[Novel] Wandering Web: Chapter 12 Shale’s Birthday

It's early spring in the north, and Yao Le's birthday has arrived. Yao Le has not celebrated her birthday in a real sense for many years. This year, she celebrated her birthday in a foreign land for the first time. She only had two close friends, Sun Mingjue and Lin Pei, but she decided to celebrate it in a very formal way. A few days ago, she notified Sun Mingjue and Lin Pei that she planned to have a big meal at an authentic local restaurant in the next city.

At 0:00 a.m. on his birthday, Beijing time, Jin Ou’s birthday blessing message arrived on time. In the past many years, Jin Ou’s birthday greetings have always been the first, at 0 o’clock, every minute. Even though she was already abroad this year, she could just be lazy and come on American time, so she wouldn't have to stay up until midnight to get stuck at 0:00, but she didn't. Chinese birthdays must be celebrated according to Chinese time. This is a concept that they have always agreed with.

Jin Ou's message said: "Dear Lele, I wish you a happy birthday and happy every day. In the new year, your wishes will still come true, all your efforts will be rewarded, and all your requests will be rewarded. If you want Go to a distant place, and may the distant place be kind to you. But no matter where you go, remember that I will always be by your side."

Yao Le's eyes felt sour when he saw Jin Ou's news, and the corners of his eyes wet unconsciously. I have been friends with Jin Ou for more than ten years. She is always the one who knows what he wants and cares about most, so even if the two of them are in different places, her blessings can always be sent to her heart. Yao Le suddenly remembered Li Ming's evaluation of his lack of focus; in fact, all his focus was given to Jin Ou, Yao Le thought happily.

Because it was his birthday, Yao Le indulged himself in staying in bed for an extra half hour this morning. In some matters, Yao Le has some persistent superstitions. For example, the day when a new year begins must be smooth and happy, so that this year will be smooth and happy. So the first thing she did on her birthday was to sleep a little longer if she wanted to, so that she could do whatever she wanted this year, which was a good sign.

Half an hour later, Yao Le got up and changed into a red skirt. She turned a few times in front of the mirror, watching the red skirt draw beautiful arcs as she turned, and her eyes smiled with two arcs. She was going to spend this birthday well wearing this dress, going to school and restaurants with her head held high, looking beautiful and triumphant. There was no better birthday than this.

Before I finished admiring the dress, my phone suddenly rang, and the familiar cartoon avatar appeared on the screen. Yao Le happily picked up the video. After a few months, Jiang Wei Shulang's eyebrows appeared on the screen again.

"Does it look good?" Yao Le was in a good mood wearing a red dress. He put his phone on the table, walked a few steps away and turned around again in front of the screen.

"Good-looking." Jiang Wei smiled softly, "Silly, happy birthday."

Yao Le also smiled with crooked eyebrows. She had not heard from Jiang Wei for a long time, but today she remembered to wish her birthday. She was still very happy. There really is no better birthday than this.

She was not surprised when Jiang Wei knew her birthday. After all, Jiang Wei spent her birthday with her during her junior year. At that time, the GRE exam had been completed, but the two still maintained the habit of studying together. Although they did not need to study as intensively as before the exam, they still spent a lot of time together every day. Junior year students have many courses and busy studies. Sometimes the class schedule can be scheduled from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Yao Le's birthday was very unlucky. There was an engineering experiment in the evening. There was only one and a half hours between the end of the last class in the afternoon and the start of the evening experiment. In order to save time, Yao Le decided to take Jiang Wei to the second faculty cafeteria, which is the highest in the school, and eat the most expensive two-meat and three-vegetarian set meal at 20 yuan each.

Jiang Wei couldn't laugh or cry at her grand plan, and asked her tentatively: "Are you sure that the second teaching staff can do it? Otherwise, after the experiment is over, I will invite you to eat outside the school at the Dongli Hotel, right?"

Yao Le waved his hand: "No need. Celebrating my birthday with great fanfare is not in line with my personality, which is full of things to do."

Jiang Wei looked at her with a righteous look on her face and knew that even if the sky fell, Yao Daba would still be number one in his studies and would not waste precious study time just to celebrate his birthday. He decided to change the angle of approach: "Then I will buy you a cake?"

Yao Le looked at him with confusion: "Even the smallest birthday cake can't be finished by the two of us. Should we take it for experiments?"

