Fried Chicken
Since there are no classes and few other regularly scheduled commitments during the summer, many of us use the time to write — to write journal papers, other articles, thesis proposals, theses, books, etc.
LIDS students and faculty, in my opinion, are authors above anything else. There is an element of creative writing in everything we do (and I don't mean 'creative writing' in any euphemistic way); however, the creative writing cannot get too out there either.
The dictionary definition of author is, "one that is the source of some form of intellectual or creative work, especially one that writes or otherwise composes a book, article, poem, play, or other work which involves literary composition and is intended for publication."
Although one finds several examples, starting pieces with 'dictionary definitions' is a writing style that I personally dislike.
A style that is simultaneously creative and not creative is quite common in the literature of the fields of study in which LIDS engages — naming problems, models, and methods in a way that modifies an existing creative name.
If one wants to decompose a signal, one could use wavelets or any of the myriad of other -lets such as chirplets, contourlets, curvelets, edgelets, platelets, radonlets, ridgelets, or surflets.
If one needs a statistical model for machine learning, one could use the Chinese restaurant process, the Chinese restaurant franchise process, the Indian buffet process, or the soon-to-be-introduced Chinese restaurant franchise with loyal customers process. In fact these processes have spawned the satirical fried chicken bucket process.
If one is tired of walking from island to island in Kaliningrad (Königsberg) and is looking for challenging problems in graph traversal, one could study the traveling salesman problem, the Chinese postman problem, the rural postman problem, or the Chinese postman with priorities problem.
If one wants to look at decentralized communication/estimation setups and their inspiration to multiterminal source coding, one has the Byzantine generals problem and the CEO problem. I am sure many more are in the pipeline.
Some problems have many names. The secretary problem, the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, and the fussy suitor problem are pretty much one in the same.
Here's a nice master's thesis topic for someone. Formulate and solve the rural, Byzantine, traveling Chinese platelet salesman franchise with loyal secretary problem.1
1 For a Ph.D. thesis, extend the analysis to disconnected graphs resulting from enclaves such as Königsberg, which is disjoint from the rest of Russia, and include a CEO for the rural, Byzantine, traveling Chinese platelet salesman franchise who obtained his position as dowry after winning over the sultan's daughter at an Indian buffet.
