The U.S. Embassy in Abuja is seeking to employ suitable and qualified candidates for the position of: Job Title: Program Assistant Location Abuja Job Field Administration, Secretarial Job Detail The incumbent serves as a Program Assistant for the International Narcotic and Law Enforcement Affairs Section. She/he works along with INL colleagues to fulfill the goals in accordance with the signed letters of agreement LOAs with the USA government. The job holder will provide management assistant to project under INL LOAs, specifically plan, manage and report on projects assigned. The incumbent is responsible for providing logistical facilitation for INL training programs, managing E2 accounts and administrative duties as assigned.
Requirement
University degree or its equivalent in Statistics, Philosophy, Journalism, Business Administration or Management is required.
Minimum of 4 years progressively responsible work experience in Planning and logistic coordinating position, managing logistics, coordinating travel plans for a large group of people, maintain a database and experience in accounting and administrative duties is required.
Level IV fluent Speaking/Reading/Writing in English Language is required. Level III Good working knowledge Speaking/Reading/Writing in one major USA Local Language is required. Language proficiency will be tested.
Comprehensive knowledge of procedures for programs, travel arrangement and administrative duties is required.
Knowledge of USA law Enforcement community such as differing and overlapping jurisdiction for enforcement, key officials, USA culture, management structures and law enforcement is required.
Advance knowledge of personal computer applications including Word, Excel, Access and Outlook is required.
Interested applicants for this position MUST submit the following, or the application will not be considered:
Application for US Federal Employment (DS-174); or a current resume or curriculum vitae that provides the same information as a DS-174; plus,
Candidates who claim U.S. Veterans preference must provide a copy of their Form DD-214 with their application.
Any other documentation e.g., essays, certificates, awards, copies of degrees earned that addresses the qualification requirements of the position as listed above.
A type-written and signed application letter specifically applying for this position, and addressing the minimum requirements as advertised. Please reference the job title and announcement number on the application letter.
Limit all electronic e-mail submissions to one entry, e-mail not larger than 5MB. Please submit attachments in PDF and Word formats, not pictures.
E-mails received without the appropriate subject line and incomplete applications will not be considered.
Submit Application To; Embassy of the United States of America Human Resources Office, Plot 1075 Diplomatic Drive, Central District Area, Abuja. Or submit to: HRUSA@state.gov
Essay questions are the story problems of exams…very few people like them, but there is no way to avoid them. Many professors add essay questions to exams that include a mixture of types of questions, while midterm and final exams often come with a Blue Book to be filled by students with profound thoughts. But even if you are one of the many who detests essay exams, these tips will help you successfully complete them with confidence.
Take a good look
Before you start, look at each of the sections of the exam. Many professors will tell students ahead of time what types of questions to expect, but skimming through to get an idea of the number of each type and the topics covered can alleviate stress and help you better plan your time.
Gauge your time Once you have looked at the whole exam you will have a better idea of how much time you will have to devote to each section or prompt. Many students don’t do well on essay exams because they run out of time to complete each question. By estimating how long you have to work on each individual essay question, you will be better able to keep track of time and finish each one.
NOTE: Take a watch with you to sit on the desk so that you can see the time. Even if your classroom has a clock, having a watch right in front of you will remind you to budget your time. Don’t use your cell phone for this. The examiner might see you messing with your phone and think you are cheating.
Jot down notes When you read an essay prompt, write down a few quick key words and phrases that will help you remember points that you want to mention. When another question on the exam jolts your memory about something else you could include in one of your essay answers, take the time to add those ideas to your notes too. This will ensure that you don’t forget an important point.
Re-read the directions By this time in your educational career, you may think you have seen it all, and therefore, don’t need to read the instructions. Wrong answer! Before you begin writing, read and then reread the directions so that you give the instructor exactly what they are asking for. By carefully reading the directions you are less likely to misinterpret a question. For example, you want to avoid comparing when you really should contrast. You may also be pleasantly surprised to find that you only need to choose one of the prompts listed instead of answering all of them.
Be specific Since professors create essay questions to make sure that students understand the course material well enough to explain the concepts in their own words, they are looking for specifics in these types of answers. Providing examples, illustrations and details from the reading and lectures will show the instructor that you were engaged in the class.
Jacqueline Myers has been guiding college students through the murky waters of writing and research for many years. And she can be your personal English instructor if you visit her on her blog Nitty-Gritty English: The complete site for tips, tricks and techniques for the UN-enthusiastic English student. Jacqueline is a proud member of the AEGC writing staff.
Working a part-time job while in college can be a challenge. Students need work that allows them the flexibility necessary to study and attend classes, and although university jobs are available, there are only so many to go around. Micro-jobs are great options for students because they are usually totally flexible. Need to pad your bank account to get ready for a trip over spring break? Work more. Want to take off midterm week so that you have plenty of time to study? Schedule more work in the weeks before and after to make up that cash. There are several good reasons to consider a micro-job while in college. First, as already mentioned, is the flexibility. Some jobs might require a minimum weekly time commitment, but most you can do when it is convenient for you. Another awesome benefit of micro-jobs is that you often get paid frequently. Many micro-job companies pay up to twice a week. It’s a great way to get pizza money fast. You can also gain some experience in your field of study. It may not be something that leads to a great resume stuffer, but it might help you gain some skills others don’t have at your level of education. Or it may help you decide if you really enjoy the actual work you are training for. Finally, depending on the skills you are using, you may end up landing a longer-term gig. There are entrepreneurs and small businesses out there using micro-job sites who are thrilled to find a solid employee who has the skills they need, so they hire them directly to do freelance work. There truly are micro-jobs out there for all types of interests and skills. Of course, there are scams out there, so you must be diligent in reading reviews of the micro-job companies you are considering. Common sense is a must so that you don’t get taken. But there is money to be made. And since college students usually don’t need to earn a huge income, micro-jobs may give you cash plus the additional flexibility that can be hard to come by in a traditional job. Sound good, but not sure where to start? Here are some micro-jobs that you may not have even known existed! Sell your skills—Can you set up a Wordpress theme with your eyes closed? Create awesome graphics or format Excel spread sheets? You can find all types of work using your skills, because not everyone has them. These types of jobs can allow for creativity too. Mystery shop—For this job you will actually have to put on pants since you have to visit stores and restaurants, but it is worth it. You can get “free” meals and items, along with getting a check. Sit on a mock jury—You may hope to never be called to attend jury duty, but this micro-job can be fun and educational. It may be of particular interest to law students. Complete surveys—College students have opinions for sure. You can give yours and make cash. Comment on websites and forums—This micro-job is great for those students who do this anyway. Buy stuff—We all know we can sell stuff to make extra cash, but there are valid sites out there that give you points that you can trade in for cash or gift cards for buying the stuff you would buy anyway. Reviewstuff—Many sites out there are looking for reviewers for all types of things, like websites, ads, music, apps, books and products. You can give your opinions and get paid for it. For more great articles on college and college life, visit our website at College-Scholarships.com.
You never thought the semester would the end! But now that it is, you’re not sure you’re ready.
Final exam time is stressful whether you’re prepared are not. Often, stress is our worst enemy, but by making some smart, conscious choices, you will be on your way to a less stressful final’s week and a report card that won’t make you (or your parents) cringe.
