I am the only one who practices magic: I practice magic in the city

Chapter 136 Tickets Got (Second Update)
In fact, Tong Yongshan did not fully understand any of the three papers that Fang Yu talked about.

After all, a considerable part of it belongs to very professional computer science, which is related to traditional applied mathematics, but not so closely that it requires specialized study.

Although he didn't understand it, it didn't affect Tong Yongshan's discovery of its value.

Because scientific thinking methods are universal.

As a top scholar, Tong Yongshan possesses very strong scientific literacy.

The so-called scientific literacy means that even if what the other party says has long deviated from your professional field, you can still judge whether what the other party says is reliable or not based on the other party's proof ideas, argumentation methods, and choice of arguments.

This sophomore student majoring in finance has no problem with the application of the three papers!
After listening to Fang Yu's report, Tong Yongshan had already keenly realized that Fang Yu must have had a purpose in choosing these three documents!

Yes, on the surface, these three papers all seem to be very influential papers on neural networks and deep learning, but Fang Yu consciously verified and referenced the contents of the three papers in his report just now.

On the surface, Fang Yu’s final conclusion is only related to the third paper, but the first two papers played a key basic role in it.

For example, using the pre-training method of deep belief networks to optimize the training of GANs, or using the latent variable model of variational autoencoders to improve factor models.

This shows that Fang Yu should have at least a preliminary research direction for the application of GANs in strong factor models!

Anyone who has done scientific research knows what is the most important thing for any scientific research project?

Research direction is the most important!

Among a thousand topics, nine hundred may go in the wrong direction, and among the one hundred that go in the right direction, ninety may fail to allocate their energy well and run out of energy halfway through.

In the end, there may be only ten people who take the right path and have the ability to reach Rome.

However, there was indeed a very small chance that among the 900 people who took the wrong path, some did not reach Rome, but as they walked, they actually arrived in Chang'an.

For example, the main rival of the Fiery Sun Essence Liquid, which has not yet been launched on the market, is the Blue Pill. As we all know, it was originally used to treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases when it was developed.

But the proportion of such examples to the overall scientific research projects is really too small.

Because of this, when Tong Yongshan realized that Fang Yu might have indeed found a way, it became a natural choice to give Fang Yu the leadership for a period of time.

Of course, this is also related to Tong Yongshan’s academic ethics.

If you change to a cruel and ruthless supervisor who only gives you a second work, you still have to be grateful to him and drive to his house every day to pick up and drop off his children, and also give him the funds that have been transferred to his card.

Otherwise, don't even think about graduating.

"Teacher, can I ask what the budget is?" Fang Yu blinked and sent out a soul-stirring attack.

"Uh." Tong Yongshan stuttered for once.

It’s not that the National School of Economics has no funds, but he has not yet submitted the proposal report for this project.

Without a proposal, there is naturally no budget to talk about.

Even if the proposal is approved, it is impossible to use only the national funding.

The money given by the national university is only enough to buy office supplies and provide subsidies and benefits to graduate students.

The bulk of the funding still needs to be sourced from enterprises.

Especially this kind of research related to computer big data, although Tong Yongshan has never done it before, he also knows that doing research on this kind of thing is very expensive!
Apart from other things, deep computing and neural networks are now done with GPUs, or graphics cards. Buying ten of the latest TitanXs will cost you 100,000 yuan. Add in the motherboard, memory, SSD and the like, and two or three servers will cost at least 200,000 yuan.

This does not include the cost of purchasing materials, which is another huge expense.

Then, with a system, there must be a professional system administrator, right? If not, who will maintain the system with only a few talents in the team?

Hiring a system administrator would cost another two hundred thousand a year.

Cloud computing services cost at least another 100,000.

Web services, journal subscriptions, dataset purchases, software licenses, development tools and libraries, all cost money.

The electricity bill and other things are not counted. After all the miscellaneous calculations, this project cannot be completed even in the first phase without one million.

Of course, some of the money can be saved. For example, if you hire a junior or senior student to be a system administrator, you might not even need two thousand yuan a month.

But why save?
Tong Yongshan had been in Maiguo for a long time and had no such awareness. He thought it was quite normal.

"Teacher, if you don't have an accurate budget yet, I do have an idea. There is a company that I am very familiar with and they just want to get involved in this area. I can try to find them and see if they can get some sponsorship."

Fang Yu's tone was very flat.

When Zhang Chang heard this, he thought, well, it turns out that this person is not only academically strong, but can also bring in funding to join the group.

The faint thought of striving for the leadership of the project disappeared immediately.

"Sponsor?" Even though Tong Yongshan was ignorant of business when he was young, he had become an old man after so many years of experience. When he heard these two words, he felt something was wrong.

I'm old now, so there won't be any female sponsors taking advantage of me, right?
Tong Yongshan remained calm: "What are the conditions?"

Fang Yu thought for a moment and said, "They may have a need for copyright and potential patents, but they probably won't interfere with academic publications."

Copyright?
Tong Yongshan pondered for a moment.

"Of course, if the school's budget approval process is almost complete, just ignore what I said."

"But when I was looking for papers these days, I found that several teams may have already started doing research in this area, such as Ma Baolong from Western University and Derek King from the Krant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University."

"Derek King just published a study on arXiv last month that I think is a preliminary study on this topic. I have sent the document to your email address. You can take a look at it."

Fang Yu pointed to his computer screen.

Tong Yongshan unlocked the screen, put on his reading glasses, opened Fang Yu's email, and became more and more frightened the more he read.

This article by Derek King only explains some of the impacts that neural networks may have on nonlinear data processing in strong factor models.

Seems unrelated.

But if you just take a few more steps down, you will reach what you want to study!
By then, it will be another academic competition!
This kind of academic competition is very common in the field of natural sciences, but it is not so common in econometrics.

This industry circle is relatively small, and there are not many bigwigs. Each bigwig has a different research direction and is good at different things, so it is actually difficult for them to collide with each other.

But now Tong Yongshan wants to cross the border, and this leap may get him into trouble.

Fang Yu, this kid, hasn't even graduated from college yet, why does he act like an academic tycoon?
Tong Yongshan secretly complained that this kid would probably betray his teacher and ancestors and go against human ethics in the future.

But if that day really comes and I retire, it would be a good thing to have a promising disciple.

If this kid really betrays his teacher and ancestors after I retire, I will find an opportunity to remove his name.

Call him Fang Xiang.

Then let people in the academic community scold him together.

"Fang Yu, you can go talk to this company first and see how much they can invest. If this project is commissioned by the company, it's not impossible, but in terms of resources, the school's resources cannot be used. Do you understand this?"

Tong Yongshan's words were rather obscure.

Fang Yu nodded: "Okay, teacher, I will go talk to them tomorrow. However, after all, the school also has the right to sign, so the license may still need the school to come forward."

Tong Yongshan didn't even think about it: "Of course."

Fang Yu smiled slightly.

The ticket to artificial intelligence is now in hand.

(End of this chapter)