Google and it's Approach to Search

I'm an avid reader of wired.com; recently, they posted an article on google and went into a never-before reported depth on the inner workings of the algorithm and how Google actually interprets your query and comes up with the most relevant sources. The full article can be found here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm.

What I found interesting was how intelligent the algorithm actually was. Google started off with the first breakthrough with having the search engine look at the popularity of sites by looking at how many links pointed to them. Later it moved on to do such things as even learn context and underlying meanings of words. For example it has been built to learn human-made synonyms. For instance, they talk in Wired about the meaning of dog/puppies. A puppy and a dog are two distinct words, but google uses the fact that when users search up a term such as pictures of dogs, they go back, delete the term dog and replace it with pictures of puppies. Google uses this to learn that to human beings dog and puppy are in some ways similar. This doesn't seem as difficult but Wired goes on to talk about the association between boiling water and hot. Google has learned enough that it can also seperate a hot dog from a boiling dog. In addition, it understands that a hot dog isn't a dog that is very hot, but rather a type of food. Similarly when you search up "strcraft", google has learned that this is a common misspelling for starcraft and tells you to change your search term. Google has been built in such a way that everytime a user enters a search term, it's learning from the user associations between words and the meanings of words. The last example I'll use shows it's learning of word associations. For example, the search engine understand the word horse to be an animal and white to be a color. However, when you pair up the two White Horse (even if you leave a space between them), the search engine recognizes that it no longer has it's old two meanings but is instead the name of a city (and incidentally a song by Taylor Swift lol). Additionally it's also realized the difference between the order of the words. Typing in horse white will give you similar results to before, but one of the top choices now talks about horses whose color is white.

What is interesting is the evolution of computers. The first computers were really basic calculators. Anything even slightly creative or different than what they have seen before would bring up errors. However, in the past few decades, algorithms have gone on to achieve much more complexity, I would daresay, some extent of intelligence. Google essentially has developed a capacity to think and even to LEARN! It seems that movies like Terminator and AI aren't so far-fetched after all...

It's that time of year again!

So, lots of my friends who were previously un-admitted (as well as the slew of posters on pre-med101!) are all going through the interview phase of med school admissions now.

For all those non-medical people out there, this time of year is perhaps one of the most stressful times of a pre-meds life, but it's also a pretty unique time of the year. I'm going to dedicate this post to describing the process and the "fun" that you actually experience (although of course it's a very stressful process as well).

One of the biggest perks of interviewing was getting to travel around and seeing some of the cities and schools. Many of them were quite a bit different than my school and it was really enjoyable to walk about the campus or the city. I had already decided on my first choice prior to interviews but I took a look around these other campuses to know what my ranking of the other schools were, in the event I was not admitted to number 1 and had a choice between the others.

The other really enjoyable experience was to meet the other applicants. There were always a lot of social events around interviews and I went out to some of these (although I never did any of the drinking, thought it would be a bad idea to show up to an interview hung over). Talking to other pre-meds you'd realize that everyone was actually pretty cool and I made friends that I ended up going to school with this year and also friends who made it elsewhere. It's pretty cool because you often introduce yourself to someone at an interview earlier in the year and you end up bumping into them again in some random other school later in the interview cycle.

Of course the entire experience was also a very stressful experience and the interviews are among some of the most important you will ever have, but also try and enjoy yourselves!

New Layout!

Had some free time and I decided to tinker around on my blog. How do you guys like the new layout for the blog? A semi-med post follows immediately!

Celebrity Role Models

Anyways, sorry for the delay in posting, but the last month or so has been absolutely crazy!

My next post is about celebrity role models. Who is yours? One of mine would be Bill Gates. Someone who's truly changed the world we live in, who came up with an invention that perhaps defines our civilization today. On top of that he is an amazing business administrator. He has retired from Microsoft since, but he's taking up more roles in global health and charity work, and I can't wait to see what he brings to this second career of his!

I shall try and post soon on updates from med school!

First Cadaver Day

As medical students, we are given many privileges over normal students. While I remember learning anatomy from a textbook in undergrad (often times with drawn rather than real pictures), we are given the unique opportunity to learn anatomy from actual bodies.