In the end, Jiang Wei bought a small piece of matcha cake for Yao Le in the second faculty cafeteria. There were no candles, so Yao Le found a thinly chopped carrot in her two-meat and three-vegetarian set and inserted it into the cake. This weird birthday cake made the two of them laugh throughout the meal. Jiang Wei took a photo of her and the cake, a red and green radish matcha cake. The girl was holding a plastic fork, her eyebrows curled up with joy. This photo is still in Yao Le's circle of friends. Although it is no longer visible to outsiders due to the three-day visibility setting, Yao Le has always remembered it. The text she captioned the photo was "Silly's birthday", and the first person to like and comment on it was Jiang Wei. Jiang Wei's comment was also very short, just one word "silly".

After leaving the cafeteria, the two of them walked side by side towards the laboratory building. Jiang Wei was not willing to accept it and asked Yao Le again: "Why don't we make up another one over the weekend?"

Yao Le licked the corners of his mouth, with the slightly bitter taste of matcha and the sweetness of cake still on his tongue: "No, this is good. And..." Yao Le suddenly turned his head and looked at him, with a bigger smile on his face. Only one eye is bright. She pointed to her nose: "Seeing how down-to-earth and easy-to-support I am, are you ready to treat me to a cake every birthday from now on?"

Jiang Wei touched her head, smiled lovingly and said, "You're really stupid."

Jiang Wei and Yao Le have not been in contact for a long time, so they must talk about their recent lives again. Jiang Wei said that the coursework this semester is very difficult, with a lot of homework and projects, and he has been very busy. However, he did well in one of the courses and was appreciated by the teacher. During the summer vacation, he can stay in that teacher’s research group to help, and he also Can earn some living expenses. For master's students, the summer vacation is long and free, and you can arrange many activities that will enhance your resume. Most people look for internships, but very few find them. For those with a master's degree who do not have an internship, it is the best place to stay in a professor's research group to work on projects. They can not only accumulate project experience, but also receive a research assistantship. However, such opportunities are also very rare. You need a professor who can take a fancy to you, and you also need the professor who takes a fancy to you to have enough research funds to be able to afford research assistance subsidies. Yao Le was very happy that Jiang Wei could get such an opportunity. She gave Jiang Wei a big congratulations and said a few more words of encouragement.

The two of them were talking and laughing when a strange big face suddenly appeared on Jiang Wei's screen. A pair of small eyes opened as wide as possible, looking at Yao Le carefully, and asked teasingly: "Hey, Jiang Wei, who is this?"

The screen shook for a moment, and a strange big face with a clear voice said: "Jiang Wei, we have lived together for so long, and every time I ask you, you say you are single. How can you find such a lovely confidante? We just hooked up yesterday. I got Professor P, so I’m going to report back today.”

All I could hear was Jiang Wei saying: "Gungun, don't be silly, go to class."

The stranger laughed loudly, and his voice gradually faded away. He might have gone to class after all.

Jiang Wei appeared on the screen again. Both of them were slightly embarrassed. After saying a few words, they hung up the phone. Although this episode directly shortened the length of the video with Jiang Wei, the word "confidante" still made Yao Le inexplicably happy, and her impression of this unfamiliar big face was much better. She even decided to remove the word "big" to express Respect him and call him "Strange Face" from now on.

Yao Le arrived at the laboratory and found that Jiang Wei had sent him a red envelope worth 500 yuan. The note on the red envelope read "Silly's Matcha Birthday Cake (the largest size)". Five minutes later, another red envelope came. This time it was only 20 yuan. The red envelope said "I forgot the money for the carrot". Yao Le couldn't help laughing and accepted both red envelopes.

Yao Le felt very depressed when he had to spend the afternoon of his birthday at Professor B's convergence proof conference. As soon as she arrived at the office in the morning, she saved all the simulation results that she would use in the afternoon and organized them into a report. To be honest, the Convergence Proof Conference has been going on for almost a semester, and Yao Le feels that he has not made any progress at all. I have to run dozens of various simulations every week, but most of them are similar systems. I adjust a few parameters or adjust the order, and then repeat the same analysis. The simulation has been run for several thousand to several hundred, but Yao Le has never quite understood how helpful it is in proving the convergence of the algorithm. Is it necessary to use the exhaustive method to prove convergence? She once asked Professor B this question tactfully, and Professor B just vaguely said that if he couldn't find the idea of ​​​​proof, he should look at simulations for inspiration. Yao Le felt that this answer seemed to make some sense, but after running the simulation for so long, she did not get much inspiration. Instead, she became a lot numb because of being immersed in this kind of repetitive work for a long time. Looking at the algorithm again, she did not see the first difference. Excited and ambitious.

