Google’s Jeff Dean’s undergrad senior thesis on neural networks (1990) [pdf]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I1fs4sczbCaACzA9XwxR3DiuXVtqmejL/view

by russtrpkovski • 8 years ago

413 98 8 years ago

drive.google.com

mcilai2• 8 years ago

Quite incredible that he was interested in NNs back in 1990. He closed this thread very well.

coldsauce• 8 years ago

Weren't neural nets popular back then?

mcilai2• 8 years ago

That's a good point.

2sk21• 8 years ago

My PhD, which I completed in 1992, was about improving back propagation in neural networks. Neural networks were going through an initial phase of excitement caused by the Rumelhart and McLeland book. My dissertation was on modularizing NNs. https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con...

totoglazer• 8 years ago

They were very in vogue at the time. This was just after backprop was coming into its own, and before ANNs totally were surpassed by SVMs, boosting and ensembles, etc.

pimmen• 8 years ago

They were very popular when they came out and until SVMs were introduced to the United States.

Then when the data explosion started during the 00s, it laid the groundwork for the NN comeback.

mark_l_watson• 8 years ago

From my perspective neural networks were a big thing in the late 1980s when I was on a DARPA neural networks tools panel for a year, and wrote the initial version of the SAIC Ansim neural network project. We had some great results using simple backdrop networks. Good times.

nabla9• 8 years ago

This was just before the second AI winter. It involved neural networks, prolog, lisp, fuzzy logic, Japan overtaking US in AI, etc.

Lots of good work with neural networks was done back then:

   A learning algorithm for Boltzmann machines
   DH Ackley, GE Hinton, TJ Sejnowski - Cognitive science, 1985

   Learning representations by back-propagating errors
   DE Rumelhart, GE Hinton, RJ Williams - nature, 1986

   Phoneme recognition using time-delay neural networks
   A Waibel, T Hanazawa, G Hinton, K Shikano, KJ Lang - Readings
   in speech recognition, 1990

plg• 8 years ago

Not that incredible. Just about every CS / Psych / Cognitive Science Dept back then was into them. I did a project on NNs in my undergrad. Programmed in C. I’m sure thousands of others did as well.

projectramo• 8 years ago

As all the other responses point out, NNs were red hot back then.

The interest in NNs was ignited (in part) by this double volume collection of essays called "Parallel Distributed Processing" edited by Rumelhart and McClelland.

Dean even cites them. And, if you read the contributors, it contains many (though not all) of the heavy hitters.

Reading back on it, it will sound very familiar. All the amazing breakthroughs: object recognition, handwriting recognition etc all seemed to be there. But all that rapid progress just seemed to stop. There was this quantum leap and then you were back to grinding out for even 0.1% improvement.

For those who stuck through the second winter, things obviously paid off.

The intro essay is online:

https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/papers/PDP/Chapter1.pdf

dekhn2• 8 years ago

The early 90s were an interesting time for NNs and other machine learning systems. I remember getting really interested, but being told that "NNs with more than 1 layer can't really be trained", so I went into simulation rather than training. It's really great that GPUs and deep backprop arose to recover the stature of NNs.

silverlake• 8 years ago

I’m almost Dean’s age. My undergrad project was evolving NN with genetic algorithms. AI was popular, but funding died abruptly soon after.

halflings• 8 years ago

As always, Jeff Dean doesn't fail to inspire respect.

Tackling a complex problem (still relevant today) at an early age, getting great results and describing the solution clearly/concisely.

My master thesis was ~60 pages long, and was probably about 1/1000 as useful as this one.

GuiA2• 8 years ago

I put a lot of effort in my undergraduate thesis, but none of the professors on my committee had much interest in advising me; and after my defense, the only professor who really gave me his undivided attention came to me and said “I’m glad you’re not staying here for grad school; you’re way too good for this place”.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Comparing your journey to others’ is pointless.

nerdponx• 8 years ago

Sorry you're being downvoted. I don't think you're trying to detract from the accomplishment here, but you are raising an important point: at an age like this, good mentorship, leadership, and guidance is essential.

There is a very small number of truly gifted people who end up discovering things on their own at a young age. Most gifted people who discover something do so with the benefit of a mentor who can work with them to refine their talent into skill.

My masters thesis sucked largely because I tried to do it on my own and didn't even pick an advisor until I was almost done. At that point all they could do with my mess was to say "well, this is a decent descriptive paper and we need more descriptive papers in the field," and then give me proofreading comments. I didn't have a damn clue what I was doing, the end product was mediocre, and I didn't learn nearly as much as I could have. I'm not an outstanding talent by any means, but not seeking out mentorship in school is one of my only career-related regrets.

