In the corporate environment, if one acknowledges the source, that is not cheating nor stealing. There are indeed no rewards for reinventing the wheel.
In education, however, one has to learn fundamental skills and acquire rudimentary experience, while gaining a broad education. Thus, one does have to "reinvent the wheel" to demonstrate that one understands "wheels".
As an adjunct teaching undergraduate and graduate students, it is amazing to me how few of them want to learn, much less think. My personal estimate is that only 25% have a worthy performance ethic. I am merciless with cheaters, giving zeros in cases I can prove. As a result, my overall grade average is very low. Another factor that leads to this low average is the increasing push to gather "students" from further and further down the left hand side of the bell curve (as defined by performance ethic).
From the description of the test, I take it that all known tablets were scanned. The programmers then showed they could categorize those tablets.
How well does their program work on unknowns that are not part of their database?
A blind test is needed to show that tablets of those sculptors that are not part of ground truth can also be correctly categorized.
Yes indeed. Go for it. Don't let "age" get you down. It is not the glass ceiling people imagine it to be.
A bit about myself: I am 57 years old with a doctorate in computer science earned at 52, 24 years after receiving my Computer Engineering masters. Far from laying me off, the company I work for keeps raising my pay in an effort to keep me here longer than the present eleven years. The job entails solving difficult problems in computer applications. So, age has not been an issue for me at all.
Where I do see "age" being an issue is when people expect the pay of a senior person while doing junior level work. Other cases revolve around people having experience only in topic areas that no longer matter. A good example is expertise with vacuume tubes in an integrated circuit world. Experience only matters when the person is up to date on current topics. Otherwise, the person is just an expert in ancient history. In either case, "senior" people doing junior work or having expertise only in ancient history, the person is not worth the pay they are receiving and should expect to be laid off.
This is not to say that greed does not drive decisions certain companies make. They expect to make the product in or provide the service from a low-cost country and sell the result in a high-cost country. The claim is that this is good for the economy. Whose economy? The economy of the rich. It is horrible for the general population and is, in my personal opinion, part of what has led to the economic devastation we are currently experiencing.
You asked, "Old man at 35?" I've seen articles with the title, "Finished at 35?" The half-life of a technical degree is five years or less. If you don't keep up with technology in your field, you will indeed be "old" and "finished" very quickly. So, don't just get the degree, develop an attitude and process of life-long learning.
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In the corporate environment, if one acknowledges the source, that is not cheating nor stealing. There are indeed no rewards for reinventing the wheel. In education, however, one has to learn fundamental skills and acquire rudimentary experience, while gaining a broad education. Thus, one does have to "reinvent the wheel" to demonstrate that one understands "wheels". As an adjunct teaching undergraduate and graduate students, it is amazing to me how few of them want to learn, much less think. My personal estimate is that only 25% have a worthy performance ethic. I am merciless with cheaters, giving zeros in cases I can prove. As a result, my overall grade average is very low. Another factor that leads to this low average is the increasing push to gather "students" from further and further down the left hand side of the bell curve (as defined by performance ethic).
From the description of the test, I take it that all known tablets were scanned. The programmers then showed they could categorize those tablets. How well does their program work on unknowns that are not part of their database? A blind test is needed to show that tablets of those sculptors that are not part of ground truth can also be correctly categorized.
Yes indeed. Go for it. Don't let "age" get you down. It is not the glass ceiling people imagine it to be. A bit about myself: I am 57 years old with a doctorate in computer science earned at 52, 24 years after receiving my Computer Engineering masters. Far from laying me off, the company I work for keeps raising my pay in an effort to keep me here longer than the present eleven years. The job entails solving difficult problems in computer applications. So, age has not been an issue for me at all. Where I do see "age" being an issue is when people expect the pay of a senior person while doing junior level work. Other cases revolve around people having experience only in topic areas that no longer matter. A good example is expertise with vacuume tubes in an integrated circuit world. Experience only matters when the person is up to date on current topics. Otherwise, the person is just an expert in ancient history. In either case, "senior" people doing junior work or having expertise only in ancient history, the person is not worth the pay they are receiving and should expect to be laid off. This is not to say that greed does not drive decisions certain companies make. They expect to make the product in or provide the service from a low-cost country and sell the result in a high-cost country. The claim is that this is good for the economy. Whose economy? The economy of the rich. It is horrible for the general population and is, in my personal opinion, part of what has led to the economic devastation we are currently experiencing. You asked, "Old man at 35?" I've seen articles with the title, "Finished at 35?" The half-life of a technical degree is five years or less. If you don't keep up with technology in your field, you will indeed be "old" and "finished" very quickly. So, don't just get the degree, develop an attitude and process of life-long learning.