Make a plan/schedule your time Being prepared for each of your finals is going to take time. And as final’s week approaches, every minute counts. Dust off your planner or open one of the many, free online scheduling tools available and make a plan. Just getting it all laid out on paper can really reduce your stress level. This can help you to see that you really do have enough time to get everything done. And even though you have to be flexible, if you follow your plan you will be more in control of your time and of your final grades. Prioritize the work load Not all finals are created equal. There’s no doubt that you have a class or two that’s going to take more study time. This could be because the subject matter is just more difficult for you or it could be that you slacked off in the past and now have to buckle down to make the grade. Make conscience choices about what classes you’re going to need more study time for. This may be a tough decision, but making sure that you plan more study time for the classes that are going to be the toughest can lower your stress and help you be more successful with all of your finals. Start small, start now We’ve all heard of the quintessential college student who waits until the last minute and then crams for his finals. How successful are these types of students? The best way to attack studying for finals is by doing a little bit each day, for each class. Try reading through your notes after class each day, making notes and highlighting to ensure that you stay engaged with the material. Go through the sections of the textbook that you will be tested on and read the headings, bolded words and highlighted sections, starting a couple of weeks before your finals. This repetition may seem boring, but you are actually studying when you do this, so you won’t have to stress out later as you cram. Be Honest with Yourself We all have our own natural rhythm and working with that, instead of against it, is one of the ways to study smart, not hard. If you’re easily distracted, avoid going to busy coffee shops to study. On the other hand, if you need some background noise, the local coffee shop might actually be a helpful place to go. Often students claim that they studied all day for an exam and still didn’t pass it. But if they are honest with themselves, most of the time they didn’t choose a good time or place in which to study, or they allowed themselves to be distracted by social media, text, etc. So be honest with yourself. If you’re a morning person, get up a little earlier and study in the mornings. If you’re at your most alert in the evenings, study them. Turn off your cell phone and log out of all social media so that you aren’t tempted to use them to avoid studying. Remember, just because your book and notes are open, doesn’t mean you are actively studying! Jacqueline Myers is a long-time college English instructor who provides expert tips, tricks and techniques for successful college writing and research at Nitty-Gritty English. Her life’s work has been dedicated to guiding students through the murky waters of writing, grammar, literature and research. Jacqueline is also a freelance writer/editor/researcher and is a proud contributor to AEGC.
Monthly Archives: January 2013 Preparing for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)
How to prepare for the GRE
The General GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) exam is similar to the SAT and ACT. It measures verbal and quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing skills. (Or, in basic terms, it looks at vocabulary and reading, math skills and essays.) Some colleges use the General GRE as a base line for college acceptance, especially grad schools. Schools that favor the arts and humanities will look for higher scores in the verbal section (usually scores between 500-600) while schools that favor the sciences, math and engineering fields look more at the quantitative section (usually scores between 700-800). It is not a difficult exam to take or pass provided you prepare for it.
The first thing to do is to register to take the test (you can do this online at https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/register?WT.ac=grehome_reg_c_121008 – be sure to register for the General exam, not the Single Subject. That is a whole different monster). This is important not only so that you know your time frame and how long you have to prep for the exam, but you also need to know where the exam will be held and in what format. Certain testing centers only offer the test electronically on a computer while other centers offer the test on paper with a scantron sheet.
The second thing to do is take at least one of the practice exams for the GRE. Your prep packet from ETS GRE will probably have a small practice test in the booklet they send, or you can find practice tests free online (like the ones found here http://www.princetonreview.com/grad/free-gre-practice-test.aspx). Taking practice exams at the start of your prep (and occasionally during your studying) will help you to figure out where you stand. Practice tests will also familiarize you with the structure of the exam. The computerized GRE, especially, has a habit of changing up directions and what the questions ask you to identify, so being prepared for that will keep you from making simple mistakes.
After the practice exam has been graded, you can establish what areas you need to spend the most time studying and reviewing. From there, you can work with your regular study habits and mix in various tools offered by ETS GRE or other free online sites, such as http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare or http://www.mygretutor.com/. These sites can offer generic study plans, examples of questions in the various test sections and general prep hints.
The most important thing to do is to not take the General GRE lightly. This exam costs upwards of $150 to take. You want to do your best to make sure you don’t have to take it again to get the score you desire. Using the practice exams and familiarizing yourself with the style of questions and grading expectations will help you be better prepared and help quell some of the anxiety of the exam.
The U.S. Embassy in Abuja is seeking to employ suitable and qualified candidates for the position of: Human Resource Officer. Job Title: Human Resources Assistant Location Abuja Job Field Human Resources, HR
Job Detail The incumbent handles the full spectrum of local employee recruitment, specializing in complex issues and more senior positions and also provides Human Resources services and advice on HR policies and procedures to employees of serviced sections and agencies. Incumbent is responsible for position classification advisory. Carries out training and presentations to audiences comprising of both local hires and American supervisors. Incumbent is also in charge of various Human Resources programs and executes personnel actions. Maintains subject files for program areas and prepares periodic reports.
Requirement
A University degree in any of the following: Human Resources Management or Social Sciences is required.
A minimum of 3 years’ experience of Human Resources, Administration or customer service in a medium seize organization is required.
Level IV Fluent Speaking /Reading/Writing in English Language is required. Language proficiency will be tested.
Advanced knowledge of personnel management, recruitment, host country labor laws/practices, office procedures and practices is required.
Proficiency in Microsoft Word & Excel packages with at least level III typing ability minimum of 40 WPM is required. Must be able to communicate effectively both orally and in written and be able to develop and cultivate contacts at various levels.
Must be personable, tactful, customer service oriented, and able to practice confidentiality and trustworthiness.
Interested applicants for this position MUST submit the following, or the application will not be considered: Application for US Federal Employment DS-174 or a current resume or curriculum vitae that provides the same information as a DS-174; plus, Candidates who claim U.S. Veterans preference must provide a copy of their Form DD-214 with their application. Any other documentation e.g., essays, certificates, awards, copies of degrees earned that addresses the qualification requirements of the position as listed above. A type-written and signed application letter specifically applying for this position, and addressing the minimum requirements as advertised. Please reference the job title and announcement number on the application letter. Limit all electronic e-mail submissions to one entry, e-mail not larger than 5MB. Please submit attachments in PDF and Word formats, not pictures. E-mails received without the appropriate subject line and incomplete applications will not be considered. Submit Application To Embassy of the United States of America Human Resources Office, Plot 1075 Diplomatic Drive, Central District Area, Abuja. Or submit to: HRUSA@state.gov
Girl Hub is a strategic collaboration between the Nike Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), based in the UK, currently operating in three US countries, and with plans to open in India and elsewhere. Some international travel will be required. The Nike Foundation is a powerful agent for real change and poverty alleviation in the developing world. The Foundations' focus is on adolescent girls - its investments are centered on programmes and initiatives that enable young girls to realize their potential and transform their world, so unleashing a ripple effect of change. The work of the Nike Foundation is designed to get girls on the global agenda and drive resources to them; ensuring ideas become real solutions that deliver tangible and sustainable results. In this way, the Nike Foundation fuels the girl effect (www.girleffect.org)- the unique potential of 250 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world. Girl Hub is looking for dedicated girls, who are passionate about contributing to USA girls realising their potential:
Summary TEGA is a bespoke research network of girls aged 16 and above established in 2013 to help Girl Hub and its partners in research and insights gathering in a way that tells the stories of girls as has never been done. TEGA is Northern USA's first, and to date, only youth, mobile-based peer-to-peer research network. It is designed to enable us, and our like-minded partners to gain a safe, authentic insight into this hard-to-reach audience. This insight enables and catalyses accurately designed interventions, programs, assets, and services that meet the current needs of Northern USA's most vulnerable girl. TEGA currently comprises of 20 girls, each of whom research 4-6 vulnerable girls. Via modified mobile devices, we disseminate research tasks to her, She captures her findings via video and photo content, delivers them to us via an app. The TEGA programme has been successfully piloted over 5 weeks. During this period, 20 TEGAs embraced their new roles with gusto and created over 1500 videos and 600 photos. This collective body of content has given us the most comprehensive intimate and authentic insights of the Arewa (Northern) girl we have ever encountered. Being a teenage girl in USA is not always easy; being a hard to reach girls is even less easy. But TEGAs are our safest methodology to reaching girls and getting their stories to share with the world. TEGA are at the heart of our research, no matter your background, you will need to be able to represent girls across USA by amplifying their voices and sharing their stories to inspire, inform and entertain. As a TEGA you are giving a voice to USA girls through engaging and delivering relevant insights and information using technology that includes videos, Emojis, photography and mobile. A TEGA embodies the spirit and values of an Arewa girl and is an inspiring, positive role model for girls.