The fact of the matter is that that some people are deprived of mentorship, either through bad personal decision-making or through bad academic infrastructure. These people have a much harder road to expertise and success than the people who were mentored.

su30mki117• 8 years ago

I had a bitter experience while pursuing my master's thesis at a pretty big firm. The people responsible for advising me were shameless in accepting that no one really cares about how well I have done my thesis (they were trying to defend as to why no one cared enough to spend time and guide me), all that matters is finishing it and moving on. If you happen to be a perfectionist, such experiences break you.

mi_lk2• 8 years ago

Wonder who was his advisor back then, because I don't think it's mentioned in the thesis. Or he did this on his own, which is not surprising by the way.

russtrpkovski• 8 years ago

https://twitter.com/jeffdean/status/1033874204548984833?s=21

mi_lk2• 8 years ago

Professor Vipin Kumar for the lazy: https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar001/.

arbie2• 8 years ago

From that Tweet:

Kudos to University of Minnesota (@UMNews) Honors Program. Earlier this year, I asked Prof. Vipin Kumar, my advisor for this work, if he still had a copy, since I had lost my copy. He didn't, but checked with the Honors Program and eventually got a very nice response saying: "Jeff and Prof. Kumar, Here is a pdf copy of the thesis in question. We digitized our physical library about 8-10 years ago and no longer keep hard copies of anything. Hope this is what you are looking for."

mlthoughts20183• 8 years ago

An underappreciated aspect of this is finding an academic department that would allow you to submit something this concise as a senior thesis.

My experience, mostly in grad school, was that anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage. If you only needed a short, one-sentence paragraph to say something, it just wasn’t accepted. There had to be more.

Jeff Dean is an uncommonly good communicator. But he also benefited from being allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to prioritize effective and concise communication.

Most people aren’t so lucky, and end up learning that this type of concision will not go over well. People presume you’re writing like a know-it-all, or that you didn’t do due diligence on prior work.

pulkitsh1234• 8 years ago

My undergrad "project"'s report had to be of some minimum page count (about 300, I recall). I remember filling the report with the W3C specification of HTTP, Wikipedia articles and what not in order to convince the professor that I had done some "work" in order to build the project (It was based on using a interactive genetic algorithm for generating CSS files for webpages).

Also, I had to be submit 3 identical hard-bind copies of that bullshit report.

tnecniv• 8 years ago

That seems absurd. PhD theses (in STEM) are often shorter.

arbie2• 8 years ago

I had just that experience and it took me years to relearn the benefits of conciseness in analyses.

sleepychu• 8 years ago

I'm not sure what a senior thesis is but my undergraduate thesis was I think 34 pages long. (Excluding the source code listing)

I had a friend who's advisor made them make everything longer the way you describe, theirs was in excess of 100 pages. (IIRC this advisor had suggested that while the guidelines say ~50 pages this was the bare minimum sufficient for a pass).

I guess it depends a lot on your advisor.

nikanj• 8 years ago

HN doesn't really encourage memes and other jokes, but this is printed at the wall on the UBC grad lounge, and it seems depressingly accurate https://imgur.com/gallery/wM7udMU

GLjEI4YbnGD27LB• 8 years ago

I'm creating my master thesis, and I have been strongly encouraged to keep it short so that it can be submitted as a paper. So mine will end up, I still feel somewhat long, at around 14 pages.

roel_v• 8 years ago

I had to write a 10k word undergrad final paper for law school (in Europe, law school is a regular university study, with a 3 year LLB and 1 or 2 year LLM). At around 8k or so, I went to my supervisor and said 'look, I've said everything I wanted to say, and in a drawn out way already which I' not happy about. If I have to add more, I will need to start another topic, and I'd rather keep this paper focused and continue that other subject in another paper. What do you want me to do?'. Then my supervisor said 'I'll get you in on a dirty secret in legal writing. When you need to hit a word count, you play with the precedent citations here and there. Go back to your desk, cite an extra sentence before and after every citation you have in there, and tadaa you're done'. Turned out that I had to include an extra paragraph here or there but still, golden advice :) And somewhat applicable to other fields as well, if you build in this sort of safety net from the start...

ModernMech3• 8 years ago

Reminds me of page count requirements in middle school. I'd write 4 pages, and in order to get to 5 I'd make every period and comma a higher font size. This was after they figured out my line spacing and margin tricks.

Certhas3• 8 years ago

It's kind of remarkable. There really is no literature review in this paper. As a supervisor I would have no problem with a content part of this length, but I would also insist on doing the scholarly work that is not demonstrated here. Don't just throw out some code and describe it but put it into the context of what exists. Give credit to where ideas originate.

That shouldn't add too much. No more than a few pages. It would still concise but then also a scientific work.

phkahler3• 8 years ago

That seems to be a key difference between science and engineering. One likes to survey the field and insist that their paper offers something novel - no matter how big or small. The other just wants to do some solid work and get the results.

bjourne• 8 years ago

From the readers perspective, what would be the point?

bipson2• 8 years ago

I have in the past been subadvisor to various bacc. theses.

