Two down, Two to go! Plus other stuff…

Well, I haven’t written for about a week, but now I’m going to try to cover as much stuff as possible. So let’s begin:

Last week, I picked up my Assignment 1 from CS 134 (the day it was returned was Yom Kippur and I’m Jewish, although I don’t do religious debates, so don’t try to start one). Upon getting it back, I note the 69% I recieved on it. Considering my mark on Assignment 2 is on the order of 97%, I was, well, appalled, really, by the horrible mark. So I did what anyone would do in my position. I looked over the errors, since they were spelled out on the marking sheet. I got 54/60 on the theory part (commenting, proper use of variable names, that kind of stuff), meaning I got 28/60 on the testing (the total was out of 120). I failed the testing? What? The program worked fine on my computer as I wrote it, so this was shocking for me. So I looked over the errors. 15 compile errors? For the uninitated, a “compile error” is what happens when there’s an error in the code, generally syntax (i.e. variable/type names not spelled properly, trying to call a method that doesn’t exist, stuff like that). The program worked perfectly on my computer, so why it wouldn’t compile for the testers just didn’t click for me. So I proceeded to be upset for the next week while I was unsure of how to proceed with this problem. On Monday, I recieved Assignment 3 back, and I once again felt cheated out of a significant number of marks, so I decided it was time to see the tutors. I went to see the tutors yesterday, and spent about half an hour in the tutorial centre while the tutor told me (essentially) that I got cheated out of at least 13 marks on Assignment 1 and at least 10 on Assignment 3 (I wasn’t counting, but those were the larger chunks) because their compiler didn’t work properly (as I had suspected). I have yet to reclaim those marks, but I plan on doing so in the immediate future. So my 69% on Assignment 1 quickly became an 80%, and I noticed a number of silly mistakes that I did make on both assignments 1 and 3, so I’m happy with my marks now (although I’m still convinced I should have gotten higher on Assignment 1, it’s no longer worth my effort since I got most of it back anyway and the program wasn’t written properly in the first place; the tutor explained what I did wrong and I was satisfied).

I have yet to recieve my MATH 145 midterm back. Professor Willard claims it will be returned on Monday. I assure an update afterwards.

My Japanese test was returned, well, I presume last week since I haven’t written about it yet, but honestly the weeks are beginning to run together already, so I’m not quite sure. Of the people in my study group, we all got comparable marks, but I got the lowest, being a low-80. However, as it turned out, I lost 1 mark due to my illegible handwriting, which I quickly reclaimed, so I ended up with a high-80, slthough still lower than the rest of my study group, but not by much. I’m probably riding a mid-80 in Japanese right now, which is my goal. Let’s hope I can keep it after my midterm next week

Speaking of Japanese, I finally feel like I can hold some semblance of a conversation. Today was the lesson I’ve been waiting for all term and the one I expected to come much earlier than today; we finally learned non-existence verbs. Up till now, we’ve only learned how to use the verbs “to be” and “to exist”, but today we finally learned something more useful. To compare to French, I guess I could say I’m up to about grade 4 level now, but still in preschool as English goes. That’s ok, though; it’s like they say: it takes longer to learn a new language the older you get, so Japanese will take me a while. But if you out there know how to speak and read Japanese to a fair extent, I wouldn’t recommend Japan 101R, although it’s perfect for me.

The new issue of MathNews came out last Friday. Of the 2 pages-ish of ProfQuotes I compiled on Professors Willard and Zorzitto, about 7 or 8 of them got printed, which I think is kinda cool. Some examples:

“You know those wax pads you pull off your legs to take the hair off? The faster you do it, the less it hurts. Proofs are kinda like that” – Zorzitto

“How many of you are actually awake and listening as I’m talking?” – Willard

The rest of them are either not funny outside of context or not appropriate for presentation on a completely public forum (although one comment from Professor Willard is particularly amusing). I’m collecting ProfQuotes for the next issue of MathNews. I have about a page and a half from Professor Zorzitto, about half a page from Professor Willard, and I’ve begun collecting from Professor Tremblay (Philosophy) as well and have a page and a half from him.