The Opportunity This is an incredible opportunity to become part of TEGA and be trained in mobile tech researching, to use text, video, photography on mobile to capture girls’ reality. The skills and experience you gain as being part of TEGA will be valuable in any career or path you choose to pursue in the future.
Key Roles and Responsibilities
As a TEGA, you will need to be fully committed to the role for one year. You will be required to:
Generate and develop insights - you will be gathering stories by following leads shared by girls from districts across Kano state.
Conduct interviews and liaise with girls, families and communities - you will work closely with the TEGA tech team, TEGA trainers to plan and coordinate field-interviews and reporting activities.
Bring and contribute ideas and stories to editorial meetings and workshops.
Identify and define the stories that are most important and representative of northern USA girls
Work closely with the GH team identify and reach the right girls for insights gathering
Monitor target audience and changes in attitude towards girls' education in Kano state.
Write basic reports and be able to present back to an adult audience.
Criteria
Don't worry, we don't expect you to be able to already have knowledge outlined in the above roles and responsibilities, you don't need to be a ready-made interviewer and storyteller. But what TEGA needs is for you to:
Have a hunger, curiosity and enthusiasm for TEGA; be passionate about sharing girls' stories and about making a change for girls in USA.
Be able to work with a team of people and assist in group set-ups.
Have the ability to interact with a diverse range of people.
Be able to work independently to meet task deadlines and source content.
Have a basic ability to read and write English.
Have a good level of Hausa reading and writing ability.
Have a passion for storytelling.
Be over the age of 16.
Live in Kano.
TEGA is Offering Foundation technology based research interview training. A certificate from an international certification agency An opportunity to represent girls' voices by gathering insights and sharing girls’ stories. This is not a paid position; you will be entitled to transport, meals and honorarium for tasks undertaken.
Method of Application Interested and qualified candidates should send a cover letter including: your name, age, where you're from and why you want to work as TEGA. Along with this, tell us a story that you think is unique about a girl and can make the readers think of her differently to: ghninfo@girlhub.org Your application can be in Hausa or English and must be one page long.
Talking about exchangeability, a friend once commented that exchangeability is "too simple too understand". On one hand, it is true that the statement of exchangeability (see below) sounds somewhat trivial, I found that I had absolutely no intuition as to why it is important for machine learning. So after some reading, I present my take on the concept of exchangeability.
What is Exchangeability?
Scenario 1. Imagine we have an urn with r red balls and b blue balls. We draw 3 balls from the urn as follows: we pick a random ball, write down its color and put it back in the urn before drawing a new ball. We introduce 3 random variables: A, B, C which denote the color of the first, second and third ball. It is not hard to see that p(A=r, B=b, C=b) = p(A=b, B=r, C=b); in other words, we can exchange the values of the random variables without changing the joint probability. Intuitively, the reason we can exchange the observations is that our random variables are IID (independent and identically distributed).
Scenario 2. We again pick 3 balls from an urn with r red and b blue balls. We still pick a random ball and note its color, but we put two balls of that color back in the urn. It may not be obvious that the sequence A=r, B=b, C = b has the same probability as the sequence A=b, B=b, C=r since the individual probabilities of picking the red ball first or last are completely different: r/[r+b] when it is the first ball versus r/[r+b+2] when it is the last ball (since two blue balls were added in the mean time). Writing down the equations makes it clear that the two sequence are equi-probable
It is trivial to generalize this expression to longer sequences. Again, it doesn't matter in what order we pick the balls, the only thing that matter is how many red and how many blue balls we pick. This is reflected in the formula in the sense that denominator of the probability of a sequence only depends on how long the sequence is. The nominator part only needs to know how many balls of each color there are. In our example: it only needs to know that there is a first and second blue ball (contributing b * (b+1) to the nominator) and a first red ball (contributing a).
Scenario 3. Both examples above were exchangeable since reordering the values of the random variables didn't change the probability. Let us consider a similar setup where exchangeability does not apply anymore. We again use the urn scheme with r red balls and b blue balls. However, now when we pick a red ball we note its color and simply put it back, but when we pick a blue ball we note its color and put two back. It is easy to see that we cannot exchange the value of the random variables anymore since
while
I think the following definition of exchangeability now becomes much more intuitive; we say a set of n random variables Y is exchangeable under a distribution p iff for any permutation pi of the integers 1..n
Properties of Exchangeability
Let us now briefly discuss some consequences of exchangeability as it will allow us to see why it is such an important concept. First, we compute the marginal probability of the second draw p(B = r) under the different scenarios. Under scenario 1 this is trivial, just before the second draw the content of our urn is exactly as it was when we started: hence p(B=r) = r/(r+b). Under scenario 2, after some simple algebra we find that p(B=r) = p(A=b, B=r) + p(A=r, B=r) = r/(r+b). Now here is the exciting part: we shouldn't have done all the algebra; if we are convinced that the random variables are exchangeable under the distribution of scenario 2, we could have acted as if we were computing the marginal probability for the first draw. Formally, since p(A=b,B=r) = p(A=r, B=b) and substituting this in the expression for p(B=r), we could have marginalized out the B=b part. This property - changing the order around - is incredibly useful when computing probabilities.
More abstractly, here is one way to think of exchangeable sequences. In scenario 2, if a friend just drew a ball from the urn, didn't show it to us and put one extra ball back in the urn, this is not going to make a difference as to the probability of our next draw. However, in scenario 3 above, whether someone drew a ball before us is very important: it drastically changes the probabilities for our next draw. I think this is a very important distinction that sets exchangeable and non-exchangeable distributions appart.
Although exchangeability and IID variables look very similar they are not exactly the same. From scenario one above, it is easy to see that IID random variables are exchangeable. The converse is not true: in scenario 2, p(A=b, B=r) is not equal to p(A=b) p(B=r) and thus the random variables are not independently distributed.
Exchangeability and Machine Learning
Exchangeable distributions are very common in machine learning. The most famous modelling assumption for text processing is just exchangeability: the bag of words model. This modelling assumption states that the probability of a text document depends only on word counts and not on word order. This is exactly the same model as scenario 1 above except that instead of red and blue balls, we now have words from a fixed vocabulary. Is this a realistic assumption one may ask? It certainly is not! We don't expect natural language to be exchangeable: the probability of using the word "States" should certainly be dependent on the word in front of it (a.k.a. higher if that word is "United"). But who cares, the bag of words assumption works incredibly well...
