本系列将介绍今年惠普实验室的一些夏季实习生的访谈。
    此次采访的是被社会化计算研究实验室录取的实习生Zhu Haiyi。
    This is a series of profiles featuring interviews with some of this year's crop of summer interns at HP Labs.

    We continue the series with an interview with Haiyi Zhu who was recruited by the Social Computing Research Group

    Zhu Haiyi今年夏季第一次在惠普实验室进行实习。作为卡内基梅隆大学人机交互计算学院的博士二年级学生，Zhu Haiyi主要与惠普社会化计算研究实验室的主任Bernardo Huberman一起工作。她说：“我对于人们如何在在线社区进行互动，以及如何互相影响很感兴趣。” Zhu Haiyi在苏州长大，清华大学计算机专业毕业。到达硅谷的时候，她惊喜地发现许多本科时代的同学已经在这里工作了。除了与老同学们一起打网球和乒乓球外，她也喜欢阅读与电影。
    Haiyi Zhu is interning at HP Labs for the first time this summer. A second-year PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human Computing Interaction Institute, Zhu is working with Bernardo Huberman, director of HP’s Social Computing Research Group. “I’m interested in how people interact in online communities, and how they are influenced by each other,” she says. Zhu grew up in Suzhou, China and majored in computer science at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. On arriving in Silicon Valley, she was happy to find a number of undergraduate friends already there. When Zhu’s not hanging out with them, playing tennis or ping pong, she also likes to read and watch movies.

    HP: 你如何将今年夏季在惠普实验室的工作与你的研究课题联系起来？
    总的来说，我对于如何影响及激励人们非常感兴趣。借助社会心理学的理论来建立假设，然后验证这些假设。这是我今年夏季正在进行的课题，我希望它会为我的博士论文带来帮助。
    HP: How will your work at HP Labs this summer connect to your graduate work?
    In general, I’m interested in how to influence and motivate people, drawing on theories from social psychology to create hypotheses and then test them. That’s what I’m doing this summer, and I’m hoping the work will feed into my PhD thesis.

    HP: 能不能谈一下你的夏季课题？
    我正在进行的课题是，在一个推荐系统中，如何通过展示一些人的选择来影响另一些人的选择。比如说，昨天我在帕拉图的两家相邻的餐馆间做了一个选择。其中一家墨西哥餐厅有很多客人，而另外一家中国餐厅的客人比较少。尽管从个人的角度来说，我更喜欢中国菜，但是客人的多少这一社会信息有可能说明墨西哥餐厅会更好，所以我选择了墨西哥餐厅。我做了一个类似的假设，即当你不确定的时候，你就更容易被他人的选择所影响，我们正在进行试验以检验这一假设。
    HP: Can you tell us about your summer project?
    I’m going to look at how displaying others’ choices can affect people’s own choices in recommendation systems. Yesterday, for example, I had a choice between two restaurants in Palo Alto that were next to each other. One, a Mexican restaurant, was full and the other, a Chinese restaurant, was empty. Even though I knew that I usually preferred Chinese food, the social information indicated that the Mexican place was better, so I ate there. Similarly I have a hypothesis that when you are uncertain about something you are more likely to be influenced by others’ choices and we’re conducting an experiment to test this.

    HP: 能谈一下这个实验吗？

    我们将在Rankr上进行试验，它允许你在两幅图片中进行选择，比如说两件家具。首先，我们会让你在没有其他信息的情况下进行自由选择。然后，在你做出了15到16个选择后，我们会让你重新做第一个选择，这次我们会告诉你有多少人选择了图片A，多少人选择了图片B。我们想知道这一信息是否会让你推翻第一次所做的选择。

    HP: Can you describe the experiment?

    We will conduct experiments on Rankr, which allows you to choose between two pictures of say, pieces of furniture. At first we’ll ask you to choose without other information. Then, after about 15 or 16 such choices, we’ll show you the same first two items again but also tell you how many other people have liked each of the pictures. We’re looking to see if that information will reverse your original choice.

    HP: 到目前为止，你在惠普实验室的经历中最棒的事情有哪些？
    其中之一是，社会化计算研究组所涉及的学科非常广泛。许多人具有应用物理、计算机、经济、心理学以及运筹学的背景，因此他们对于同一个问题有着非常不同的思考方式。同时，这个组也具有相当的跨文化背景等等，这些对于我们的研究很有帮助。
    HP: What has been the best thing so far about interning at HP Labs?
    One thing is that the Social Computing Research group is very interdisciplinary. We have people with backgrounds in applied physics, computer science, economics, psychology, and operations research, so they all have very different ways to think about a problem. It’s also very inter-cultural – and those different perspectives help our research.

    HP: 你希望如何发展你的研究生涯？
    就目前而言，我想我很愿意进入学术界，但是这并不是我唯一的选择。
    HP: Do you have a sense of how you’d like your research career to develop?
    Right now I’m thinking that I’d like to go into academia, but I’m keeping my options open!

    HP: 你如何看待在惠普实验室进行实习的价值？
    在学术生涯的早期，我认为拓展视野，与许多不同的人一起工作，并了解他们的想法是非常有价值的。像这样的实习机会对于获取这些经验很有帮助。

    HP: What would you say is the value of an internship at a place like HP Labs?
    Early in your academic career I think it’s good to expand your view and work with others, to know what they are thinking about and working on. An internship like this is a great way to get that kind of experience.