Category: in english

“We got high SDs in our user study? Now what?”

Published by Joni on August 9, 2025

A major problem in user studies are high SDs (=standard deviation). People generally experience and perceive things differently. This imposes problems for statistical analysis of user study data, because methods are often based on means, e.g., means comparison (t-test, ANOVA). Consider two cases: participant A gives on a five-point likert scale the rating 5 to a system (maximum), participant B…

Four advantages human educators have in comparison to AI

Published by Joni on August 7, 2025

MIRH: Motivate, Inspire, Relay personal experiences, Hold accountable >> four advantages human educators have in comparison to AI MOTIVATE: People still rely on other people to be motivated. Except if a person has strong intrinsic motivation, then they don’t need to be motivated. But many students need to be motivated and the generic “Hello, I am your friendly AI assistant…

Learn chess as a PhD student

Published by Joni on August 5, 2025

Been playing chess recently. Chess is oddly similar to research. Thinking and writing require steps similar to moving pieces on board, with eventually the paper you’re writing being the board. Concepts and sentences are the pieces. You need to move them into the correct order (position) on the board. And there is a similar goal of making the opponent (reviewer)…

A collection of beginners’ mistakes on digital marketing (based on student answers)

Published by Joni on August 3, 2025

1. Google Ads is nowadays NOT much about selecting keywords >> Google Ads is no longer about keyword selection >> Google Ads is most typically selecting the keywords on your behalf, especially in Performance Max campaigns >> there can be some campaigns (e.g., brand) in which you’d still want to manually select keywords, but this practice is no longer the…

Incompleteness in job markets will always exist

Published by Joni on August 3, 2025

Replacing human labor does not equate to replacing humans. I’m arguing that humans will always need other humans. And for that reason, there’s always need for human work. This is sort of “Gödel’s incompleteness theorem”; that new innovations always yield new work tasks, job positions, and stuff for people to do. I’m basing this on historical precedence: during industrialization (starting…

Using AI to detect empty rhetoric (instead of just generating it)

Published by Joni on July 23, 2025

In addition to generating it (!), AI can be used for *detecting* empty rhetoric. Is the sentence below empty rhetoric? “By addressing both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors, AI-based chatbots can play a key role in creating effective learning environments.” >> Yes, it’s empty rhetoric – the sentence sounds academic but conveys no real substance: >> It makes a sweeping…

Factors that affect evaluation complexity

Published by Joni on July 23, 2025

evaluation complexity increases when: *task is more subjective*you have more coders*you have more categories*you have more data to code chance-adjusted agreement (as opposed to percentage agreement) metrics typically aim to consider these factors in their calculation (though there’s no easy way to quantify “subjectivity” except after the calculation; a low score can be of indicative of the subjective nature of…

The Dance of Dynamics

Published by Joni on July 21, 2025

Research involves some interesting “back and forth” dynamics. Two of them are: 1. “Zoom in, zoom out” dance 2. Expand, simplify The first one deals with how to write paragraphs. For example: “There is little research on the effects of persona modality on users’ attention” (<= zoom out sentence = talks about the big picture). “However, of those studies that…

“AI didn’t replace thinking—it demanded more of it”

Published by Joni on July 21, 2025

A quote from a panel discussion I participated recently:“AI didn’t replace thinking—it demanded more of it.” It is indeed our solemn duty, now more than ever, to ensure that the future generations get educated in thinking, whether logical, critical, or hypothetical. I don’t believe in the “calculator hypothesis” (=you don’t need to count because we have calculators; same way you…

How to cope with failure?

How to cope with failure?

Published by Joni on July 20, 2025

Failing is painful in academia. Rejection hurts, mentally and almost physically. And you get plenty of it. You get it MUCH MORE than success. So, it’s very tough. We need to learn to cope with failing to survive. Here’s a simple formula: Recharge … regroup … retry 1. Recharge = rest enough, take some time off from the screen, eat,…