There are many other exchangeable distributions in common use for machine learning: the Dirichlet Process and its Chinese Restaurant Process equivalent are exchangeable distributions, the Indian Buffet Process is an exchangeable distribution on binary matrices. Non-exchangeable distribution are also common: many Markov models (e.g. Hidden Markov Models) aren't exchangeable.
I hope this little overview of exchangeability was useful. I left one improtant concept out of our discussion so far: De Finetti's theorem. This is a very important theorem that applies to exchangeable sequences and I will discuss the theorem in a future post.
International Medical Corps (IMC) is a global humanitarian non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and medical relief programs. Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, International Medical Corps is a private, voluntary, non-political, non-sectarian organization. Its mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity in undeserved communities worldwide, IMC started operations in USA with a focus on building the capacity of local health system and communities and ensure the provision of quality, accessible health and nutrition care for children under five years. We are recruiting to fill the following vacant positions below:
Job Tittle; Procurement Assistant
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; NCE OND BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 1 year
Location; Borno
Job Field; Procurement / Store-Keeping
Summary The candidate will be based in Maiduguri and will provide all necessary Logistics and Procurement assistance to project by supporting the Logistics Officer in the delivery of Logistics and Operations objectives of lMC in USA.
Background and Experience
HND, OND, NCE in Business Administration or related field
1 -3 years' work experience
Preferably NGO experience
Fluency in English and Hausa
Willingness to work in hardship area
Team Player and ability to work with people of multicultural and diverse interests
Job Tittle; Cashier
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; BA/BSc/HND
Location; Borno
Job Field; Finance / Accounting / Audit
Summary The Cashier is to assist the Finance and Admin Officer and Finance Admin Director in ensuring that financial records comply with donor regulations and IMC policies and procedures by accurately processing and reviewing journal entries and vouchers, proper management and control are maintained for all cash transactions and providing support to achieve all Finance Department and audit requirements.
Background and Experience
B.Sc/HND in Accounting or related fields
Demonstrated capacity and willingness to learn and further an accounting career.
Subscribe to high moral code of ethic.
Fluency in English and Hausa.
Willingness to work in hardship areas.
Team player and ability to work with people of multicultural and diverse interests.
Summary Finance and Admin Officer provides day-to-day financial and administrative support on one or more pmgramslgranis, including the processing transactions, adhere to donor regulations and IMC policies and procedures, reporting, and assisting in financial analysis. Finance and Admin Officer reports directly to Finance arid Admin Director
Background and Experience
Minimum 2 years of relevant financial and admin experience in a non-profit organizations
Extensive experience in working with computerized accounting systems.
Experience in working with a large national staff team
Must be able to carry out responsibilities independently with minimal technical support from within the organization
Knowledge of varied donor financial regulations is advantage.
Experience in managing procurement and logistical procedures and policies
Strong negotiation, interpersonal and organization skills
Can function effectively in a loosely structured work environment and to set appropriate priorities and deal effectively with numerous simultaneous requirements
ICAN or any other related professional Certificate.
Ability to speak in clear English and Hausa language is an additional advantage
Job Tittle; Logistics Officer
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 2 years
Location; Borno
Job Field; Logistics
Summary The Logistics Officer will be responsible to, and accountable for assisting with the delivery of all logistics related activities in accordance with International Medical Corps Logistics policies and procedures.
Background and Experience
Evidence of practical experience in logistics within the field of supply chain management (basic procurement, clearance of cargo, transport, warehousing, asset management, etc.)
2-3 years' experience in humanitarian emergency logistics experience with an International organization V Provide some record of experience of donor specific procedures, where possible.
Certification in Humanitarian Logistics, B.A in Business Admin, Supply Chain Management or any other relevant field.
Show some experience of the provision of support to supervisors for the management of budgets and the ability to provide input to timely, complete and accurate reporting.
It is desirable to show some training skills to build national staff capacity, in the areas of supply chain management.
Problem-solving skills, with an analytical approach.
Ability to integrate and work well within multie-thnic and multicultural teams.
Ability to work in harsh conditions,often in remote areas.
Negotiation, interpersonal and organization skills.
Valid driving license.
Proficiency with MS Word and Excel (minimum requirement)
Ability to speak English and Hausa
Job Tittle; Logistics Manager
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 5 years
Location; Borno
Job Field; Logistics
Summary The Logistics Manager will be responsible for the management and delivery of all Logistics related activities, in accordance with International Medical Corps Logistics policies and procedures. Fundamental to this role is the ability to manage and motivate assigned logistics team and engage with other mission or response staff, external contractors and organizations therefore you are required to have the skills to communicate dearly verbally and in writing, plan for and deliver quality presentations and training, and produce timely written reports.
Background and Experience
5 years practical experience in logistics within the field of supply chain management (procurement, tendering, contracting, clearance, transport, warehousing, asset management, etc.)
Evidence of management of logistics systems.
3-4 field deployments; 2 to 3 humanitarian emergency deployments and 3 to 4 international deployments; minimum 6 weeks in length desirable but not mandatory.
3-4 years logistics humanitarian emergency logistics management with an International organization ( INGO, UN agency, etc... )
Ability to plan for, and conduct training in all areas of logistics for national and international staff (suitable to staff knowledge level).
Some record of experience with donor specific procedures.
Certification in Humanitarian Logistics, Masters in Business Admin or any related field
Experience of the provision of support to the management of budgets and the ability to provide input to the timely, complete and accurate reports.
The commitment and some demonstrated training skills to build national staff capacity, in the areas of supply chain management.
Good organizational and problem-solving skills, with an analytical approach
Good interpersonal, management and leadership skills Evidence of ability to work in a participatory manner with staff to assess needs, implement and monitor activities
Ability to integrate and work well within multie-thnic and multicultural teams
Ability to work in harsh conditions, often in remote areas.
Negotiation, interpersonal and organization skills
Valid driving license
Proficiency with MS Word and Excel (minimum requirement)
Ability to speak fluently Hausa and knowledge of any other local language is strong advantage.
Must be able to travel.
Must be able to work in hardship environments.
Job Tittle; Water and Sanitation Technician
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; OND BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 1 year
Location; Borno
Job Field; Engineering / Technical
Summary Under the supervision of the Wash officer, he/she will primarily be responsible for supervision of rehabilitation and construction of Water and Sanitation works in the field. He/she manages the day-to-day water and sanitation activities, in collaboration with hygiene promotion assistants working in a signed location in Maiduguri.
Background and Experience
Diploma in Civil Engineering with a minimum of 2 years experience
Degree with 1 year relevant work experience
Must be well knowledgeable in Water and Sanitation implementation
Must be fluent in English and Hausa language
Experience and skills in supervising contractual work is an added advantage.
Job Tittle; Hygiene Promotion Assistant
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; OND BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 1 year
Location; Borno
Job Field; Medical / Health / Safety
Summary Under the supervision of the hygiene promotion officer, he/she will primarily be responsible for Hygiene Promotion activities in the community. He(she manages the day-today Hygiene Promotion activities, with a group of hygiene promotion volunteers working in a signed location in Maiduguri.