I value conciseness dearly, and prefer quality over quantity in scientific writing, i.e. I would accept incredibly short theses, if the content is sufficiently presented (reproducible and comprehensive), and most of all, contains a valuable contribution.

The reason I typically have to request "more verbiage" and an own section on the state of the art, is because I need to force my students to confront their sitcom ideas with the history of "what has been done before, and what the actual current problems are".

Unfortunately, the approaches of most students are neither new nor particularly interesting in this regard.

fjsolwmv5• 8 years ago

sitcom?

It's strange to expect an undergrad to do new and interesting work when they haven't even finished their basic education in the field. Solve problems that are easy but not important enough for professional academics, sure. Do an application of a standard idea in a specific environment (like porting an pp to Android), sure. But not new approaches to the field.

busyant2• 8 years ago

anyone editing my work wanted more verbiage

I _never_ got that feedback. My mentors all emphasized economy of language and nobody cared how "thick" my thesis was.

This is a pretty amusing story about verbiage.

Back in the old days, you would send a manuscript/research article to colleagues/friends by _snail-mail_ to get their feedback. You'd wait a month, and maybe they would mail a 'red-inked' copy of your manuscript back to you.

My Ph.D. advisor sent out a draft to a colleague who was famous for being harsh with the red-ink.

After a month, my advisor receives the manuscript in the mail.

* He turns to page 1. No red ink!

* He turns to page 2. STILL no red ink! [He must looove the paper]

* Keeps turning pages (no red ink!!).

* On page 10--in red ink--is written, "Start here."

mlthoughts20183• 8 years ago

Of course people want you to write less when it means less work for them. But think of an academic review committee for a senior thesis. They aren’t going to heavily read your paper, just decide if it meets compliance standards for some preserved artifact for your graduation. But they can veto what you’ve written and send it back to someone else (your advisor likely) and have that person request edits.

So this puts the reviewer in a situation with misaligned incentives. They might prefer to tell you to prioritize concise communication, but believe the risk is high that such a thing will get vetoed by the committee for Dilberty reasons, and thus their feedback gets optimized for what the committee will superficially think.

When the committee is mostly attentive professors, this isn’t so bad and everybody is aligned on short, to-the-point style.

But my experience is that this is hardly true. Maybe one committee member will be an attentive technical authority, sometimes only your advisor. The others will be deans or directors of various sorts who view it as an administrative chore to even have to sign off, and probably farm that review out to grad students or adjuncts, who are far more likely to take a capricious point of view about e.g. heavy literature review or conclusion sections.

akhilcacharya5• 8 years ago

It's really impressive that Jeff accomplished so much despite going to UMN for undergrad.

hazz99• 8 years ago

Non-American here -- what is wrong with UMN? I visited once, and it seemed like a decent university.

akhilcacharya5• 8 years ago

I'm sure it's fine, but it's not Harvard or Stanford or MIT - it has a 45% acceptance rate similar to my school (~45-51%). AFAIK it's not even considered a public Ivy like UMich or UW or UNC.

unexpected• 8 years ago

nothing is wrong with UMN - OP is making a joke based on the common refrain that Google only hires Stanford/Harvard kids.

mlevental• 8 years ago

umn is #30 according to us news. not top 10 but still very good.

wenc3• 8 years ago

In the U.S., one's undergraduate institution does not correlate to success as much as it does in certain countries like France or Japan, where universities are a pipeline for elite selection and grooming.

Also, not all intelligent American kids can or want to go to elite schools, even if they are academically qualified. In the U.S., you often hear stories of kids turning down really good schools for ones they felt were a better "fit" (financially, culturally, etc.). And unlike the rest of the world, elite colleges in the U.S. are often private and expensive. Despite need-blind admissions, not everyone can afford them without going into heavy debt. (many middle-class parents make just enough money for their kid to not qualify for substantial financial aid).

So kids go to schools they can afford.

One of my college professors (who attended Princeton and MIT) once told me that in his observation, the top 5 percentile students in (good) state schools aren't that different from the kids who went to Princeton or MIT. I didn't believe him at the time, but having worked with different folks over the years, my experience inclines me to believe that there's some truth in that observation.

Owing to its population and economy, the U.S. has a large enough talent pool that the top percentile students at large, well-funded state schools (of which UMN is an example) are plenty smart. If you were to meet the really smart top-5-percentile kids from such state colleges (I have), you'd have no doubt that many of them could have attended MIT or CMU.

To be sure, good colleges can give you a headstart in life -- but it's what you do with that advantage that counts.