I’ve recently found a new TV show to become addicted to. A friend of mine from Japanese hooked me up with some anime, and I’ve become addicted to the show Bleach. For the anime fans out there, I recommend it if you found InuYasha an interesting concept with a boring execution. And yes, I’m watching it in Japanese (with English subs). But back to the academics this blog is supposed to be about:

Well, not quite. Yesterday was my don’s birthday, so we threw her a surprise party. Everyone in the building pitched in a couple of dollars and we got a cake and some flowers for our don. She really appreciated it. It was really nice to see the whole house (plus another one of the dons helped) come together and do that for our don.

Now REALLY back to the academics:

Since my last post, I’ve been in contact with Professor Ragde, one of the professors for CS 135, who commented on my blog. In particular, he commented on my constant complaints about the lack of complexity in CS 134. I didn’t ask him if I could put this in, but hopefully he won’t mind, and I think it’s important. He said that (and keep in mind he’s a prof for CS 135, so take this as you will) if you are considering taking CS 134 in your first term, to consider 135 instead. 135, he says, is much more interesting than 134 in that it’s a language you won’t have learned yet, and it’s not Object-Oriented Programming so it’s completely different from Java. Also, because the language is so different, everyone will be learning at the same level, so no one will get bored. He said that CS 135 (and the followup 136) also prepares you better for CS 241 (the next CS course after 134 and 136) better than 134. He also said he was disappointed that, in 3 years, They ((c), (R), TM) haven’t picked a Math Blogger from CS 135, so I figured I should probably address his points, since it would probably be of importance to many of you reading this.

Speaking of CS 134, the midterm was on Monday. The Tale of The CS 134 Midterm actually begins this past weekend. I was confident (probably overconfident) about my skills in CS 134, and, instead of studying myself, decided to play video games and help my rez-mates in CS’s 125 and 133 with their problems. I called it “actively not studying”. This practise of active indifference to an exam worth 25% of my final grade continued all the way until 5 minutes before the exam, by which time it was too late to do anything. So I went to the MC knowing only what tidbits I picked up through the term, plus the knowledge I had from ICS4M (in other words, I knew pretty much everything we’ve learned so far). The one thing I didn’t know was that my exam wasn’t even in the MC. At 6:58 (I looked at my watch; the exam started at 7 pm) I took out my laptop and checked the schedule (w00t to UW-Wireless!). As it turned out, my exam was in a building called DWE (Douglas Wright Engineering Hall, or something of the sort), about a 7-minute trek at full sprinting speed from where I sat on the 4th floor of the MC. Why they would have the class and tutorial in one building and the exam in another escapes me, almost as much as why they would have the exam in the Engineering Quad, which escapes me almost as much as why the exam wasn’t in the building called “Mathematics and Computers” (that’s what MC stands for). Oh well. So I went to DWE as fast as I could, arriving there at about 7:10. I sat down at my seat and took a look through the exam. My first reaction was: “Holy garbage, this is easy!” And it was. Having arrived at the exam 10 miuntes late, tired, short on breath, and somewhat stressed out, having to catch up on 10 minutes of time and worried more about not finishing than about the algorithms I was writing, I managed to finish the entire exam, check it over twice, and have 10 minutes to spare. I think I did well (and I’m not afraid to say it this time). The midterms were being marked today, so I should *hopefully* have it back on Monday, and I’ll write an update when I do.

Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

One down, 3 to go!