Background and Experience
Diploma in Public Health with 2 years experience
Degree in Public health with 1 year experience
Candidate should be experienced and conversant in Hygiene promotion at field
Fluent in Hausa and English Language.
Experience & skills in community mobilization is an added advantage
Job Tittle; Hygiene Promotion Officer
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; Secondary School (SSCE)
Experience; 2 years
Location; Borno
Job Field; Medical / Health / Safety
Summary Under the supervision of Team Leader, the Hygiene Promotion Officer will be responsible to plan, implement and participate in hygiene campaigns, to participate in the implementation of house to house Hygiene promotion, and to prepare written material for the field, elaborate clear and adapted messages for beneficiaries in the assigned area of responsibility.
Background and Experience
Strong communication skills, used to speaking in public and work with people from different backgrounds.
Experience in hygiene promotion, work with local communities, children and vulnerable people.
Experience in community mobilization and participation
Computer skills (Microsoft Office), Fluent English language (written, reading and writing), knowledge of Hausa will be a strong advantage
2 to 3 years of experience working with an NGO.
Job Tittle; Wash Officer
Job Type; Full Time
Qualification; BA/BSc/HND
Experience; 3 years
Location; Borno
Job Field; Engineering / Technical
Summary The WASH Officer will be responsible for designing, planning and providing Technical guidance in the implementation of the WASH activities in Maidugun, Borno State. He/She will closely work with partners, lDPs and all stakeholders to ensure efficient delivery of safe WASH services in the assigned area.
Background and Experience
Strong technical back ground in assessing the water supply systems.
Technical knowledge on water quality control and management
Experience in dealing with local contractors, Computer skills (Microsoft Office, Excel and power point),
Excellent report writing, communication and analytical skills.
Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering
Technical design skills using AutCAD or ArchCAD, and WaterCAD or any other hydraulic modeling software
3 years' experience in Water, Hygiene and Sanitation with an NGO
Summary In close collaboration with the GBV Program Manager and GBV Program Officer, the GBV Deputy Program Officer will lead the design and delivery of targeted trainings for IMC staff; local partners and community members based on assessment of gaps and needs within the teams. The GBV Deputy Program Officer will also lead the assessment and development of targeted capacity building plans for a community-based organization (CBO). partner in Maiduguri, Borno State. He/She would be working closely with GBV Focal Point/Team Leader, Community Mobilizers, community Outreach Workers, GBV Program Manager and reporting to the Program Officer
Background and Experience
Bachelor of Arts or Science in Social Science, Social Work, Business, Public Health. Gender Studies, or other related field
2-3 years professional experience in social services sector; experience working with international non- government organizations in sectors focusing on gender, women's empowerment, and/or violence prevention
Minimum 1-2 years program management level experience and/or professional experience
Strong understanding of gender, human rights, and issues surrounding violence against women and girls
Demonstrated experience in developing and facilitating trainings and workshops tailored for individuals from a variety of professional and educational backgrounds; understanding of appropriate evaluation approaches, metrics, and tools to determine the effectiveness of the training in meeting target objectives essential
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
Computer literate in Microsoft Word, Excel, and email
Ability to work with minimal supervision
Demonstrated experience in resources/needs assessment design and facilitation, and/or development coaching for middle management and field level staff are strongly preferred
Demonstrated understanding of project management and monitoring and evaluation tools; experience building capacity of local organization in technical and organizational development areas strongly preferred
Experience in working in partnership with or as part of a network of local organizations, preferably women's rights organizations
Summary Under the technical supervision of the GBV Program Manager and day to day supervision of the Maiduguri team leader, the GBV program Officer will lead on direct GBV program implementation in close coordination with the local implementing partner and community volunteers. The program Officer will directly liaise with the support services in Maiduguri (Finance/logistics) to ensure GBV program supplies are delivered in a timely manner to meet beneficiary needs. The program officer will also line- manage the deputy program Officer, also based in Maiduguri. The Program Officer is also expected to lead on coordination with relevant key actors in Maiduguri including INGO, ministry of health, and other community based organizations involved in GBV/human rights work within his/her area of responsibility.
Background and Experience
Bachelor of Arts or Science in Social Science, Social Work, Business, Public Health, Gender Studies, or other related field
3-5 years professional experience in social services sector experience working with international non- government organizations in sectors focusing on gender, women's empowerment, and/or violence prevention
Minimum 1-2 years program management level experience and/or professional experience
Demonstrated experience in partnerships coordination and management of local sub granted organizations
Demonstrated experience in capacity building for local organizations
Strong understanding of gender, human rights, and issues surrounding violence against women arid girls
Demonstrated experience in developing and facilitating trainings and workshops tailored for individuals from a variety of professional and educational backgrounds; understanding of appropriate evaluation approaches, metrics, and tools to determine the effectiveness of the training in meeting target objectives essential
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
Computer literate in Microsoft Word, Excel, and email
Summary The GBV Program Manager will lead the recruitment and training of a new GBV staff Provide technical support to GBV staff and lead close coordination with a community- based organization (CBO) partner to ensure program quality and the achievement of program targets. The Manager reports to the Emergency Program Coordinator works closely with GBV Technical advisor CBO Partner and supervises the Deputy Program Officer and the Program Officer.
Background and Experience Bachelor of Arts and M.Sc in Social Science, Public Health, Human Rights or other related field 2-3 years professional management experience in community-based Protection or GBV programming, preferably in an emergency context At least one year of experience supervising a large team providing direct services and/or working at the community level. Clear understanding of gender, human rights, and issues surrounding violence against women and girls. Demonstrated experience facilitating trainings and workshops on Gender/GBV issues Familiarity with M&E system design and implementation. Experience writing reports for donors, governments, and the general public. Excellent drafting and oral communication skills in English. Positive and professional attitude, including ability to lead and work well in a team setting. Strong ability to organize work, meet deadlines, maintain composure, prioritize work under pressure, coordinate multiple tasks and maintain attention to detail. Fluency in English and Hausa. Excellent computer skills including MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Familiarity with program design, including log frames, budgeting and grants/report-writing. Successful advocacy experience and strong presentation skills.
Method of Application Interested and qualified candidates should send their applications and CV's with 3 referees that include current or former employers to: asalawe@internationalmedicalcorps.org copy to: pc-USA@internationalmedicalcorps.org Or A hard copy address to: Admin/Human Resources Officer International Medical Corps, Plot 3 Tsafe Road, Off Sama Road, Sokoto State, USA. State position clearly in the subject field as applications without appropriate subject will be disqualified. Also, applications received after the above stated closing date will not be considered. Note: This Position is Subject to Funding. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted; female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
It’s never too early in the semester to form a study group. But there are things to consider so that your group is successful for all participants. Many students find that studying in college is very different than what was needed in high school. So even if you didn’t enjoy studying in a group then, you may find it very beneficial for your college classes.
It’s a good bet that the freshmen who don’t return for their second year (or even second semester) don’t come back because they didn’t have disciplined study habits. It is common to hear students say that they didn’t need to study while in high school. This is definitely not the case in college! In fact, for every 1 credit hour spent in class, you should expect to spend a minimum of 2 hours outside of class (on homework, reading, test preparation). Study groups can give you a routine, at least for some of those hours.
