Meanings
- humorousuncountablemachine learningThe process of choosing hyperparameters manually and in an ad-hoc manner, typical of work assigned to a graduate student.
Phrase of the day, "Graduate Student Descent." Optimization through graduate student tweaking.
[2011 April 6, Kat Scott, Twitter, archived from the original on 04 Jul 20222 more examples
[…] people without real-world experience often ignore systematic approaches to hyperparameter tuning in favor of manual, gut-feeling approach. The most popular method is arguably 'Graduate Student Descent (GSD) […]
2019, Chip Huyen, “Design a machine learning system”, in Chip Huyen [personal website], retrieved 27 Sep 2021Instead of hypothesis-forming based on theory, extensive research on previous studies and/or reflection against the existing domain knowledge, grad student descent […] is applied.
2019 April 17, Oguzhan Gencoglu with Mark van Gils, Esin Guldogan, Chamin Morikawa, Mehmet Süzen, Mathias Gruber, Jussi Leinonen, and Heikki Huttunen, “HARK Side of Deep Learning - From Grad Student Descent to Automated Machine Learning”, in arXiv, page 2
Origin
Modeled on gradient descent. Attributed to David A. McAllester.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
graduate student descent. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/graduate%20student%20descent
“graduate student descent.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/graduate%20student%20descent. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “graduate student descent,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/graduate%20student%20descent.
Source: graduate student descent on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.