Today would have been a normal day, except for the fact that my MATH 145 midterm was today. I woke up, the usual stuff, and went to class. Apparentely Professor Willard knew we were going to ask him a lot of questions, so he took 20 minutes out of class for us to ask him questions about the midterm. I don’t know about you out there, but I like that kind of stuff before a test; it relaxes me knowing that I can ask the professor what he’s expecting. After 20 minutes, we continued regularly scheduled programming (i.e. a normal lesson). After MATH 145, I had a spare, and then my CS 134 tutorial. On my way to CS, I picked up a copy of the MATH 145 course notes (considering it’s a month and a half into term and Professor Willard keeps referring to them, I figured it was about time to get a copy). In CS, We got our second assignments back (I haven’t yet picked up my first assignment; I’ll have to do that at some point). I got a great mark on the assignment, although it was pretty basic stuff; I would have been terribly upset if my mark had been any less than what it was. I noticed I got a couple marks deducted here and there for stupid stuff. As it turned out, one question I got half a mark docked for was because Microsoft Word printed half on my solution on a seperate page and it looked like it was another part of the solution. This gave me 8 results instead of the 7 I actually had (the requirement was 8-10), so I actually gained a mark from a printing error Now I just have to wait and see if I get as good a mark on Assignment 3 (the one I pulled an all-nighter doing).

After CS was Calculus. Professor Zorzitto seems to be slipping a bit in his ProfQUOTES-worthy material; I only got one quote from him today. Oh well. MATH 147 continues to go somewhat over my head; I really hate these epsilon-delta problems. If I don’t do well on the midterm, I’m likely going to drop down to MATH 137, because I’m just not getting this stuff.

After MATH 147 was my LOOOOOONGGGGGG spare of the week (from 12:30 to 4:30). I got my shopping done, my DDR-playing done, and my lunch-eating done, in that order. After eating lunch, I had an hour to spare before the CS tutorial centre opened to ask about my CS assignment. I spent this hour reading the first quarter or so of the MATH 145 course notes. Hey, it’s the day of the exam, about time I get some studying done, no? Also, I figured it would do me well to be prepared for my MATH 145 tutorial in which I could barrage Professor Willard with questions to my heart’s content (that way I wouldn’t have to barrage myself with these same questions on the exam…the difference is he knows the answer). I then went to the Director of First Year Math Studies office to see if I could get my calculator approved for the exam. I couldn’t. Crud. Now I had to go out and spend $15 on a new calculator, before 7 pm. Next thing I knew the tutorial was over and I went back through the SLC for some dinner and a calculator. Unfortunately, CampusTech was closed, so I was SoL, as they say, on the calculator issue. Double crud. Now I had to write the Algebra exam with no calculator (I had a perfectly good one from high school, but it has to be “MathSoc approved”…stupid bureaucracy…). The people I was with had connections to people who might’ve been able to help (as one of them was in the same boat as me), but after making tons of phone calls, nothing came of it. Oh well.

And then the exam time arrived. I brought my calculator from high school anyway in case Professor Willard decided to have pity on me and let me use it if I needed it (he claimed we shouldn’t need to, but you never know). In fact, you do never know, because we had two problems on the exam, each of which would have been distressingly difficult to do without a calculator (I know because I did them both without a calculator and almost got one of them wrong in the process). About halfway through the 2 hours, Professor Willard enters the room (there was another supervisor-type there until then), and I ask him about the calculator. He takes pity on me. Sweet. I’m SO going to buy a calculator tomorrow (today) though.

Overall, the Algebra exam wasn’t bad. I don’t want to say “it was easy” or “I aced it”, because if it turns out I screwed it up, I’ll look like an idiot. So I won’t. But the undertone is there, take it for what you will. Before the exam, Professor Willard said he wrote the exam so we could do it, not to make it impossible. Turns out he did. The proofs that were required looked mean and ugly, but were pretty basic if you listened in class and bought the course notes (awesome timing ftw!).

Afterwards, I went to the Music class I should have been having during the exam. I spoke to Professor Wood (I think he’s a professor, anyway) about arranging an alternate time, as I have exams every Monday night until November. We arranged some alternate dates, so I won’t have to drop Music. I’ll just have to practise, though; something I haven’t had time to do in a while. It’s about time though.

Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

An Interesting Thursday, Part II

Yes, it’s still Thursday. The clock on my computer, the display on my watch, and, if there were one in view, the clock in the Math C&D would all say it’s 10:10 Friday morning, but to me it’s still Thursday.  Why, you ask?  No, I’m not insane.  Yet.  I pulled my first all-nighter ever.  I’ve been awake now for almost a full 24 hours.  Why did I do something so stupid, you ask?  2 words: CS Homework.  Last night I was up until 3:30 am doing the CS assignment I had been half-putting off half-trying to decipher for the past week.  I managed to get it submitted at about 3:40 am this morning, with an 8:30 am class.  I figured if I stayed up, I could get a start on the Calculus assignment that’s due in about an hour and a half, plus I wouldn’t have to go through the whole wake up, stretch, shower, get dressed thingamajig.  As it turned out, in the 4 hours between finishing my CS assignment and starting to prepare for class, I managed to get almost the entire Math 147 assignment done.  Albeit, I did a poor job of a couple of the questions, but better to get 2/3 then 0/30, no?  I did manage to get it all done by now, though, which is good, although my eyes are burning from lack of being closed for an extended period of time.  Thank goodness for 12:30 day-ends.

Here’s a tip: Try not to pull all-nighters if you can avoid it.  Better to not go out on the weekends than to have to do what I just did the day before not one but two assignments were due.  I’ve learned my lesson.  I’m going to be homeworking it up this weekend.

Until next time *yawn*

Lyle Waldman

An interesting Thursday

If you knew my schedule, you’d know that my Tuesdays and Thursdays are not particularly interesting. First off, they’re only about 11 hours long, as I don’t wake up until 11:45 and my classes start at 8:30 on Friday so I have to go to bed earlier. Additionally, I only have 2 classes on each of Tuesday and Thursday. These 2 classes are CS and Philosophy. And as you’ve probably figured out by now, nothing of interest usually happens in CS. Today, however, was different. I had An Eventful Thursday; a happening few and far between.

My morning/afternoon wasn’t too interesting, except that I got to CS class 5 minutes late. Oh well; they were just doing more stuff with Stack anyway; something else I learned in Grade 12. Professor Case finished the unit on Stack about half an hour into class and proceeded to start the unit on Queue. Queue is like Stack except flipped over. While this sounds dumb, it actually changes a lot. I won’t bore you with the details, but I was actually, genuinely interested in CS once I started actually listening to the lecture, about 45 minutes into class, when I couldn’t access the CS newsgroup to get a question about the assignment answered (I was doing my homework for the first 45 minutes). It seemed I was the only one who understood what was going on though because no one else asked any questions or said anything, though.

My Interesting Thursday continued with Philosophy. For once, I wasn’t late to class. This makes twice in a row; an achievement, I must say. The class started with Professor Tremblay handing back our mini-quizzes from Tuesday. I’m not going to go into the details. He then started talking to us about the Unit Test from last week (I called it a midterm but it wasn’t really). He started by saying the marks were good. Then he continued to define “good” as 70%+. Being a 90%+ student in high school, a 70% for me is practically a fail. I’ve heard your marks are supposed to go down in University, and I’ve seen that in my Math classes, but a 70%? I didn’t even get that in English in High School (English was my worst subject in High School, hence why I’m now in Math)! Then he gave us the marking scheme he used. The more he talked the more worried I became, as I went through all the things he said we should have done that I didn’t remember doing. He broke down the marking scheme for us, telling us what we did or didn’t do, etc., and we hadn’t even gotten our tests back yet. By the time he was done, I was ready for a failure (and this time I mean an ACTUAL failure), as he said there was a big gap between those who did well and those who didn’t. My test was the 10th or so down the list. I look at the marks of the people around me; I see a 14 and a 16. Considering I wrote about 1.5x as much as Plato did when he wrote The Allegory of the Cave (the subject of the test), I was expecting something higher than this, but from what Professor Tremblay said, I thought I completely missed the point. Then he calls my name. I pick up my paper. 18/20! Holy crap! I was ecstatic, to say the least, considering I rarely got a mark above 85% ever, in any Arts course (and those I did get I had to work my pants off for; again, why I’m in Math).