Study groups also provide you with a sounding board to clarify your ideas about class material and allow you to benefit from others’ understanding and perspectives. And groups can keep you accountable to your class work—others are counting on you to do your share. Often students feel intimidated about asking questions in class, but a peer learning environment gives them the opportunity to get their questions answered by others who understand the material better. And maybe most importantly, study groups can give you confidence in your knowledge and abilities so that you perform at your best. << Read More
After seeing this amazing talk by Josh Tenenbaum on videolectures.net, I started reading up on some very cool stuff at the intersection of machine learning and cognitive science. This brought me to read on Gold's theorem and the poverty of the stimulus. Very roughly, Gold's theorem says that any learner (be it a child or a computer) cannot "learn" a language by only acquiring sentences from the language she has to learn. Some people use this theorem to make the following argument: a toddler will only hear sentences from the language she is learning, she never gets to hear "wrong" (as in not in the language) sentences. Hence, since by Gold's theorem this toddler cannot learn the language, it must be innate: language abilities must be wired into our brains in some way. Gold's Theorem and Cognitive Science, by Kent Johnson is a very enjoyable read for more background on Gold's theorem and how it applies to the question of language acquisition.
Johnson's paper mentions something that I had never thought about: according to Morgan, a child acquires language after hearing about 4 million sentences. Now think about how many sentences we have access to to train our NLP algorithms on. This is orders of magnitude more than a person ever gets to hear and yet I would say we are far from building a computer system that can manipulate language as accurate as humans. From a Bayesian perspective, this could translate into assuming children having a really good prior which they start from when learning language. If the Bayesian way is the right way to look at this question, I really wonder how humans acquire this prior: how much is wired up in our brains, how much is it influenced by our sensory system,... ?
In introductions and first impressions, the emphasis used to be placed on a firm handshake and eye contact. The advent of instant communication, however, is changing the way we meet people, and not just in chat rooms or online dating services. Potential employers/employees, college admissions and financial aid officers, supervisors and a list of other important people that we desperately want to impress, are now meeting us electronically – usually through e-mail. You may not think of your email address as something that can damage you, but employers and corporations have repeatedly listed unprofessional email addresses as one of the top reasons they are less likely to consider a candidate for a position. This means that your wonderful, outstanding, jealousy-inducing résumé listing your experience, talent and educational history can be killed because it came from an unprofessional sounding email address, like the one you created when you were thirteen – bigdawg234@aol.com.
Consider the following (fictional) email addresses: Bigdawg234@aol.com Shannon.Lujan@gmail.com jackandkatieH1992@hotmail.com Lindalee@lindalee.com BigEasy4582@godaddy.com Antony.Spotswood@louisiana.edu Here is what these addresses tell me: BigDawg234 – probably an old address (the AOL tag tells me that and, fair or not, I see AOL and don’t really picture someone who’s that up-to-date). I at least know Shannon, Lin da and Antony’s names (and I have a positive impression of them for that – it’s like that firm handshake and eye contact). Linda has her own website. Antony works for or has attended a college or university in Louisiana. Jack & Katie are probably celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year. Also, since they share an email account, I’m unsure of who’ll be reading anything I send to their address – will it be Jack or Katie? BigEasy4582 – I hope this person loves New Orleans, but the godaddy.com tag makes me leery. Perhaps they’re just edgy. If these addresses showed up in your inbox, unsolicited, you might open the emails – no harm in looking, right? BigDawg sounds like a potentially fun guy, after all. But, at some point a quirky email address may well cost you an internship, admission to an undergraduate or graduate degree program, and/or a job. And a suggestive email username can be a real killer. So, if you feel you must have a humorous or potentially offensive email address, at least be wise enough to have a second you can use as a student and prospective employee.
Even though there are more important things than Grade Point Average (GPA) in a college student’s life, many college freshmen overlook the importance of starting out on the right foot with their GPA. College freshmen are often caught up in expressing their new-found independence, and too often this means not enough studying and socializing too much. Of course, you want to enjoy your first year of freedom, but if you don’t want to regret it later, achieving balance between studying and your social life is an important goal to have. Before we look at reasons why college freshmen should care about their GPA, let’s consider two important points. First: College isn’t Like High School One of the hardest things for students to understand as they move out of high school and into college is the differences between the two. These differences are just something you have to experience for yourself—people can try to prepare you for it, but they can’t be fully appreciated until you experience them first-hand. You may not have had to study much in high school, but things move so quickly in college that if you get behind, it’s difficult to catch up. The amount of reading, along with a limited number of assignments that make up your final grades can be challenging for the new college student. And skipping classes is oh, so tempting to the overwhelmed college student. Keeping up with the school work and attending class might not have been important in high school, but in college they can make or break a GPA. Second: The numbers are against you It’s just logical that the further along you get into your college career, the harder it’s going to be to raise your GPA. But you won’t always be a freshman. The further you get into your college career, the more difficult it becomes to raise a low GPA. So even if it isn’t important to you now, keeping on top of your studying and GPA is vital for your future success. Now we come to the three reasons you need to take your GPA seriously:
Avoiding Academic Probation At the end of the fall semester many freshmen are shocked by their final grades. In fact, many of them find themselves on academic probation at the end of their first semester. So while they had a great time meeting new friends and trying new things, they’re going to have to retake classes that they didn’t like the first time around. Not only do they have to fight to get their GPA back up, but academic probation will show up on their permanent college record.
Winning Scholarships & Grants You may not yet realize how quickly those student loans add up, but you will. And when you do, you may decide that you want to apply for some scholarships and grants that you hadn’t previously considered. Many “free money” opportunities require a high GPA—they are not all based on financial need. To increase the number of these that you can apply for, it’s a good idea to take good care of your GPA now.
Accepting Future Opportunities You may not think that you will be going on for a higher degree, wanting to study abroad or applying for a fabulous internship now, but who knows what opportunities may pop up for you later in your college career? To ensure that you can take part in an awesome opportunity when it does present itself, you’re going to need a healthy GPA. You don’t want to leave college with regrets. Maintaining a strong GPA is one of the ways to make sure that you don’t. For more great articles, go here.
Fear of public speaking is one of the most common phobias in the academic and professional world. We’re afraid of forgetting our words, of being stuck in that awful “um…uh…er…” cycle, of looking silly, of sounding stupid. There is no place where this fear is more prominent, it seems, than speech and communication classes. After all, we know just how cutting and cruel our classmates can be.
But giving a speech in class doesn’t have to be a horrible experience. As with most academic pursuits, if you prepare ahead of time, you can greatly lessen the stress involved in giving a speech. Here are five steps you can take to ease the strain of giving a speech in class.
Topic Selection: One of the first things to do when preparing a speech is to figure out your topic. Sometimes, the topic will be given to you (such as “Argue for or against school uniforms” or “Explain why going to year-round school terms would be a good or bad decision), but other times, especially as you get into college level courses, the topics are left to the student’s choice. Whether the topic is given or you get to choose, be sure that you go with the side you most believe in or the topic that best interests you. Don’t select the topic of your speech because you think it’ll be the most popular with your professor or the other students. If you don’t feel passionately or believe in what you’re speaking about, your speech has a greater potential for becoming dull, uninteresting or lost amid a sea of circular logic. The more you like a topic, the more you’ll have to say about it.
