This is a rather large conference, with more than 150 papers being presented. There were some very good seminars, several good papers and lots of wide-ranging discussion. But true to form, only the extremes stand out in my memory. The acme was a presentation on data mining, a subject that I was grateful to learn about and eager to start using. The pits was a paper ostensibly on the same subject.
There isn't much to say about Dr. Usama Fayyad's very good presentation on data mining -- you can go and get his book if you want. I do have quite a bit to say about the paper I identified as the pits. The co-author of that paper got up, in a technical conference devoted to specific ideas and their applications, and gave a 20-minute speech devoid of all content. At one point, he spoke at length (rather symbolically, I thought) with an empty slide. Several in the audience actually took out a copy of the proceedings of the conference to see if the submitted paper had anything worthwhile. Nada.
"So, what was so damn special about a specious presentation," you ask, "these happen all the time." Well, the fellow who presented the paper was black. I know it is terribly unfair to the individuals, but in a field where you are in a distinct minority (1 in 50 in this case), you should be careful about performing way under par. In a roomful of Japanese, the lone American should take care to be reasonably prepared -- dumbness on his part will reflect on all his countrymen. Blacks in science are no different.
