October 2018 - vrg - dgp mailing lists

[Tux] TUX Reminder: Ashton Anderson Today!
by Xuan Dam 26 Mar '19

26 Mar '19

cid:image005.png@01D357B6.5B82A7B0 cid:image008.png@01D10810.C2D01210 cid:image008.png@01D357B6.5B82A7B0 Hello TUX! A reminder that today we have a Member Presentation by Prof. Ashton Anderson. We look forward to seeing you there! Ali, Daniel, and Tovi TUX Member Presentation: Prof. Ashton Anderson *October 5, 2018. DGP Lab, Department of Computer Science at U of T @ 40 St. George Street Room 5166* Lunch reception begins at 12:30 pm. Presentation begins at 1:00 pm. *The Design of Social Incentives * An increasingly common feature of online communities and social media sites is a mechanism for rewarding user achievements based on a system of social incentives, such as badges. Badges are given to users for particular contributions to a site, such as performing a certain number of actions of a given type. In this talk, I will speak about how badges can influence and steer user behavior on a site—leading both to increased participation and to changes in the mix of activities a user pursues on the site. I’ll introduce a formal model for reasoning about user behavior in the presence of badges, and in particular for analyzing the ways in which badges can steer users to change their behavior. To evaluate the main predictions of our model, we study the use of badges and their effects on the widely used Stack Overflow question-answering site, and find evidence that their badges steer behavior in ways closely consistent with the predictions of our model. We then investigate the problem of how to optimally place badges in order to induce particular user behaviors. Several robust design principles emerge from our framework that could potentially aid in the design of incentives for a broad range of sites. Finally, I’ll report on a large-scale deployment of badges as incentives for engagement in a MOOC, including randomized experiments in which the presentation of badges was varied across sub-populations. We find that badges significantly increased student engagement, with the magnitude of the increase varying with the saliency of the badge presentation. *Bio* Ashton Anderson (University of Toronto) is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he is also a Faculty Affiliate with the Vector Institute and a Research Fellow in Behavioural Economics. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2015 and completed a postdoctoral appointment at Microsoft Research NYC in 2017. His research in computational social science focuses on questions in the increasingly vital intersection of data and society. His work has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sociological Science, and The Web Conference. cid:image009.png@01D357B6.5B82A7B0 *OUR SPONSORS:* cid:image010.png@01D357B6.5B82A7B0 *TUX is made possible by the support of our sponsors, Steven Sanders, Autodesk, * *University of Toronto Department of Computer Science, and MaRS*. */About MaRS:/*/MaRS is the one of the world’s largest urban innovation hubs—a place for collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship. Located in the heart of Toronto’s research district, MaRS provides the space, training, talent and networks required to commercialize important discoveries and launch and grow Canadian startups./ _______________________________________________ tux-announce mailing list tux-announce(a)dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tux-announce _______________________________________________ tux-announce mailing list tux-announce(a)dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tux-announce

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Invited talk this Thursday @4.30 in BA5166 (DGP seminar room)
by Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat 31 Oct '18

31 Oct '18

Hi everyone, Dr. Alim Al Islam, a Professor of Computer Science at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) is visiting our department and will deliver a talk at DGP seminar room tomorrow from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. Dr. Islam's recent focus is on helping underserved people with technological solutions. Please come and join us at the talk. Below are the details of Dr. Islam's talk. *Title of the talk*: *In Road to Serving the Under-Served with Computing Solutions.* *Time*: Thursday, November 1 at 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm *Venue*: BA 5166 (DGP lab, seminar room) *Host*: Dr. Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed *Abstract*: Research efforts, until now, on computing solutions exhibit little focus on the under-served people even though a substantial part of the world’s whole population is still under-served. This happens perhaps due to the challenges of reaching them as well as of devising solutions for them while being consistent with their economic constraints. In this talk, Dr. Islam would like to focus on our attempts to overcome the challenges and for devising specialized computing solutions for under-served people. The attempts to be presented in the talk cover the following three specific avenues: 1) devising solutions to bridge education barriers experienced by under-served visually-impaired people, 2) devising a solution to overcome contamination hazards experienced while using shared input devices (for example Kiosks) mostly by under-served people, and 3) developing a solution for securing railways of third-world countries. *Bio*: A. B. M. Alim Al Islam (Razi) received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. He is currently serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of CSE, BUET. He has also served as a member, R&D, in Commlink Info. Tech. LTD, Bangladesh and in Stochastic Logic, ACI, Bangladesh. His research interests cover human-computer interaction, networking and systems, modeling and simulation, intelligent transportation, environmental monitoring and sensing, and reliability analysis. He has co-authored several journals and conference papers and presented his papers at different well-reputed conferences. He achieved several research awards covering best paper awards, best poster awards, best demo award, research grants, etc. Thanks, Rifat -- Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~rifat/