Yao Le subconsciously felt that this conference was becoming more and more useless. Every once in a while, she could always hear a weak voice in her heart shouting: "Don't go, it's a waste of time!" But every time the voice sounded, another big hand would immediately reach out to suppress it. Whether emotionally or intellectually, she is unwilling to admit to herself that the thing she has spent a lot of time and energy on is probably useless, so she would rather continue to invest in it, hoping that if she persists for a while, things will turn around and she will be able to turn around. Then none of these investments will be wasted. Many years later, she learned that this is actually a very common economic concept called "sunk cost."

In the afternoon, the convergence proof conference was still a group of students taking turns to show various simulation results to Professor B. However, something different happened near the end of the conference. A boy suddenly stood up from the crowd and said to Professor B: "Teacher, I still have to go home this summer vacation."

Professor B looked up at him, then looked around at the other students, made a pressing gesture to the boy and said, "Let's talk alone." Professor B's tone was quite dissatisfied, and the conference room suddenly became quiet, and everyone The students all looked up and stared at the two of them.

Yao Le knew this boy. He was a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Professor B’s laboratory. It was said that he was a model worker in the entire laboratory. He was never lazy and stayed in the laboratory from morning to night. Ever since he entered Professor B’s laboratory, he had no I haven't even been back home since I was on vacation.

The boy didn't seem to feel Professor B's dissatisfaction and said stubbornly: "Let's talk about it here. I haven't had a vacation in more than three years. This year I want to take the previous three years of vacation together and go home to get married."

Professor B sat up straight and answered him: "The vacations that were not taken in previous years will be invalidated. If you want to go home, doctoral students have two weeks of vacation during the summer vacation."

The boy insisted: "Two weeks is not enough to get married. I want to take a month off. If I don't use the previous vacation, just wait until I come back and work a few more overtime hours every day to make up for the time."

Professor B was very dissatisfied with his persistence. He couldn't get angry in front of so many students. He could only twist his brows into a knot and said, "No. I pay you so much because you have to pay." I don’t work to give you a holiday.”

The boy was unmoved: "Then I don't want this month's salary."

Professor B was furious, but for the sake of what the other party said, he really couldn't refute it. He calmed down and said, "Then you might as well take a summer vacation. Don't ask for your salary for the entire summer vacation, and I will hire a master's degree to replace you."

"Okay!" It seemed that he finally got what he wanted, and the boy finally compromised.

Professor B saw that he refused to obey and walked out angrily. The conference room was quiet for a while, and the sound of clearing things sounded again.

"Hey, I have worked hard for the professor for more than three years but got such a ruthless treatment." A female voice suddenly sounded next to Yao Le. She was a senior sister in Professor B's laboratory. The senior approached Yao Le with a gossipy look on her face. She pointed at the boy's back and said to Yao Lenu: "Do you know why he had to say it here?"

Yao Le didn't know why: "Why?"

The senior sister smiled mysteriously: "He has told Professor B since the beginning of this semester that he will go back to get married during the summer vacation, but Professor B has not allowed him to leave. Now that the wedding is coming soon, he has been unable to take time off, and the bride is at home every day. After crying, he decided to break the rules and force Professor B to draw a line in front of everyone."

Yao Le felt a sense of discomfort when he heard the inside story: "His home is so far away, and it's such a big deal like getting married. Is it normal to take a month's leave? And he's not a laboratory model worker. Why should he have made up for this one month's leave long ago? .”

The senior curled her lips in disdain: "Honest people are easy to bully. The professor has noticed early on that you are a submissive person, so don't try to squeeze you. This is the ugly face of capitalists."

Yao Le looked at the boy's lonely back and felt an indescribable blockage in his heart.

After returning from the Convergence Conference, Yao Le returned to the office to find Sun Mingjue and Lin Pei, and drove to the restaurant together. The three of them ordered two of the restaurant's signature dishes and two vegetarian dishes. Sun Mingjue and Lin Pei also bought an ice cream cake for Yao Le. Everyone ate it happily.

