# Evan A. Sultanik, Ph.D.

Evan's First Name @ Sultanik .com

Chief Scientist
Digital Operatives, LLC

Drexel University College of Computing & Informatics
Department of Computer Science

## LaTeX

### In which Evan and Joe teach you how to make beautiful documents.

Earlier today, Joe Kopena and I once again presented our tag-team LATEX talk. Not familiar with LATEX? Why not read the Wikipedia article! It’s essentially a professional grade system for beautifully typesetting documents/books. There are various books and Internet tutorials that do a fairly good job of introducing the basics, so, in our talk, Joe and I cover some more advanced topics and also general typesetting snags that novices often encounter. We always get requests for our slides after each of our talks, so I figured I’d post them online (which is the purpose of this blog entry).

Note that the entire presentation was created in LATEX using Beamer. You may also want to read my notes on BIBTEX, which will eventually become a part of our talk. You can read some of Joe’s notes on LATEX on his personal wiki, here. Feel free to browse and/or post any of your general typesetting questions to this public mailing list.

## On the Economics of Higher Education

### In which I apply flimsy math and hand-waving to justify the time I’ve wasted in school.

There has been much “messaging on twitter” [sic] and “posting to blogs” [sic] of late regarding the economic benefit of pursuing a graduate degree in Computer Science. For example, there are claims, among other things, that a masters degree will require 10 years to earn back the income lost during study. A Ph.D. will require a staggering 50 years. Most everything I’ve read cites this article based upon Dr. Norman Matloff’s testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration. Curiously, the article everyone seems to cite does not itself have a bibliography. It does, however, credit “a highly biased pro-industry National Research Council committee” for calculating these numbers. Five to ten minutes of “searching on Google” [sic] and I was unable to find a report from the National Research Council corroborating such a claim. Can anyone point me to a link?

I do not dispute that these numbers may be correct; the purpose of this blog entry is to point out that, at least in the case of most with whom I’ve matriculated, it is flat out false.

Here is my (admittedly simple) mathematical model:

$n=\frac{t ( E[s_w] + c )}{E[s_a]-E[s_w]},$
where,
• $t$ is the number of years spent in school;
• $E[s_w]$ is the expected salary one would have earned if one did not attend school;
• $c$ is the net monetary cost of attending school per year, such as tuition paid, books purchased, &c. This value should also take into account any income earned during a school year (e.g., one’s stipend) and in many cases will be a negative number;
• $E[s_a]$ one’s expected salary after graduating school; and
• $n$ is the number of years one would have to work after graduating to make up for lost income.

Note that this model does not take attrition into account.

## Flexitarded

### In which I blatantly offend yet another group of people.

I’d like to begin with a simple analogy that expresses my feelings on the subject at hand:

aborted llama fœti : Perestroika :: Flexitarianism : this analogy.

In other words, flexitarianism makes as much sense as grooming one’s pubic hair with a rusty vegetable peeler. I fail to see how flexitarianism is any different than, oh, say, being an omnivore. “I am a vegetarian… except for when consumption of animal products is required socially, nutritionally, culturally, or pragmatically.” STFU. In other words, you’re a normal omnivore who cannot always stomach eating meat for some reason, most likely due to moral dissonance. I have no problem with vegetarianism—or any other diet, for that matter—as long as its practitioners do not proselytize. I don’t care if you deprive yourself of certain foods on moral, religious, or nutritional grounds. What does offend me is the addition of a new word to our vernacular that adds little or nothing semantically. Also, it is concerning that those in moral conflict about eating meat are given a new term to legitimize their ethical limbo, thus postponing their decision about whether or not to give up being an omnivore.

I only drink to excess when it is socially acceptable.

The flexoholic.

I only cheat on my spouse pragmatically.