Blog

January, 2015

As much as I love languages, one of the things that frustrated me in linguistics was the seeming arbitrariness of theories. There was no way of knowing which one was better than another.

August, 2013

After almost 5 years, I am finally done with grad school! I just started a postdoc, so this is probably a good time to look back. Two friends recently asked me what my “grad school story” was.

April, 2013

Our software package MACE (Multi-Annotator Competence Estimation) is out! It provides competence estimates of the individual annotators and the most likely answer to each item. All you need to provide is a CSV file with one item per line.

November, 2012

I have noticed that some of my friends (mostly Germans) use a fake name on social networking sites. This started a few years ago, when it became clear that a) the security of these sites isn’t exactly Fort Knox and b) their business model includes selling your data.

September, 2012

Writing your papers in LaTeX is great and you should definitely do it. It makes everything better (with the possible exception of grammar), but you have to trust it with the formatting.

September, 2012

I have talked before about how important it is for scientists to express themselves well, and the most important aspect of that is to give good talks. I am far from being a good speaker, but I am a little obsessed with learning what makes one.

April, 2012

Together with my roommate, I found a great way to prepare chicken. It cooks quickly, stays moist, and is almost impossible to mess up. I made variations of it four times during the last week.

March, 2012

While writing on my thesis and various papers, I found that there sometimes is a disconnect between my perception and what others make of the same data. I started thinking about why that is and how it could be solved.

October, 2011

German researchers have drafted a position paper in which they demand science be decelerated in order to improve its quality. Their points are (Die Zeit article 4/14/2011): worldwide reduction of publications to allow scientists to survey the field and ensure quality

April, 2011

One thing I wish I was, apart from brilliant, is to be fascinated by boring things. Think about it: it would have so many advantages. Like that linear algebra class you had in high school when you could barely stay awake, and now you try to remember how to invert a matrix.