Examples of smart computer folk who went to decent, but non-elite schools for undergrad:

Doug Crockford (Javascript), SFSU

JJ Allaire (ColdFusion, Rstudio, etc.), Macalester College

Ward Cunningham (Wikis), Purdue

Rich Hickey (Clojure), SUNY Empire State (though he did go to Berklee College of Music)

John Carmack (Doom, Quake), U. Missouri Kansas City

Sergey Brin (Google), U. Maryland College Park (before Stanford)

Larry Page (Google), U. Michigan (before Stanford)

Dave Cutler (VMS, Windows NT), Olivet College

Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), U at Buffalo

Ryan Dahl (Node.js), UCSD, then U Rochester

Larry Wall (Perl), Seattle Pacific U (before Berkeley)

Alan Kay (Smalltalk, windowing GUIs), U Colorado, then U Utah.

Brendan Eich (Javascript, Mozilla), Santa Clara U (before UIUC)

akhilcacharya5• 8 years ago

Owing to its population and economy, the U.S. has a large enough talent pool that the top percentile students at large, well-funded state schools (of which UMN is an example) are plenty smart. If you were to meet the really smart top-5-percentile kids from such state colleges (I have), you'd have no doubt that many of them could have attended MIT or CMU.
To be sure, good colleges can give you a headstart in life -- but it's what you do with that advantage that counts.

I just graduated undergrad from a state school (Rank #49 in CS) but I'm still pretty skeptical of this fact.

godelmachine2• 8 years ago

Thanks for the list but I am not entirely sure about Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s alma mater.

tdb78932• 8 years ago

The flagship university in each state actually always has some very very bright students. The very elite schools don't accept many students and the admissions criteria are far from perfect so a ton of students who would be good enough for top tier schools end up going to state schools. I know a couple different people who were top of their high school class and within a question or two of perfect on their SATs that happily went to state schools.

ebikelaw• 8 years ago

Lots of people get accepted to fancy-ass schools but then can't afford to attend, and state schools will bend over backwards to get those people.

EchoAce• 8 years ago

This is incredibly elitist.

fipple• 8 years ago

It’s not elitist, it’s just dumb.

anonytrary2• 8 years ago

The so-called Ivy Leagues miss out on people who peak in academic ability after high school, plus there are more excellent people than there are spots at Ivy Leagues. The upper echelons of pretty much every standard university are going to have equally competent people.

jl2718• 8 years ago

Looking back. I should have gone to my in-state school. There might be an incremental difference in quality, but I would not have rushed to get it done a year early, and would have actually done meaningful research and probably PhD.

elvinyung• 8 years ago

I don't know anything, but does this work directly inspire DistBelief?

slyrus• 8 years ago

Does anyone else miss enscript -2G?

lukeh• 8 years ago

Indeed!

aquamo2• 8 years ago

enscript -2Gr yeah -). used to be my default mode as well!

ahuibers• 8 years ago

Yes! :-)

yuhong• 8 years ago

As a side note, I already have a draft of my essay (not published yet) that replaces the mention of storage costs with a mention of Ruth Porat. The point is why Ruth Porat was hired in the first place.

pknerd• 8 years ago

Interesting coding style with too much whitespace. Is it some standardized pattern? I found something similar in the code written by John Carmack.

benzoate• 8 years ago

To my eyes this seemed like a completely normal amount of whitespace. The only thing I personally prefer that you would reasonably reduce is moving the left block delimiter from its own line (But left block braces being on their own line is fairly common for C/C++ projects afaik)

fjsolwmv5• 8 years ago

Allman style. More popular in the error before pretty printing editors, to help visualize the blocks.

sigjuice• 8 years ago

This is the usual amount of whitespace. A couple of examples

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/master/libsyscall/m...

scottlegrand2• 8 years ago

Really interesting and innovative early work, and I think it also explains why tensorflow does not support within layer model parallelism. It's amazing how much our early experiences shape us down the road.

My entire career has consisted of reimplementing bits and pieces of things I've previously built all the way back to high school and then reimplementing whatever was new on the previous round in the next one.

dekhn2• 8 years ago

I guess it's not totally surprising that Dean's undergrad thesis was on training neural networks and the main choice was between or in-graph replication. This is still one of the big issues with TensorFlow today.

One thing most people don't get is that Dean is basically a computer scientist with expertise in compiler optimizations, and TF is basically an attempt at turning neural network speedups into problems related to compiler optimization.

I'd like to thank my undergrad university for hosting my undergrad thesis for 25 years with only 1-2 URL changes. Some interesting details include: Latex2Html held up, mostly, for 25 years and several URL changes. The underlying topic is still relevant (training the weight coefficients of a binary classifier to maximize performance) to my work today, even if I didn't understand gradient descent or softmax at the time.

Google’s Jeff Dean’s undergrad senior thesis on neural networks (1990) [pdf]

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