Featured Researcher - Sharad Goel
“I always thought I’d go into medicine, but honestly, I mostly didn’t think about it,” says Research Scientist Sharad Goel. Born and raised in Madison, WI, Goel grew up with three older sisters, two of whom eventually became doctors. His parents naturally thought he would follow in their footsteps.
However, Goel took a different direction and chose to major in something he felt wasn’t really his strength: math. “I was always interested in science, but not math,” says Goel. He attended the University of Chicago and attributes his choice of major to his roommate. “I was socially influenced,” he professes. “I figured if my roommate could do it, I could do it.” He clearly wanted a challenge in choosing his field and, in a shocking turn of events, really liked it.
Goel continued his math focus in graduate school at Cornell. His thesis was on card shuffling – specifically, the number of shuffles it takes to randomize a deck. “I studied gambling,” he laughs. Aside from his thesis, he was busy helping start a successful program called the Summer Math Institute – designed to increase diversity in the mathematical sciences and prepare students for the rigors of graduate school. “We ran the program on a shoestring budget for the first two years, and then received five years of NSF (National Science Foundation) funding,” says Goel.
After graduating from Cornell in 2005, he spent one year as a post-doc at Stanford’s math department, working alongside Persi Diaconis, professor and former professional magician. They looked at voting patterns of U.S. Congressmen and constructed an automated ranking of legislators along the liberal-conservative spectrum. “I also learned a couple of card tricks,” says Goel.
He returned to Cornell to continue work with the Summer Math Institute and it was during this time that he was connected to Yahoo! Research Scientist Duncan Watts. Goel met one of Watts’ former students, Princeton sociologist Matt Salganik, who gave a presentation at the program. They started working together and Salganik eventually introduced Goel to Watts.
Although Goel was “sure he was going to be at a university for the rest of his life,” he conducted social experiments with Salganik that caught Watts’ attention. In August, 2007, Watts successfully enlisted Goel into the Microeconomics and Social Systems group at Yahoo! Research.
“Before Yahoo!, most of my research was theoretical mathematics,” says Goel. “After joining Yahoo!, I became interested in the dynamics of group behavior.” Goel cites an example of self-fulfilling prophecies. “If enough people believe a bank is on the verge of insolvency and suddenly withdraw their money, they could inadvertently trigger a run on the bank, causing the insolvency they feared.”
Goel is currently working with fellow scientists in search and computational advertising to study consumer behavior. His research is part of an effort to better understand the anatomy of the “long tail” -- the search queries, movies, songs and products that interest only a small percentage of the population. “It turns out that it’s pretty ordinary to have extraordinary tastes,” says Goel. “And that fact suggests niche content is vital to satisfying consumers.”
Working at Yahoo! for Goel has been fulfilling and challenging. “It’s great to see computer scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists working together on problems,” he says. “A lot of people at Yahoo! will tell you that the attraction is the data, but the most valuable resource here is the human capital.”
Goel plans to be a Yahoo! for a while, although he can’t predict what he will work on in the future. “Six months ago I had no idea that I was going to be doing what I’m doing now,” he says. “In six months, I’ll probably work on something that I had no intention of getting into.”
And that, according to Goel, is the greatest appeal of working at Yahoo!