But the interesting part of Interesting Thursday doesn’t end there. About 5 minutes after we all get our tests back, I look out the window, and it’s snowing! Snow in October! And not just your early-November trickling snowfall that melts as soon as it hits the ground; we’re talking all-out blizzard here! A few others see the snow and turn to the window and there’s some murmuring, but Professor Tremblay continues the lesson anyway. About 15 minutes later it’s all over and I look over to the window to see the ground coated in snow. It’s only October, what’s the deal? I’m not a fan of extremely warm or cold weather, so snow doesn’t thrill me; it was just surprising to see.

By the time class was over, though, the snow was all melted away. It was pretty cold out, but after my daily trip to The Cove for some DDR, I didn’t even notice. Then I returned to my room to, allegedly, work on my CS assignment that’s due in 14 hours, but instead I started writing this. Now I’ve really gotta work on CS

Lyle Waldman

It’s academic, Watson!

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I really tried. As my last post was completely non-academic, this one’s gonna be focusing on academics, with maybe a little non-academic blurb at the end. I will try to satisfy Da Rules ((c), (R), and TM) by keeping it short, but I make no guarantees.

MATH 145 and 147 are becoming steadily easier. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting used to it or because we’re not doing Epsilon-Delta proofs in 147 anymore (PURE annoying), but whatever it is, I’m not as stressed out about it anymore.

I’ve gotten 2 assignments back from 145 now, so I have a basic idea of where I’m at, and I’m liking my station. It’s not the 95%+ I had in High School, but I’m not complaining. Then again, I’m taking advanced versions of courses whose basic versions I have little understanding of, so I suppose I should be happy. In fact, I AM happy

I got Assignment 2 back from 147 today. Turns out the TA who marked it didn’t notice the 3 or 4 places I blatantly ripped apart the rules of Absolute Value with no care whatsoever. Oh well; I’m not going to correct him

As it turned out, my Japanese midterm wasn’t today. It was just the first of 2 quizzes I’m having over the course of the term. I don’t think I failed as miserably as I thought I was going to, but I didn’t get 100% either. Then again, my classmate in 2nd year who’s practically (well, significantly less than practically since he hasn’t been kicked out of JAPAN 101R yet) fluent in Japanese didn’t get 100% either. We finally learned a verb today other than “to be”. That was the cool part. The not-as-cool part was that the verb was “to exist”. Sweet. Now I can say the same thing in not one but two different ways! It’s actually different, but I’d like to be able to have a conversation outside the realm of “the weather is nice, isn’t it?” “Yes it is.” “See you later.” at some point. Apparentely that comes in about 2 weeks.

Oh, right, midterm. My midterm is ACTUALLY the 1st of November, followed by another Philosophy test on the 2nd. Nothing on the 5th though (for those who don’t get the reference, watch V for Vendetta).

CS continues to bore me. We’ve finished our unit on Linked List, in which the Prof. Case covered as much in 2 weeks (at 3 hours/week) as my High School CS teacher covered in about 15 minutes *sigh*. Now we’re on to Stack. Stack is significantly easier than LinkedList, but it seems we’re going to take the same amount of time on it. *sigh* why do I bother?

I’ve only had one Philosophy class since last I wrote (well, the last academic post I made) so I’m not going to say anything about it yet.

Once a month, MathSoc (The Mathematics Society) produces a newsletter called MathNEWS. In each issue of MathNEWS there’s a section called ProfQUOTES. Any student can write down funny things their profs have said during class and submit them to MathNEWS, and MathSoc prints the best ones. I’ve been keeping ProfQUOTES for 2 days now (well, actually a week, but there was no Math class on Monday and Professor Case isn’t particularly humourous). The first day I kept them, I filled up an entire page, single spaced, back and front, in my notebook on just things Professor Zorzitto said in one class of MATH 147. That was an awesome class. I’ve started keeping ProfQUOTES on other profs too, but I haven’t got another page ready yet. I’d suggest picking up MathNEWS whether you’re a Mathie or not; some of the stuff in there is just pure brilliance, but the ProfQUOTES are particularly good in general.

Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

Viva la Revolution!

Well, when I started my blog, I was told by The Powers That Be ((c), (R), and TM) that this blog was supposed to focus on academics to try to advertise how awesome UW is, as well as inform future frosh about course selection/material/etc. Well, I’ve been reading the other blogs from both this year and years past, and…well, it seems I’m the only one who follows the rules. Viva la Revolution! Just so I can be the ULTIMATE nonconformist, I’m going to write an entire post that involves academics as little as possible (and if the joke isn’t apparent, you need to watch more South Park, or perhaps just read this small paragraph over again).

So, as I sit here in the Math C&D on the 3rd floor of the MC, a place I seem to frequent regularly (and…um…frequently), I think about what’s worth writing about. Oh yeah!

Microsoft sucks. There, I said what we’re all thinking. So, you ask, what did they do THIS TIME?! Here’s what they did, this time. Be forewarned. I recently bought a song over the Sympatico/MSN music store (don’t worry, I didn’t actually *pay* for it…long story short I found a $5 music card on the ground outside my residence, picked it up, noticed the expiry date is in under a month, and proceeded to find songs I wanted…actually, that’s the whole story, so I suppose it’s not long at all, but I digress). Upon downloading said song, I noticed it was a WMA (it’s Microsoft…they like their Windows Media Audio format or w/e WMA stands for). Upon trying to play the song in iTunes (the program I use for music, JUST because it’s not Windows Media Player), iTunes told me said song was write-protected so it couldn’t convert it to mp3. Awesome. So not only did I have to PAY for this song (well, not *pay*, technically, but if I did have to pay I would have been really upset), but I can’t even play it (or, worse, upload it to my iPod)? Wow, Microsoft sucks. Oh, and so does the RIAA. In the end, it turned out a floormate of mine had an extra CD-RW to lend me. I’m not sure of the legal ramifications of explaining why a CD-RW was useful here, so I’m not going to continue, but let it be said I now have my mp3.

Oh, and Microsoft sucks. Now I have a Japanese quiz to study for, plus I don’t want to write another ridiculously long post, for fear that the Man Upstairs ((c), (R), and TM) will have my Rear End ((c), (R), and TM) for breaking the rules a 4th time. He hasn’t said anything yet, so I presume he hasn’t noticed. SHHH!!! DON’T TELL HIM!!!!

Lyle Waldman

*sigh* Midterms

Ok, so 4 days have passed since my last post. It’s about time for an update.

I’m a mathie!

Well, the Math courses are going well. I got a MATH 147 assignment and bonus back this past week. I got 30/32 on the assignment and full marks on the bonus. That should just about make up for the absolutely horrendous mark I’m expecting on Assignment 2. Assignment 3’s not bad, but I haven’t really gotten into it yet. Right now we’ve just finished limits (and be forewarned: these aren’t your limits from high school; Professor Zorzitto really likes his limits) and are moving on to inverse functions.

As for MATH 145, I haven’t gotten any assignments back yet, but I think I’m doing fairly well in that class. We recently started modular arithmetic. I haven’t dealt with modular arithmetic in Math before, but I’ve done it in CS, so I have a vague idea of what’s going on. Apparentely it’s quite useful though; I would never have finished Assignment 3 without it.

The other day Professor Willard forgot his lesson plan at home. It was quite amusing. He managed to get through an entire class having no idea what he planned to do in the first place with naught but his intuition and trusty Pink Tie calculator. You know your prof’s good when he can pull off an entire lesson by memory.