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Board games tomorrow @6PM at Bampot
by Fanny Chevalier 30 Oct '18

30 Oct '18

Hi all, I’m sorry for those of you who can’t make it, but the most popular vote on Doodle was for our social event to be tomorrow, on Wednesday 30 Oct., starting from 6PM. We have a reservation for Bampot <http://bampottea.com/>, which is quieter and more cosy than Snakes and Lattes. They have a large selection of games, so it should be fun! Let’s leave the lab at 5:45pm and walk there, or if you’re not leaving from the lab, join us from 6PM on at Bampot, on Harbor and Bathurst. I will cover the game fee, as well as the first round of drinks and snacks for everyone (they have fancy tea, and beer bottles). Larger meals and extra drinks will be on your own. Looking forward to it! Also, just a heads up that Claudia, Steven and I will have to leave the group meeting ~10-15min early tomorrow because of another meeting in a different building. See y’all tomorrow! Fanny — Fanny Chevalier Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistical Sciences University of Toronto fanny(a)cs.toronto.edu http://fannychevalier.net/

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HCI Meeting Tomorrow
by Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat 29 Oct '18

29 Oct '18

Hi All, We have our HCI group meeting tomorrow at 12:30 PM at DGP Seminar room. Weiwen Leung is going to give a practice talk on his paper that he going to present in CSCW next month. The paper is about the impact of NFL games to the Wikipedia editors that identify themselves as fans of NFL teams (abstract is below). Please drop by and help Weiwen to prepare for the talk, while at the same time give feedback on this awesome work. Lunch will be provided during the meeting. Thanks, Rifat -- Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~rifat/ Exploiting evidence that sporting results affect fans’ mood, we analyze whether National Football League game outcomes can affect the contributions of Wikipedia editors who identify as fans of a specific team. We find that the day after a team loses, their fans decrease their contributions towards football-related pages (relative to after a win). Relative decreases are bigger if losses are unexpected, or if losing margins are big. In contrast, unexpected wins do not cause more contributions relative to wins that were not unexpected. Neither do big wins result in more contributions relative to small wins. Additionally, contributions to non-football-related pages are not affected by NFL game results. Our findings add to the literatures on (i) the determinants of individual contributions to peer production communities, (ii) how community dynamics affect user contributions, (iii) the importance of emotions, (iv) the effect of offline events on online behavior, and (v) the applicability of behavioral economics concepts to the HCI literature.

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Final demo schedule for Dr. Paul Dietz (Tomorrow)
by Varun Perumal C 23 Oct '18

23 Oct '18

Hi Everyone, Here is the final schedule after accommodating everyone's requests. 10:00 - 10:20 - Zhen 10:20 - 10:40 - Harel 10:40 - 11:00 – Seongkook 11:00 – 11:20 – Haijun 11:45 – 01:15 – Lunch Break 02:30 – 02:50 - Jacob 02:50 - 03:10 - Peter 03:10 - 03:30 - Seyong 03:50 – 04:10 – Varun Cheers, Varun

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Final Demo Schedule for Dr. Paul Dietz (Tomorrow)
by varun perumal 23 Oct '18

23 Oct '18

Hi Everyone, Here is the final schedule after accommodating everyone's requests. 10:00 - 10:20 - Zhen 10:20 - 10:40 - Harel 10:40 - 11:00 – Seongkook 11:00 – 11:20 – Haijun 11:45 – 01:15 – Lunch Break 02:30 – 02:50 - Jacob 02:50 - 03:10 - Peter 03:10 - 03:30 - Seyong 03:50 – 04:10 – Varun Cheers, Varun

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Please don't spend tooooo long time chatting loudly in the lab area while other people are working
by Fengyuan Zhu 23 Oct '18