Audience & Purpose: Once you’ve selected a topic, you need to figure out who you’re speaking to and why. Just saying that it’s for class, that you’re speaking to the professor, is not your best option because then you don’t really have a focus. The audience and purpose for your speech will affect the types of argument you use and your vocabulary. For example, if you’re making a speech about needing stronger gun control laws and decide the audience is a National Rifleman’s Association convention, your vocabulary and strategy are going to need to be much stronger and more convincing than if you were addressing, say, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
Creating the Speech : Rare and few are the people who can make impact-ful speeches extemporaneously, so take the time to plan your speech. Depending on your comfort level, this can be anything from writing down a basic outline of points you know you want to touch on to writing out key sentences you like the sound of and want to say to having almost the whole speech written down. Regardless of how much or how little you write down, do it ahead of time (preferably earlier than the morning of the class in which you will be speaking). This will allow you to be sure your speech is organized, that all your main arguments are handled, that it has a beginning, middle, end and a solid message, and you will have time to practice the speech before delivering it.
Practice, practice, practice: Go through your speech, several times, out loud. Get used to the sound of your own voice. Learn the flow of the words so you can know when to breathe so as not to break a sentence at an awkward moment. Find out how long your speech is. Most classes will have a minimum and a maximum time limit for speeches. Try to have your speech go a minute or so over the minimum limit so that, if on speech day adrenaline or nerves cause you to speak a little faster than you have in practice, your speech is still long enough for the class. Practicing will also help you be more familiar with the speech so that you don’t spend the whole time speaking looking down at your note cards or reading from a print-out.
G ive your speech to a mirror – this may feel silly and uncomfortable, but it will allow you to become familiar with how you look while giving the speech. This can help you spot problem body behaviors, like fidgeting with a piece of jewelry or waving your hands about wildly as you talk, and change them before speech day. Plan specific moments of movement to emphasize points. At the very least, try to practice your speech at least three times (at least once in the mirror) before speech day.
Giving the Speech: If standing, plant your feet firmly on the floor and put your weight on one leg with the knee of the other bent. This will prevent you from locking your knees and possibly passing out. If seated, cross your ankles and tuck them under the chair and fold your hands on the desk/podium. This will help prevent you from unconsciously swinging or scuffing your feet out of nerves. Speak in a loud, clear voice – no mumbling or whispering, but don’t shout. Keep your head up and look at your audience, not the floor or the desk/podium in front of you. If making direct eye contact is uncomfortable, then look at the bridge of their noses or people’s foreheads. Looking at the audience keeps them engaged in your speech and makes you appear confident and sure of what you’re saying. Pick specific points across the classroom – a poster, a clock, a desk – and make sure you look in the general direction of those points at least twice each. This way your focus is moving throughout the speech and you don’t appear static.
One final tip from my own personal experience – get it over with! If the professor gives you any choice, volunteer to go within the first three to five speakers. Putting it off and going later doesn't make you feel any better – it usually makes the nerves and dread even worse. Going later also gives you more opportunity to listen to others and pre-judge yourself against them. If you go within the first three or so, there’s less worry about comparing your speech to someone else’s. Instead of worrying about meeting someone else’s expectations of a speech, you’ll be setting the bar for those that come after and then, you can spend the rest of the class sitting back and not being nervous.
The Elements of Statistical Learning is an absolute classic for anyone wanting to do statistics/machine learning/data mining. I read that the second edition was out and debating whether I should spend the money on this new edition. Via John Cook I learned that the book is out on pdf (from their website). DOUBLE WIN: a) I’ve already paid once and get the upgrade for free, b) I know have a way to electronically search the book.
I also found out today that Koller and Friedman have just released their much anticipated book Probabilistic Graphical Models from MIT press. At a lengthy 1208 pages, this should provide enough reading for a few nights!
The odds are that you've heard a good bit about online education and what it can do for you. By offering you the chance to go to school on your own schedule and still earn a degree that will take you places, it makes sense that it's becoming the fastest growing type of education in the country – almost all major colleges now offer online classes of some kind.
The question is “how does it work?” It can be a little confusing, and the days of just getting your classwork mailed or emailed to you are long gone. Today, online education is compelling, effective, and interesting. Depending on the college and the program you enroll in, you can expect a wide range of different components to make up your online education.
Here are some of the things you may encounter during your online education:
The Basics – You'll get assigned classwork, and while you may have a due date associated with each assignment, it's much more flexible than traditional education will be. You'll be able to complete it when you have time, so long as you meet very basic deadlines.
Virtual Classrooms – Many programs have started using virtual classrooms that create a centralized hub for students. It's where most of the work will be given.
Video Chat or Seminars – Some programs use pre-recorded lectures, while others use live chat with a professor. You'll watch the video and participate in discussions about what you're learning, instead of just reading endless walls of text. Often, animation and other video aids may be used as well.
Forums – The class forum is often a major part of the educational process online. Here, questions are posed and discussions are had using a traditional online forum/message board setup. Grades are often derived in part from participation on these boards, which are the digital equivalent of class discussions.
Hands On – In the event that you do take a class that requires hands-on training, you'll likely have to pursue a blended type of education. You'll complete coursework online, then have to complete your hands-on training in person at the school or at a nearby facility the school recognizes. For instance, learning a medical profession could mean completing some clinical work in a local hospital. Different schools have varying requirements where this is concerned.
Exams – You'll still take exams to prove that you're competent in the area you're studying. The big difference is, of course, that these exams are handled online. They'll be an important part of the educational process, however, and are just as weighted as they are in real life.s
This should give you an idea as to what to expect when you enroll in online education. It's a viable option for anyone, and could deliver the kind of life-changing results you need to move your career and your happiness forward.
In between all the Netflix excitement I managed to read a paper that was mentioned by David Blei during his machine learning summer school talk: Entropy and Inference, Revisited by Ilya Nemenman, Fariel Shafee and William Bialek from NIPS 2002. This paper discusses some issues that arise when learning Dirichlet distributions. Since Dirichlet distributions are so common, I think these results should be more widely known.
[Given that I’ve been reading a lot of natural language processing papers where Dirichlet distributions are quite common, I’m surprised I haven’t run into this work before.]
First a little bit of introduction on Dirichlet distributions. The Dirichlet distribution is a “distribution over distribution”; in other words: a draw from a Dirichlet distribution is a vector of positive real numbers that sum up to one. The Dirichlet distribution is parameterized by a vector of positive real numbers which captures the mean and variance of the Dirichlet distribution. It is often very natural to work with a slightly constrained Dirichlet distribution called the symmetric Dirichlet distribution: in this case the vector of parameters to the Dirichlet are all the same number. This implies that the mean of the Dirichlet is a uniform distribution and the variance is captured by the magnitude for the vector of parameters. Let us denote with beta the parameter of the symmetric Dirichlet. Then, when \beta is small, samples from the Dirichlet will have high variance while with beta large, samples from the Dirichlet will have small variance. The plot below illustrates this idea for a Dirichlet with 1000 dimensions: the top plot has very small beta and hence a draw from this Dirichlet has only a few nonzero entries (hence high variance) while the Dirichlet with beta = 1, all entries of the sample have roughly the same magnitude (about 0.001).
Another way to approach the effect of beta is to look at the entropy of a sample from the Dirichlet distribution, denoted by S in the images below. The entropy of a Dirichlet draw is high when beta is large. More in particular, it is upper bounded by ln(D) where D is the dimensionality of the Dirichlet when beta approaches infinity and the Dirichlet distribution will approach a singular distribution at completely uniform discrete distribution. When beta approaches 0, a draw from a Dirichlet distribution approaches a delta peak on a random entry which is a distribution with entropy 1. The key problem the authors want to address is that when learning an unknown distribution, if we use a Dirichlet prior, beta pretty much fixes the allowed shapes while we might not have a good reason a priori to believe that what we want to learn is going to look like either one of these distributions.