Halfway through the meal, Yao Le suddenly asked Lin Pei: "Did you go to Professor S this afternoon to talk about the paper? How was it?"

After Yao Le and Lin Pei discovered that the results of the paper were wrong, they discussed it with Sun Mingjue and three others, and finally decided to compile their findings into a report and show it to Professor S first. Lin Pei faltered for a moment, started talking a few times and then stopped a few times. After thinking about it, he started talking again: "I'm actually not quite sure what Professor S meant. Why don't you help me analyze it?"

Lin Pei took the report prepared by him and Yao Le in the afternoon and went to explain their findings in detail to Professor S. From the divergent simulation results to the inconsistency between the system and the algorithm assumptions, he explained in great detail.

Professor S's expression became more and more serious as he listened. He took the report and read it several times, and then asked Lin Pei very carefully: "Are you sure?"

Lin Pei affirmed: "At least we are very sure about what is written in the report. Yao Le and I checked it several times."

Professor S sat in a big office chair, carefully comparing the output diagrams in the report with the output diagrams in the paper, without saying a word for a long time. Lin Pei sat opposite him, looking at Professor S's serious expression, feeling that they might have discovered something big that would cause a sensation in the academic circle. He thought of many reports about famous professors being found to have falsified academic results, and suddenly felt that he must become such a fighter to maintain academic purity. He couldn't help but think about it silently in his heart, wondering if he could provide more evidence for this defense war.

Lin Pei waited with excitement for a long time before Professor S finally spoke: "Actually, this paper cannot be said to be wrong."

Lin Pei's heart skipped a beat, what?

Professor S looked up at Lin Pei with a loving smile: "Algorithm convergence proof generally requires many assumptions, but where can you find so many systems in life that fully meet the assumptions? Engineering practice requires knowing how to be flexible. Even if the system does not You can try any hypothesis that conforms to the algorithm. If you don’t try it, how will you know if it works? Young people boldly try areas that have not been explored before, are eclectic in their methods, and even do it when they know it is impossible. This is history The experience that many breakthrough achievements have given us is also the true meaning of academics.”

Lin Pei was caught off guard and was given a bowl of chicken soup. Although the chicken soup was freshly made, I was in such a hurry that I picked up a few ready-to-use items from the chicken soup shelf and stewed them in one pot. The water was not even boiling yet and it was served to the table in a hurry. It was full of reluctance that the article was not on topic and avoided the important points, but this did not prevent Lin Pei from being drunk by this chicken soup. The ambition and pride in his heart to maintain academic purity quickly dissipated, and was replaced by the inability to grasp the true meaning of his own academic work. Feeling ashamed of oneself. Because of this, he was so ashamed that he even forgot that the output graph concealed the divergence part. Disguising unstable results as stable results was the biggest problem of this paper.

Lin Pei was trembling and asked very sincerely: "Then I can try again when I go back?"

Professor S rolled his eyes and said, "No, you should find another algorithm."

After listening to Lin Pei's description, Sun Mingjue couldn't help but sigh at this man's lack of understanding. She educated Lin Pei: "Professor S means that you should stop pursuing Professor A and Professor C's falsified paper results and pretend that you don't know."

Lin Pei's face became even more confused: "Why?"

Sun Mingjue said: "Why is this? You have no evidence that can convict you now. You only have the simulation results of an approximate model and a conjecture based on system conditions and algorithm assumptions that do not match. With this kind of evidence, they can make another random one at any time. To refute them with pictures that are indeed convergent, you can’t get their original programs and pictures anyway, so you can’t refute them. Moreover, most of the papers were written by their students, and the two professors probably don’t know whether the results are really created. After taking leave, not only will they not doubt their students, but they will think that you are cheating. You are just a minor master's degree, and you will forget about it after graduation. Professor S still wants to hang out in the academic circle. Which professor should you not maintain a good relationship with? Especially a great professor like Professor A. With his status in the world, he can reject your paper or take away your application for scientific research funds with just one sentence. Then you will have to live in poverty. . For Professor S, the best solution is to turn a blind eye. It’s better to do less than to do more. It’s just that you can’t say it so clearly to the students.”

Sun Mingjue is awake in the world, and Lin Pei is enlightened.