
UC Berkeley research fellow Michael Cohen dies at 25 - rudimental
http://www.dailycal.org/2017/10/04/uc-berkeley-research-fellow-michael-cohen-rising-star-in-computer-science-dies-at-25/
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anjellow
If anyone's interested, I found video of Michael Cohen as a guest lecturer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3umLs_SnhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3umLs_SnhQ)

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santaclaus
How does one publish 30 papers in 3 years? That is an insane rate!

Just navigating the political ramifications, dealing with revisions, etc, on
three or four a year is a serious pain in the ass, let alone ten.

~~~
rokob
What is considered a paper in CS is different than in many other fields. That
is not to say the content is not worthy of publication, just that they tend to
be shorter and often are more focused on a single issue. There are also
publications in conference proceedings that are usually an easier review
process. Looking at his top 10 by citation count on google scholar shows most
in proceedings and under 10 pages. Arguably it is more intellectual work, but
the process is less arduous so the rate isn't that insane.

~~~
santaclaus
> There are also publications in conference proceedings that are usually an
> easier review process.

The big CS conferences are around 20% acceptance rate, Science and Nature are
around 7%. So while easier than Science, that is still quite an
accomplishment!

~~~
fatjokes
Getting a paper into high-impact conferences are definitely still an
incredible accomplishment, but comparing these acceptance rates is a bit
misleading. Those CS conferences have a very narrow scope, while Science and
Nature literally cover any topic pertaining to science and nature... including
CS :).

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nschiefer
I'm a friend and colleague of Michael's at MIT. This article is very nice and
gives a good summary of what made Michael so special. In a lot of ways,
Michael was the animating "spirit" of the MIT theory group. He had an
encyclopedic knowledge and incredibly deep understanding of basically every
area of computer science, and many areas beyond; in the short year that I knew
him, we had conversations about everything from convex optimization to
computer architecture to rent control laws to Medieval philosophy.

Michael was a truly remarkable researcher. Ludwig's comments about him being
the type that you "only see a couple of times in a generation" are accurate. I
also recommend watching the start of Yin-Tat Lee's recent talk [1] at the
Simons Institute. Yin-Tat is a prolific researcher himself, so his comments
carry a lot of weight.

For those wondering about Michael's publication count: computer science (and
especially theoretical computer science) is a "high publication" field, in
part because of the nature of publishing in conferences and in part because
the field is young and there are many good open problems. Still, Michael's
publication record is abnormally strong and reflects his collaborative nature.
Regarding the comments about co-authorship, Michael could easily have been a
co-author on a dozen more papers if he had cared, since he often contributed
the main ideas to projects that he never formally joined. This was definitely
my experience collaborating with him. I expect that Michael will be more
prolific in the next year than many living researchers, from the point of view
of publishing.

His papers (incomplete list here [2]) are very well written, by the way. I
recommend checking them out.

The most incredible thing about Michael was the way he learned. If you talked
about something that he didn't understand, he'd quiz you about it until he
did. And he did this with everyone, from brand new grad students like me to
famous professors.

At the same time, Michael was incredibly generous. He liked to talk, and you
could interrupt him at any time and he'd explain everything to you with
astounding patience. Michael wasn't in science for glory; he just really loved
learning and teaching. He's already profoundly missed and our entire community
is shocked by his untimely passing. My deepest condolences go to Michael's
family.

We hope to have a memorial website up soon, especially since Michael was too
humble to have much of an online presence.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pIheZseT1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pIheZseT1U)

[2]
[https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=t3kDJHQAAAAJ...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=t3kDJHQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate)

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tabeth
Life is so precious. To think any one of us reading this could be gone
tomorrow.

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kylec
I'm morbidly curious what the odds are that someone reading this _will_ be
gone tomorrow. I'll bet it's non-trivial.

~~~
nkurz
I think you are right: the chances aren't extreme, but are non-trivial. This
looks to be a chart that has the mortality data necessary to answer your
question (although presumably it also includes "non-natural" causes like
suicide and homicide):
[https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html).
The first two columns show age, and the probability that a holder of an
American Social Security card who is of that age will die within the next
year. For all but the oldest ages, I think it should be accurate to simply
divide this by 365 to calculate the chance that an individual of that age will
die within 24 hours.

From the chart --- and oversimplifying HN demographics by assuming they match
those of chart and consist only of 30-year-old American males --- the
probability of death within the year is 0.0015; making each individual's daily
chance of death 0.000004, which is about 1 out 250,000. Unless I'm
misremembering, to calculate the chance that at least one person out of a
group of size N dies, it's easiest to exponentiate the probability of survival
(1 - .000004 == 0.999996) ^ N, and then subtract this from 1 to find the
chance of at least one death.

If we guess that we readers are one-thousand 30-year-old males, I think that
means there is about a half a percent chance that one of us will die before
tomorrow ((1 - (0.999996 ^ 1000)) == 0.004). If we instead assume ten-thousand
30-year-old males, then we get about a 4% chance that someone won't be around
after tomorrow. If we generously assume a hundred-thousand such readers, then
there is about a 30% chance that one of us won't make it another full day. I
don't know what the actual readership numbers are for this post (or maybe the
grandparent was self-referencing their own comment rather than the main post?)
but it seems likely that it's somewhere within that range.

If we use a more realistic age distribution for HN, the probability would go
up (older readers increase the probability more than younger readers decrease
it). On the other hand, if we assume that HN readers on average have better
health care and less risk of violence than randomly chosen Social Security
card holders, then the probability would go down. But suicide risk would
probably go the other way, so I don't know what the total correction factor
would be. Still, I'd guess this estimate would remain in the ballpark.
Corrections to my methodology or calculations appreciated.

~~~
glbrew
Nice analysis. One shortcoming is you group all deaths together; expected and
unexpected deaths. A considerable chunk of 30 year old's may be expected to
die, mostly from cancer.

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notfromhere
How does one die of natural causes at 25?

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Madmallard
Natural causes just means ruling out of external causes and accidental death.

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mfukar
I'd only made the acquaintance of Michael through a mutual friend. In but a
few hours, I became convinced this person is one in a billion. What a pity.

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imranq
Live as if you were going to die tomorrow, learn as if you were going to live
forever – Gandhi

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ssalazars
How does someone dies of "natural causes" at 25? This sounds more like an
unknown health condition.

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mxschumacher
dying from a disease is still a natural cause. Unnatural would be getting
killed, suicide, accidents etc.

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goialoq
The term "natural causes" is a misnomer for "non-human-agent causes".

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microcolonel
It fits the "natural versus artificial" dichotomy. i.e. anything is natural if
it comes about without human agency.

~~~
lutorm
If I die from a lightning strike while hiking, I'm pretty sure that's not
counting as "natural causes" either.