We started off by discussing dissections in general and talking about conduct around the laboratory. We were told the sacrifice and altruism the donors had when they donated their bodies. They were in full knowledge of what would happen to them and agreed to donate themselves after death to train a new generation of doctors.

We headed downstairs towards the basement, where our labs were situated and were given a chance to group up and find our cadavers we would be working with. Each station was equipped with a hand washing station and a monitor with which we could observe our instructors and the dissections they were doing.

Anticipating seeing a dead body for the first time, I was feeling a bit queasy and uneasy; however, what I found was that the cadaver was fairly far removed from what a human looks like when alive. The skin is hardened and frozen in place from the formaldehyde and the skin is just a shade of grey. The face is covered up and the only exposed areas were the torso.

Overall, I think today was a very humbling experience, to see the body of a deceased person, and also a very unique experience, one that only a few members of society will ever experience.

To end this post, I would like to post a thank-you to all those who donated their bodies and to the families of these people. Not only to my cadaver, but also to all the people out there, the medical schools cross-Canada and also internationally, that have made the altruistic sacrifice to help us learn.

Journeys

Have any of you ever worked like hell for something and when you finally get it, you realize the end-product isn't as important as you thought? But in self-reflection you find that the journey itself is what was truly important?

Let me take you through my experiences. Of course for the past few years, I've dedicated every waking moment to making it into medicine, to get that letter in the mail affirming my end goal of becoming a doctor. But in reflection, what was really important? Was it the piece of paper with patterns of black ink on it? Or was it rather the journey towards it, the experiences you had, the growth your character has experienced, and who you have become as a result of the journey that matters?

My journey towards my letter has hardly been a easy one. I've experienced crushing failures, gotten up from them, and learned from my mistakes. I still remember applying for my first time and receiving the letter of rejection. I had poured my blood, sweat, and tears into making it into medicine and having a letter telling me I wasn't good enough felt like being hit with a sack of bricks. While I moped and cried for a while, I realized that I could not give up, I needed to get up and try again. Looking back to this experience, I'm glad I was rejected, the failure (while it hurt) was one of the most useful experiences I could ever have had. I took a long hard look at myself and improved myself, made myself into a better person, and a better future doctor.

I sincerely believe that due to the journey, whether I had made it into medicine or not, I would have become a better person.

Now, I'm walking along another path, one where I know the outcome, but the path is hardly going to be easy. I've already hit obstacles already. I know that the next 6-9 years (residency + med school) will be tough, that I will stumble, and I will fall, but I know that after these years, I'm going to be a different person. A better person, and perhaps one that is equipped with the character to help make a difference in the world. And this time I know that it isn't just the MD that is important, but the experiences and the lessons that lead me to that MD.

From Science to Emotion

Throughout my undergraduate program medical school so far, I learned about human physiology and (to some extent) disease. I found the material interesting, but nevertheless bookish and abstract. It was intriguing to learn about masses growing in the brain, to read about case studies of patients in far away places and what behavioral deficits it resulted in. For instance the famous cases of HM (seizure patient, surgical intervention, leading to permanent loss of long term memory formation) and Phineas Gage (pole through the frontal lobes leading to a complete change in personality) that have probably been written about in every brain-related textbook in the past few decades.

But reading about these cases is so completely different than approaching a patient. It's so easy to sit in a room, discussing amongst doctors about an interesting brain tumor they find on a patient. But walking up to a human being, sitting down, and telling someone that they have brain cancer is a completely different story. As doctors have a multiplicity of times told me, you learn to separate yourself from the emotions, from the patient. But how do you do that, is it possible to completely distance yourself? I have thus far been lucky not to have seen someone get bad news and am far too early in the game to have given someone bad news, but how do you completely emotionally distance yourself from a situation like that? Back to the brain cancer example, you probably have sat down and given the person and maybe even the family, the worst news that they have ever heard in their lives. How do you not emotionally respond, how do you not empathize with that person?

But by the same token, we can't. Everyday, especially if you work in a hospital, you will be surrounded by people like this. You'll be walking from cancer patients to trauma patients to coma patients etc. If a doctor empathesized and felt the sorrow from every single person they saw, well they probably wouldn't last for too long...