This is Andrew Chael. He wrote 850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm!

mensmod · 2019-04-11T12:24:31+00:00

This post has been removed for pushing known falsehoods.

EricAllonde · 2019-04-11T06:32:28+00:00

I found a comment on that thread which answered my question: why are all these posts going around with a picture of a woman and crediting her for the image?

I'm not trying to take anything away from Katie, but it seems like there has been a huge circle jerk saying "yeah she's the one who came up with the algorithm why aren't we putting thanks where thanks is due?" Then when people point out actually some other guy (I think some other male scientist actually came up with the algorithm) did most of the work the narrative becomes "why can't you stop being negative and just agree everyone worked hard". Like, do people not even see how hypocritical they are being by selectively recognizing people for their work because of their gender?

RacelessSexlessName · 2019-04-11T07:09:05+00:00

The voting on that entire post is just 'Wtf?' level odd. There's shit with votes in the crazy opposite direction I would expect as a developer.

EvrythingISayIsRight · 2019-04-11T09:06:47+00:00

I thought the Katie circlejerk today was a bit too much. Whenever the media has an obviously forced narrative going "omg this girl did X Y and Z!" I know to take it with a grain of salt. Kinda funny how they are actually cheapening their accomplishments as an affect XD

my_name_is_gato · 2019-04-11T06:57:04+00:00

But he's not a cute "girl next door sexy" person. Funny how every accomplishment a halfway pretty woman makes is way more important than when another white male manages to do what is expected of them.

JediBurrell · 2019-04-11T07:57:26+00:00

Why's this have to do anything with sex? It's not a competition. It's science, and it's amazing. There's no need to fight over it.

J_A_K_ER · 2019-04-11T07:35:27+00:00

in the original thread someone wrote this (it's pretty much the top comment):

I'm seeing a lot of comments in here by people who havent had experience with github. Githubs lines of code measurement is an estimate that is usually wrong and counts a lot of things that arent actually code. Andrew did write a good amount of code. But from a quick glance through this github, most of those "lines" are models and data, not code. He didn't write 95 percent of the code.

Hes extremely accomplished and obviously very talented but I doubt he wants to be pitted against his teammate using false statistics.

Edit: I'm on a team right now where they person with the most "lines of code" is a non coding member of the team who exclusively uploads new datasets and documentation. Their part of the project is extremely important but it would be completely false to call them the primary dev or to give them credit for the majority of the code

Foobyx · 2019-04-11T11:10:24+00:00

You are wrong. I checked the sources on github and while i m not an astrophysicist, i understand a codebase.

Adrew Chael was in charge of managing the codebase. It's mainly him who move the code from branch to branch: test, qualification, master, experiment1, experiment2, etc.

So he moved thousand of line of code everyday, but he didn't write it himself.

Same for the next 2 big contributors: they mainly move file, make some minor corrections, write documentation.

Bouman is indeed the main contributor to the algorithm, which do some thousands lines of code.

MajorWookie · 2019-04-11T08:04:01+00:00

Comment from OP

“She came up with the idea for the algorithm that their subteam used. Essentially this means that without her, he wouldn’t have had anything to code and their subteam wouldn’t have existed.

It’s a really cool algorithm idea too. I already posted this quote once, but I’ll share again here since it answers your questions a bit:

Vincent Fish, a research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, told CNN, “(Bouman) was a major part of one of the imaging subteams. One of the insights Katie brought to our imaging group is that there are natural images. Just think about the photos you take with your camera phone — they have certain properties. … If you know what one pixel is, you have a good guess as to what the pixel is next to it.”

MuffinMonkeyCat · 2019-04-11T11:20:02+00:00

Not seeing many replies in this threat to the top comment in the original thread:

"I'm seeing a lot of comments in here by people who havent had experience with github. Githubs lines of code measurement is an estimate that is usually wrong and counts a lot of things that arent actually code. Andrew did write a good amount of code. But from a quick glance through this github, most of those "lines" are models and data, not code. He didn't write 95 percent of the code.