23 Oct '18

Dear all This email might be little bit awkward, not so polite and I apologize in advance if my word hurt someone here. Generally speaking, please please don't spend too long time chatting loudly in the lab(like over few hours), especially when other people use the same space working and struggling on their code at the same time. Personally I'm not trying to say that no one should talk at all in the lab. We all know that the DGP Lab is a space not only for our research work, but also for us to communicate with each other, sharing ideas and enjoying joys with friends. But meanwhile, I hope everyone understand that the DGP Lab is not a public bar, means that chatting and laughing over multiple hours with childish topics is totally not a good thing, especially when other people expecting to use the same space for working at the same time. For some people, those sounds are the source of joy and fun, but meanwhile, same sounds can be noise for others, which will ruin their work at same time. Rather than the noise part, when someone continuing those long chatting in the lab, it actually create an "environment", makes some people think "hey so many people are enjoying something together, it might be very awkward if I'm not joining them and try to stop them", in which is actually doing more damage to those people who planned to work, but joined the random talking later. At least from my side, I saw so many times that after those chatting session done, those friendly guys has to go back to their working station, struggling their works until 1 - 2 am, or even sacrifice the following night, in order to compensate their wasted time. All in all, I'm not trying to stop the conversation itself in the lab, as I personally also enjoyed a lot from those short leisure chatting, no matter related or non-related to the research. But please, don't spend too long time chatting loudly in the lab area. There are so many other choices, like DCS lounge, seminar room or a pub outside can serve a party around, but please don't use the lab itself for that. And also, as a not so friendly person, I'm sorry that I always choose to break those joyful environment with an awkward request. As a new Ph.D. here, I might misunderstand some general rules here in the DGP Lab. If there are some rules similar as "after 6:00pm the DGP Lab is a party space and no one is allowed to continue working here", please let me know, I'll apologize and adjust my working habits then. Otherwise, please. Thank you for reading those awkward words, and apologize again if those words might hurt someone here. Sincerely Fengyuan Zhu

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Demos for Dr. Paul Dietz (Sign Up)
by Varun Perumal C 18 Oct '18

18 Oct '18

Hi Everyone, Dr. Paul Dietz is visiting our lab on Wednesday Oct 24th . Dr. Dietz headed several research groups at Disney Imagineering and Mitsubishi Research Labs and was the Assistant Director of Research at Microsoft Research in the past and is currently the CTO of Misapplied Science, a company building light field displays : http://misappliedsciences.com/ and https://www.geekwire.com/2018/breakthrough-parallel-reality-display-technol… He is an amazing person to talk to and I would encourage everyone to sign up for the demo's even if your research is not directly related to his work. This is a great opportunity to get some high quality feedback and perspectives. Please pick a time slot here as soon as possible since there are not that many. There are 20 min times slots for now. If you don't find a time slot available, please write your name down and I will try to accommodate you. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OlSXfsmecJiBkSS9KWr6JeGiheagLhLl5rZ… Cheers, Varun

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Demos for Dr. Paul Dietz (Sign Up)
by varun perumal 18 Oct '18

18 Oct '18

Hi Everyone, Dr. Paul Dietz is visiting our lab on Wednesday Oct 24th . Dr. Dietz headed several research groups at Disney Imagineering and Mitsubishi Research Labs and was the Assistant Director of Research at Microsoft Research in the past and is currently the CTO of Misapplied Science, a company building light field displays : http://misappliedsciences.com/ and https://www.geekwire.com/2018/breakthrough-parallel-reality-display-technol… He is an amazing person to talk to and I would encourage everyone to sign up for the demo's even if your research is not directly related to his work. This is a great opportunity to get some high quality feedback and perspectives. Please pick a time slot here as soon as possible since there are not that many. There are 20 min times slots for now. If you don't find a time slot available, please write your name down and I will try to accommodate you. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OlSXfsmecJiBkSS9KWr6JeGiheagLhLl5rZ… Cheers, Varun

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UIST Video Preview Session
by Bryan Wang 16 Oct '18

16 Oct '18

Hi all, We are going to have a session at DGP Seminar room to go through the video previews (40 minutes) of UIST papers at 3 pm on Friday. Please feel free to join us! Best, Bryan

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vrg October 2018