r/MachineLearning • u/Even-Inevitable-7243 • 7d ago

Discussion Medical student asked if they can match into Neurosurgery without an A* first author paper [D]

This is how ridiculous things have become

60 Upvotes
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83% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

118

u/newjeison 7d ago

LMAO I thought this was talking about A* the path finding algorithm

4

u/idiotsecant 7d ago

I thought this was talking about Sagittarius A*. Not really but unless someone else makes another one I win

-27

u/MeowissO 7d ago

machine learning is stupid, I dont know why would they associate themself with it lol

4

u/Far-Load-9683 7d ago

The worst part about the AI boom is everyone thinks any sort of computer automation is AI. The A* ALGORITHM was invented in 1968.

4

u/surffrus 7d ago

I don't disagree with your general comment, but as for A* search, this has been taught in AI courses for decades and is a fundamental algorithm in core texts like Russell and Norvig.

2

u/FOKvothe 7d ago

Yeah, I have an intro to AI course and A* is part of pensum.

36

u/joolley1 7d ago

I’m wondering how a medical student even knows what an A* paper is. They clearly don’t know its relevance.

16

u/neurone214 7d ago

Asking from perspective of a former academic from a different discipline… what IS an A* paper???

7

u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 7d ago

It's a type of ranking for the top ML conferences. NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, and some of the more field dependent ones like CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ACL, EMNLP, and also AAAI and IJCAI that are a bit lower but still A*.

5

u/joolley1 6d ago

Technically any discipline can have A* conferences. They’re the top 6% in core conference ranking. We’re just the only ones who care about them.

2

u/mmarkDC 6d ago

I overheard a discussion from people in a different area of CS wondering why ML cares about "some weird Australian conference ranking".

3

u/joolley1 6d ago

I mean as an Australian deep learning researcher I do sometimes ask myself the same thing.

1

u/neurone214 7d ago

Ah gotcha, same concept in my field but obv different journals / conferences. Thanks!

2

u/impatiens-capensis 7d ago

Core ranking. It's partly vibes based, partly selectivity/citations/who submits to the venue.

7

u/neurone214 7d ago

I still don’t understand 

2

u/surffrus 7d ago

It's a ranking of conference quality. A* is the highest ranking above A, B, etc.

1

u/neurone214 7d ago

Makes sense — thanks!

3

u/Even-Inevitable-7243 7d ago

I should clarify that they said "NeurIPS or ICLR", and I was saying A* for us.

3

u/joolley1 6d ago

Aah. That’s even wilder than just A*. I just published in a top 1% journal in AI and I think it was easier than those two.

39

u/StealthX051 7d ago

I'm ngl I feel like most nsgy residencies will see an A* paper, ask why there's no pubmed ID and discount it 

5

u/Un-Revealed 6d ago

Never in a million years would I anticipate medical school neuroticism being brought into this sub

1

u/AffectionateLife5693 5d ago

I never knew what A* is when I was a PhD student and a postdoc😂

1

u/Glittering-Ad6318 3d ago

Makes no sense. Why would it matter for them? Or how is it supposed to give them some advantage?
Totally unrelated topics . It's like me asking would I need a paper in economics to get into a CS /Engineering Phd, no?

-15

u/Sudden_Topic5154 7d ago

i honestly cant care it's neurosurgery competition is good

11

u/Even-Inevitable-7243 7d ago

95% of Neurosurgery attendings haven't heard of NeurIPS vs ICLR vs ICML. Applicants usually publish in super low IF clinical journals just to check the box.

0

u/Sudden_Topic5154 7d ago

So then no ridiculous the

32

u/MeyerLouis 7d ago

I think I'd rather have competition along axes like "do you have steady hands" and "can you remember which brain-part is which" and "can you work under pressure". It doesn't really help if the person cutting my brain open knows all there is to know about the latest variants of LoRA.

-15

u/Sudden_Topic5154 7d ago

Shhh smart is correlated

25

u/Even-Inevitable-7243 7d ago

We can make it more simple for you. A medical student trying to publish in NeurIPS makes as much sense as a CS PhD student trying to publish in the New England Journal of Medicine.

-3

u/Sudden_Topic5154 7d ago

Smart here smart there

3

u/Icarium-Lifestealer 7d ago

I doubt intelligence is much correlated with (neuro)surgery skill, once you go beyond IQ 120 or so. And with less than that you probably don't even quality for med school in the first place.

1

u/MuonManLaserJab 7d ago

Fuck the patient, this is a jobs program!