My answers to the questionnaire

9. My name is Jerod Weinman. For this course, I prefer to be called any of the following: Professor Weinman, Dr. Weinman, or (in egalitarian Grinnell College style) Mr. Weinman, whichever you prefer.

10. I studied Computer Science and Mathematics (double major B.S.) at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a similarly-sized school in Terre Haute, Indiana that focuses on teaching engineering, math, and science.

    My PhD in Computer Science came from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I specialized in computer vision and machine learning. My dissertation research involved designing algorithms for a system to help the blind navigate by reading text from images (such as street signs and storefronts).

11. In addition to this course, I am teaching "Artificial Intelligence," a fun class investigating the fundamental computational problems facing agents that must behave rationally in the face of uncertainty, new information, and adversarial circumstances.

12. Unlike today, when I started with computers, it was still unusual to be first exposed to them as a one year-old, which I was when my dad brought home his first Apple ][. This is the same computer I first learned to program on in junior high. (My first was a quiz program about baseball trivia.) I was excited by the opportunity to practice creative thinking and problem solving that could be applied to whatever other interests were at hand. As an undergraduate, an introductory course on image processing led me to my research area where I am often faced with reverse engineering a different kind of "computer"--the human visual system.

13. As always, I look forward to getting to know my students and their approaches to learning about computation. I also can't wait to see your creative processes at work in your projects.

14. Even if you are not a Computer Science major or choose not to take any further CompSci classes, my biggest concern is that you will all see the utility of computational thinking and not be dismayed by the utter stupidity of computers. (You really do have to tell them exactly what to do!)

15. You can ask me about the landmark of my hometown in Nebraska, my earlier involvement as a college radio DJ, my stint as a frontman for a punk band in a previous life, or whether I've managed to resuscitate my hobby of playing fingerstyle guitar, which has been largely dormant since writing my PhD thesis.

What questions do you have for me that have not already been answered?

I'd like to know more about your research on the human visual system, such your work on reading text from images. What I've seen on the website so far looks really interesting.

I'm happy talk more about all of those things one on one. Stay tuned for presentations during the Computer Science Department's "Thursday Extras" Seminar series for talks from students who did research with me this summer on building a parallel-processing machine learning algorithm to better improve character recognition, as well as a study on whether knowledge of categories help improves general object recognition.

Why did you choose to become a professor of Computer Science -- what lead you to that decision?

As a computer scientist, what made you choose academia and professorship over industry, programming, software development, etc?

First of all, because I get to work with a bunch of sharp students. It's great fun! Also, as an academic, I have more freedom to pick and choose the sorts of scientific questions I want to work on.

your family and age

My wife Jennifer and I have lived in Grinnell since last August. As my Dad always said to me, I am "old enough to know better."

What led you to majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics?

There are a lot of reasons. Hopefully I highlighted some of them for you on the first day. The same thing that frustrates all programmers about computers, I initially found very attractive: they do EXACTLY what you tell them to do. Once I understood that, getting them to do many cool things was a fun challenge. I've always been a problem solver and enjoyed thinking creatively, even artistically (I'm a musician, too), and I get to do all of these in computer science (and mathematics), in addition to dabbling in the many other areas where computation can be of use.

I would be interested in learning about how you got into Computer Science, what specifically you do with it

See above. My research areas are machine learning and artificial intelligence for image interpretation. I have used this for character and object recognition, robotic depth perception (3-D scene reconstruction), and medical image analysis, among other things.

Do you prefer Macs or PCs

I use both. PCs running Linux serve my research computational needs, but my personal machine is a MacBook Pro. I like that it's UNIX, but pretty.

I am intersted in what college you attended and your experience, what your hobbies include, and why you enjoy computer science?

My alma mater is Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (see above). I love kayak fishing (thats fishing from kayaks, not for them). I've said a bit about computing above. Long story short, I enjoy using computers to solve problems that are not solvable by any other means.

What do you like the most about computer science?

I enjoy the beauty of computational solutions once they are revealed.

Do you know any nerdy math jokes?

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

What do you do for fun??

Aside from the activities already mentioned above, my wife would probably say I really enjoy reading, since I spend so much time doing it. I enjoy making connections between lots of different ideas and fields, and reading lots of different kinds of things helps me to do this. From newspapers (I still prefer the print kind), to history books, to fiction, I try to dabble in a little of everything.

Have you ever played any mmo's? Do you like chess?

I haven't played a MMO, as I'm not much of a gamer (even board games). Thus, that includes chess. In my Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms and Objected-Oriented Design classes, we write computer players that can crush me (and most others) at some simple games. That's about as close as I get.

Where did you go to high school, undergrad, and grad school?

See above.

What was your schooling experience like?

I thoroughly enjoyed my undergraduate institution, although more technical than the training at Grinnell, it was often project-based and very focused on quality teaching.

when did you first get into computer science?

See above.

I would like to learn more about different passions and activities of yours, that are not connected to Computer Science at all.

I also like to go backpacking and hiking. I hope to get a pair of cross-country skis this year, since my downhill skis aren't really as useful here as they were in my previous residence of Massachusetts.

Where have you worked?

I did a stint for a while working in industry at Ameritrade, and I've done some occasional consulting, for example, for a company that outfits transportation for the disabled.

In which areas of computer science do you consider yourself and expert?

My areas of specialization include machine learning and computer vision, though I'm curious about and dabble in many others.

Why did you decide to pursue a job in the computer science field?

I should say that I pursued my academic studies in computer science before pursuing employment. Employment helps put food on the table, but you can read my responses above to see why I chose it as an academic pursuit.

How many programming languages do you know?

Hmm... (counts fingers) I'll say roughly nine, plus or minus, that I have a working knowledge of.

Also, I have some family in Nebraska, and was wondering where in Nebraska you were from.

Alliance, just west of the Sandhills and right in the center of the panhandle.

Is it irritating for you to have seniors in your intro class?

Not at all! I appreciate the diversity of experiences that comes with having students from all levels in the class. The only thing that's irritating is when seniors (or juniors) say, "I WISH I had taken this course earlier; I would have been a Computer Science major!". (It's not irritating if you say it, it just means we're not publicizing our field well enough.)

Why did you come to Grinnell?

why teach at Grinnell College?

I wanted to teach and work at a small liberal arts college with sharp students like all of you. I also love living in a small town where people know and care for each other, and this is doubly true of the college community, too.

Also, would you be up for a computer science project with a student?

Yes, I had four students doing MAPs (499) with me this summer. Whether and when I will be able to supervise future projects will depend on many factors, including my schedule and student interest.

Did you watch Bill Nye the science guy when you were younger? Because you remind me of how he teaches.

Ha! That's great. I don't think I watched as a child, but some when I a little bit older. (I don't remember exactly.) Not sure if I'm supposed to, but I'll take it as a complement.

What caused you to become first interested in optical related work?

I first got interested in image processing by taking a math course in college. I loved the duality of the concreteness of seeing the pixels (I'm a very visual person) but also the abstract representations through which they might be understood.

Jerod Weinman
Created 22 August 2008
Revised 19 August 2009