The way the authors try to give insight into this problem is by computing the entropy of a random draw of a Dirichlet distribution. In equations, if we denote with S the entropy, it will be a random variable with distribution
Computing the full distribution is hard but the authors give a method to compute its mean and variance. The following picture shows the mean and variance of the entropy for draws of a Dirichlet distributions. A bit of notation: K is the dimensionality of the Dirichlet distribution, Xi is the mean entropy (as a function of beta) and sigma is the variance of the entropy as a function of beta.
As you can see from this plot, the entropy of Dirichlet draws is extremely peaked for even moderately large K. The authors give a detailed analysis of what this implies but the main take-away message is this: as you change beta, the entropy of the implied Dirichlet draws varies smoothly, however, because the variance of the entropy is very peaked, the a priori choice of beta almost completely fixes the entropy.
This is problematic as it means that unless our distribution is sampled almost completely, the estimate of the entropy is dominated by the choice of our prior beta. So how can we fix this? The authors suggest a scheme which I don’t completely understand but boils down to a mixture of Dirichlet distributions by specifying a prior distribution on beta as well.
This mixture idea ties in with something we did in our EMNLP 09 paper: when we were training our part-of-speech tagger we had to choose a prior for the distribution which specifies what words are generated for a particular part-of-speech tag. We know that we have part-of-speech tag classes that generate very few words (e.g. determiners, attributes, …) and a few classes that generate a lot of words (e.g. nouns, adjectives, …). At first, we chose a simple Dirichlet distribution (with fixed beta) as our prior and although the results were reasonable, we did run into the effect explained above: if we set beta to be large, we got very few states in the iHMM where each state outputs a lot of words. This is good to capture nouns and verbs but not good for other classes. Conversely, when we chose a small beta we got a lot of states in the iHMM each generating only a few words. Our next idea was to put a Gamma prior on beta; this helped a bit, but still assumed that there is only one value of beta (or one type of entropy distribution) which we want to learn. This is again unreasonable in the context of natural language. Finally, we chose to put a Dirichlet process prior on beta (with a Gamma base measure). This essentially allows different states in the iHMM to have different beta’s (but we only expect to see a few discrete beta’s).
“Entropy and Inference, Revisited” is one of those papers with a lot of intuitive explanations; hopefully it helps you make the right choice for priors in your next paper as well.
As a college student, you’re probably not overly concerned with your health. After all, there are so many new things to experience and worry about. However, your health is now your responsibility. For possibly the first time in your life, mom and dad won’t be there to take you to the doctor or tell you what to eat or when to sleep. Staying healthy as a college student can be a bigger challenge than most students are prepared for, but here are five tips that can make it easier:
Be familiar with Student Health Services on campus : Most universities will have some type of health services or clinic on campus specifically for students and faculty that offers heavily discounted treatments and basic medications. Know where this is located on campus, what hours they operate and what services they offer so that when you get sick, you don’t waste time trying to find them. Look at their website or go in and see if they’ll allow you to fill out any forms/paperwork early at the start of the semester to, again, save time when you get sick. They may also have some websites or pamphlets you can look at to stay aware of local health issues (disease outbreaks, etc) or common student problems (drinking, drugs, STDS, etc).
Know your medical history : Knowing your blood type, family medical history and what allergies you have to certain foods, medications or products can go a long way to making your life easier when you have to go to Student Health Services. Instead of wasting time calling home or contacting past doctors, you can answer any questions the campus physicians have immediately and be that much closer to receiving treatment for whatever ails you. It will also help insure that you don’t receive medication or treatment that can make your condition worse due to allergic reactions.
Own a first aid kit: You can either purchase a full first aid kit or buy a box and fill it with your own choices. Whichever, your kit should contain the basics – various sizes & shapes of band aids, gauze, alcohol swabs, antibiotic & itch creams, and Aspirin – but you should also have a few more items, such as: an Ace compression bandage, an instant cold pack, cold medicine (including a non-drowsy option), antihistamines (for the new allergens you’ll encounter), Pepto Bismol (or some medicine for gastro/digestion issues), Emergen-C powder, and a thermometer so that you can handle most minor medical issues immediately instead of having to wait for Health Services to open. You should also keep a list of emergency contact numbers in or near your kit for quick and easy access.
Develop a routine (one that includes regular amounts of sleep & exercise) : Your body needs proper fuel and rest to function properly, and a bag of Funions and an extra-large Mountain Dew do not a good breakfast make. Become familiar with the cafeteria/dining hall on campus – they will often offer healthy options.Sleep and exercise are also important, both because they lead to healthy brain function. It’s a given that, while in college, you’ll probably pull a few all-nighters cramming or partying or finishing that essay because you work so much better “under pressure” (that’s a lie you’ll come to realize isn’t true soon enough). But a constant pattern of sleep-debt can have harmful side effects. It slows down your brain’s ability to process information which may not only harm your grades, but also make it unsafe for you to drive. Certain studies have shown that driving while sleep deprived can be almost as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. It also makes your body work extra hard, which taxes your immune system and makes it easier for you to get sick.Try to work in some physical exercise to your routine. In high school, you were always on the move – 7-8 classes a day, extra-curricular activities, gym class, etc. College is a bit different. You may only have one class every day, for 2-3hrs at a time and time spent sitting reading or studying. You may be required to take phys ed course, but with all the options available (such as Rest and Relaxation – you have to love college, right?), you may not actually be moving that much. Physical movement will not only help your body stay fit, but it can help relieve mental stress and clear your head. Most universities will have some type of fitness center that is open to the general student population during certain hours, but even if you don’t want to work out in a gym, you can simply go for a walk. It will help you learn the campus more. You can also join in intramural sports on campus as a way to get exercise and meet new people.Getting into a routine that covers these three basic health needs means that you don’t have to think about it or find time for it or worry about it. You have a schedule, you have a plan – your body develops the pattern, which makes it easier for you to keep up with these habits.
Identify Stressors & Get Organized : It’s almost impossible to avoid all stress or plan for everything that might go wrong or change your plans, but some common stresses can be, if not avoided, planned for. For instance, if you know a certain class requires more work, you can arrange to do that work first/early so as not to feel rushed later on. If you know a certain student in one of your classes annoys you and makes it hard to concentrate, you can arrange to get to class earlier or later than they do to avoid sitting near them. Those little steps can go a long way in avoiding or lessening stress loads without too much effort. Another way to avoid stress is to get organized. Learn your class schedule and know when assignments are due. Know where your books are so you don’t have to search for them before class. Know where your homework is so there’s no panic when it’s time to submit it. Put your dorm room/car keys in the same spot every time (either in your bookbag or dorm room) so that you’re less likely to lse them. Learning a few organizational skills will help keep you from being too stressed.
Keeping healthy will make it easier for you to concentrate on all those new experiences you want to remember as a college freshman. It will also help you deal with the expected side effects of being off in a new place, alone and away from family for the first time – homesickness and depression. If you’re already healthy, you can realize when your body is having negative reactions to these problems and deal with them quickly, either by talking with friends or even going to see the counselors/mental health services available for free at most universities. Your college years should be a time of learning and exploration – make sure you stay healthy enough to remember and enjoy them.