CS: The Saga Continues

Well, Professor Case came through on her promise. We’ve started Linked List and it’s only taken a month. However, she’s going through it at a snail’s pace. In high school, we did about as many applications with Linked List in 15 minutes as we’ve done in CS 134 in 2 classes (each class is an hour and a half). And they said CS is harder in University…*sigh*. It’s not just the in-class stuff either. Homework-wise, I can do a whole CS assignment in about half the time of a MATH 145 or 147 assignment. Granted, it takes me dreadfully long to get a Math assignment done, but that’s kind of embarassing when you consider the work and time involved should be (if prior experience is any indication) significantly higher in CS. If I didn’t need CS 125, 133, 134, or 135 for my degree, I would definately apply to skip a grade…

Philosophy

We’ve officially finished the unit on allegories, which means no more watching The Matrix for credit :’( Oh well. Philosophy class continues to be fun, although I don’t have much else to say regarding that since I’ve only had one class since last I wrote.

Japanese: I’m running out of catchy titles

Japanese continues to be awesome, but it is becoming significantly more complicated. I got my Hiragana test back yesterday. I thought I failed miserably before reading the subheading: Each question is worth 0.5 marks, for a total of 10. Sweet. Of the 17 questions I answered, I got one wrong, giving me an 80% on the test, even though I thought I did horribly (and barely studied…stupid Math assignments). We’re learning adjectives and advanced (well, more advanced…I’m sure this is still basic to anyone who speaks Japanese fluently) sentence structures now. In other words, more memorization, less application. We had a test on adjectives yesterday. Once again I was unable to finish due to not studying because of a stupid Math assignment, but I’m pretty much guaranteed an 80% on that one too. I’m getting a bit worried though; of all the courses I really want to do well in, it was hard enough to get into JAPAN 101R; I should bloody well do a good job at it. So I’ve decided I’m going to work harder at it, even if that means having to drop down from the MATH 140-sections. I know it’s sort of a pass/fail type of thing, but I’d like the personal satisfaction of doing well and not scraping by (especially since I plan to take JAPAN 102R in the summer, and then 201R and 202R after that).

Music: Yeah, I should really think about these custom titles more

Honestly, I haven’t been to a music practise since last I wrote. Monday was Yom Kippur and I’m Jewish, so my family wanted me home, so I missed that one. Next Monday is Thanksgiving, so I’m missing that one. The following Monday is my MATH 145 midterm, so I’m missing that one. Honestly, Professor Wood decides not to change the practise day, it’s hardly worth my staying in the course, despite how much I want to continue playing music. I’d really like to do it but…*sigh*.

The Midterms are coming! The Midterms are coming!

Yes, indeed, the Midterms are coming. In fact, they’re already upon me. Today, instead of having a discussion in Philosophy, we had a midterm. I can officially say that I have written a paper based on a writing that was longer than the writing it was based on. I’ve come close before (my final term paper in Grade 12 English was about 10 pages and was based on a 70-page book), but never actually done it. My midterm Philosophy paper, based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, came to about 5 pages, despite the story itself being only 3. I’m proud of myself. Wednesday entails my Japanese midterm which will (likely) be largely based on sentence structures and vocabulary. The former I have down pat, the latter…not so much. A few friends of mine in Japanese are organizing a study session at some point next week so we can do well on the Midterm on Wednesday afternoon. If I can ace that and get some time to study for the mini-quizzes, I’ll hopefully scrape an 85% on my final. That’s my goal. The following Monday is my Algebra midterm, an hour after my Music class starts. Professor Wood has organized a Rhythm Section (of which I am a part) practise that day, and is expecting me to be there. Crap. Music is just not working out for me. Two weeks later, on the 30th is my Calculus midterm. That one’s gonna be a doozy. It’s likely going to decide whether I stay in MATH 147 or not. Unfortunately, once again, it starts an hour after Music, so I’m going to be missing practise AGAIN that day. Gah. I really wanted to do Music too.

Luckily, between my 6 courses (7 if you count PD), I only have 4 midterms. One’s done and the one I’m most worried about isn’t for almost a month. I wouldn’t mind having a CS midterm, if only to take some of the weight off my final (the final in CS 134 is worth 50% of the final mark…ugh). At least I don’t have a weekend midterm; some of my res-mates aren’t so lucky.