Hes extremely accomplished and obviously very talented but I doubt he wants to be pitted against his teammate using false statistics.

Edit: I'm on a team right now where they person with the most "lines of code" is a non coding member of the team who exclusively uploads new datasets and documentation. Their part of the project is extremely important but it would be completely false to call them the primary dev or to give them credit for the majority of the code"

Sorry - i don't know how to format on mobile. But surely this and the other educated coding answers on the main thread should be echoed in this thread, no?

2019-04-11T09:26:54+00:00

"850,000 lines of code" No, that has to be mostly data generated from the algorithm.

MasterChris725 · 2019-04-11T10:01:42+00:00

Congrats to the whole team, because they all deserve the praise for their hard work.

JohnGenericDoe · 2019-04-11T11:08:22+00:00

Good on him, her and everyone involved. Fuck reddit for making this into a gender thing. It's almost patronising the way they treat her like she's subhuman or a child that couldn't achieve something.

If she was a fat ugly bint reddit wouldn't be interested in her to this extent. That's the horrid truth. It'd be great to just appreciate something amazing rather than a pissing contest.

TenYearsAnIncel · 2019-04-11T06:20:13+00:00

This is sexist. Half of the lines need to be written by women.

bakedpotato486 · 2019-04-11T08:29:18+00:00

Check out all the karma this post got; https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bbql1i/this_is_dr_katie_bouman_the_computer_scientist/

laid_on_the_line · 2019-04-11T09:40:21+00:00

This thread is one of the reasons why you have to check every post on feminism/mensrights or any other group which is prone to bubble-building twice.

At least on mensrights the corrections are not deleted outright. :)

spisko · 2019-04-11T11:13:00+00:00

He uploaded data sets, he still contributed but this posts makes it seem like a spotlight was stolen which is not the case. Great work to the whole team.

TheXanderp · 2019-04-11T08:59:57+00:00

If you dig just a millimeter down in this story - you find it's not accurate, he's not responsible for 95% of code - although i'm sure he contributed a lot.

rydogthekidrs · 2019-04-11T06:33:12+00:00

That’s really impressive. I wish I had that kind of programming knowledge/skill

Nucreum · 2019-04-11T13:44:52+00:00

Andrew Chael didn't wrote 850k lignes. He COMMITED the lines, because he's the dev team leader.
Andrew Chael wrote the library for the EHT imagery software.
Most of the lines are simply data.
There is a whole team in the project, like in every scientific project.
Katie Bouman have designed and coded the algorithm for the image reconstruction.
The MIT confirmed that.
The leader of the project Sheperd Doeleman confirmed that.
Andrew Chael HIMSELF confirmed that.
The photo of Katie Bouman you see everywhere... is took by Andrew Chael.

xoxo

2019-04-11T11:02:21+00:00

Don't you mean 850,000 lines of the program? That would be an absurdly long algorithm.

cokitussen · 2019-04-11T11:40:00+00:00

RREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

ukiyuh · 2019-04-11T11:41:48+00:00

But men are evil so this is obviously false

Steampunkfox999 · 2019-04-11T11:41:56+00:00

laurenfckery · 2019-04-11T11:51:38+00:00

Oh, boy. Here we go.

2019-04-11T12:00:05+00:00

Men's rights activist here. Glad the whole team is getting recognition. Obviously a scientific discovering of this magnitude was done by a whole team of scientists and not just one woman like the internet would have you believe. The 850,000 lines of code statistic sounds off to me though. Waaaaaay off.

GleichUmDieEcke · 2019-04-11T12:05:05+00:00

It took a team of scientists and experts to make this historical thing happen. Experts of one field pulled more weight on certain tasks than other experts of other fields for obvious reasons.

Can we all please stop circle jerking about which person is most deserving of credit and recognition?! A team made this this possible. Multi gendered, multinational, multicultural.

This achievement does not need to be dragged down and muddied up with gender squabbles, etc.

