run a contest where people posted 
their analysis to a separate section of MATLAB Central, not the File 
Exchange itself, would you have been more or less angry than you are now?


If you have been given this data and asked to design a contest around it, 
what type of contest would you have designed?


Should we even hold MATLAB contests?  After all, the previous contests were 
(in part) an excuse for people to show off their MATLAB coding and tweaking 
skills, making it very much like a "beauty contest".


I thought I remembered seeing you answer this question in another thread, 
but now I can't find it so I'll ask it again:  you used the phrase "goals 
and expectations of the FEX" above.  What are _your_ "goals and 
expectations" of the File Exchange?  Is it to be a repository of useful (for 
some definition of useful) code for others to use and expand upon?  Is it to 
teach new users how to use MATLAB?  Is it a place for people to post their 
code in hopes that others will improve that code?  Is it somewhere for 
people to post their code to have it reviewed and judged like some sort of 
dog show?  Or is it something else?



Frankly, I don't see this contest as a "beauty contest".  I view it as an 
opportunity for people to show off how they actually use MATLAB to analyze 
data.  Admittedly the data isn't what most of you would work with on a 
day-to-day basis, but finding a "real-life" data set that would be 
accessible to everyone would be difficult at best.  [Although maybe an 
expanded version of the census data that ships in the MATLAB demos directory 
...]  And while the contest entries may not be very useful for you or me, 
for someone who's new to using MATLAB for data analysis examples showing 
what types of analysis people actually use on a "real" data set could be 
useful, and would probably lead them to look at functions and capabilities 
they had not used before.

As I said above, I'm not happy that an at-bat like this caused so much anger 
and frustration among some of the newsgroup regulars that I consider friends 
(even though I've never met most of you in person.)  I hope we can find some 
way to make the File Exchange, the contest, and all of MATLAB Central be 
what you want it to be as well as what we at The MathWorks want it to be (or 
some combination of the two.)

As always, this is just my opinion, but I wanted to make that explicitly 
clear this time.

-- 
Steve Lord