TheseNthose · 2019-04-11T12:33:35+00:00

Why is this even a big deal? Not that it's not but the media is acting like a program that visualizes a black hole is more important than solving our dependency on fossil fuels or they found a cure for cancer.

krypt_o · 2019-04-11T12:41:03+00:00

Cool and all, but this makes it seem like they didn't actually take a picture of a black hole.

More like they used thousands/millions of data-points from their infrared and other satellites/telescopes that take images of spectrum's we can't really see, and constructed what they think it should look like... I'm going to have to look into this, now. I thought that 4chan image of it would have been enough.

aeolianplayer · 2019-04-13T00:44:41+00:00

Actually Andrew Chael himself said on Twitter that he didnt write all the code and thought people who launched sexist attacks on his colleagues... just don't.

aeolianplayer · 2019-04-13T22:56:26+00:00

Because no woman would say that. Only a man would be that sexist and stupid. This original reddit post was taken down because its not true. Only a sexist man would dig his hole deeper in the face of lies to save his insecurity. Perhaps go to the doctor. You are a man or a very very self loathing woman

king_jasper · 2019-04-15T20:08:14+00:00

summary of all the reasons this story is pure bullshit, pulling from the best and most concise comments from reddit and elsewhere:

1) If you actually look you see that 500k of his committed lines of "code" were data and models from text files: https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/commit/886b07b8a00d142b23a70537511c79bef85e0042 - this commit from the 850,000 "lines of code" dude, Andrew Chael, is literally 520 thousand lines of DATA, computer generated data. See also: https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging/tree/master/models - there is no way he wrote that all by himself, but github counts it as if it was his code.

2) Lines of code is not a good measure of work. Even if it was, Github's "lines of code" measurement is an estimate that is usually wrong and counts a lot of things that aren't actually code. Take this comment I'm stealing from Reddit as an example:

"I'm on a team right now where the person with the most "lines of code" is a non coding member of the team who exclusively uploads new datasets and documentation. Their part of the project is extremely important but it would be completely false to call them the primary dev or to give them credit for the majority of the code."

3) Andrew Chael was in charge of managing the codebase. It's mainly him who moved the code from branch to branch: test, qualification, master, experiment1, experiment2, etc. So, he moved thousands of line of code everyday, but he didn't write it himself. This is also true for the next 2 big contributors: they mainly moved files, made some minor corrections, wrote documentation. Bouman is, indeed, the main contributor to the algorithm.

4) There's more to the project than just what's on github. Even if what you see from a casual and completely misinformed examination of the Github was 100% accurate to what you thought you were looking at (see 1-3 for a detailed explanation of why it's not), it still would not be an accurate reflection of the sum of work that went into the project.

5) Writing a line of code, or even many lines, is actually different from writing an algorithm. "Katie came up with the idea for the algorithm that their subteam used. Essentially this means that without her, Andrew wouldn’t have had anything to code and their subteam wouldn’t have existed."

6) Just use your brain for a second and think about how likely it is that literally 1 person did 94% of "the work" on a huge of a collaborative project between hundreds of researchers across dozens of academic institutions.

rodriter · 2019-04-16T02:33:57+00:00

Thanks for showing us the truth.

anything-for-a-buck · 2019-04-11T11:01:15+00:00

This post is lame. Give him credit sure but it’s not a contest, we should be glad there are famous women scientists who could inspire young females to get into STEM subjects

2019-04-11T12:21:59+00:00

Oh look, some fragile egos.

GlueGuns--Cool · 2019-04-11T10:57:49+00:00

Y'all are pathetic

2019-04-11T11:29:23+00:00

You guys are so sad.

Just accept, that "white man world" is over. It´s everybodys game now.

This is Andrew Chael. He wrote 850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm!

Comments

NOT A SINGLE ONE CAN PROVE ME WRONG

THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE 900k LINES

IS

NOT

CODE

NO ONE WRITES 850k LINES OF CODE IN A MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH PROJECT

MAYBE

THAT SHE IS NOT A FUCKING PHYSICIST

in

the

slightest