Obligatory Student Life stuff

Not too much has happened of interest over the past 4 days, except that some people in my res went went out to the Mongolian Grill last night for an inter-house dinner. About 20-ish of us (probably more, I didn’t count) showed up to Mongolian Grill. The dons put to us a challenge: If we could eat 4 plates of food, they would buy us free drinks at the caf. No one in my house (to my knowledge) completed the task (including myself), but at least 4 people in the other house had not 4 but 5 plates of food. They were incredibly sick afterwards, but their don promised them ice cream floats instead of just soda for doing 5. I wonder if he quite understood what he was getting himself into when he did that.

For the uninitiated wondering “why would you spend so much money to get free pop?”, Mongolian Grill is an all-you-can-eat buffet. Basically you take raw ingredients for stir-fry-type dishes (noodles, meat, vegetables, seasonings, etc.) and they cook it for you. It’s pretty expensive, so you may as well get the most out of it.

Last Saturday was the Small c Math competition. Those of you who thought you were done with Math contests after the Euclid are sorely mistaken. The Small c contest is based mostly around high school math. It’s a similar format to the Cayley, Pascal, and Fermat contests from high school; multiple choice, 5 choices per question, 25 questions, the whole bit. It’s a bit different though. Because we’re in University and we’re all Mathies anyway, they decided to put a few jokes on the cover page. I tried to take a photograph of the page but it didn’t quite come out, so I’ll just dictate a few of the jokes I found humourous:

1) The date on the cover sheet was “00 October, 2006″. It was September 30th.
2) The numerals beside the rules were in binary.
3) Rule #8: “Als u dit kunt lezen, spreekt u het Nederlands”. I don’t speak Dutch.
4) Rule #10: “In typical Canadian fashion, “EH” is the answer many times…or maybe it isn’t”.
5) Question #2 mentions the Church of St. Timothy of Horton.

And for those of you who don’t think these jokes are funny, you should be Engineers.

That’s all for now. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

September – An Overview

Well, October has started, and I’ve been ridiculously busy with schoolwork this month, so I haven’t had time to break what’s likely going to be quite a long post into seperate little bits. In future, I’m going to try to break it up, but since much of this information goes back almost a month, I don’t remember much of it in blazing detail, so I’m going over it quickly.

Math 145 and 147

During Frosh Week, there was a presentation for, they said, “anyone in Advanced Math or was interested in Advanced Math”. In high school, my math courses bored me tremendously (and my principal wouldn’t let me skip a grade in math), so the prospect of advanced math sounded interesting to me. This presentation was given by the two Advanced Math profs, Professor Willard and Professor Zorzitto. The general theme was “don’t come to our class; it’s too hard”. Of course, especially when it comes to math, anyone who says something like “it’s too hard” to me only makes me want to do it more. Within a week, I had switched into Advanced Math. So far it’s been pretty good; Professors Willard and Zorzitto are really funny guys and they make class interesting, especially Professor Zorzitto who comes up with such awesome lines as “A function can return anything you like! It can be an integer, a real number, even a chicken for all I care!” (I now have a drawing of a chicken at the back of my notebook after that one). The only problem is that I find the homework to take distressingly long; it takes away from my time to do other homework and writing on this blog (which is why I’m doing 3 posts today). If you’re prepared for a lot of homework, a lot of thinking, and a lot of topics going over your head, I would definately recommend taking these classes. They’re more than worth it.

Watashi wa Lyle desu. Nihon-go no kurasu wa totemo ii desu!

Before I begin, for all the Japanese people reading this, I sincerely apologize if I completely butchered my grammar and/or word choice with that title. For those of you who aren’t/don’t speak Japanese, the title says “My name is Lyle. Japanese (language) class is awesome (lit: very good…I don’t know the word for “awesome”, or if it exists)!”

This story actually starts about 2 years ago. I became really interested in Japanese…well…everything; Anime, video games, music, everything. Then a friend of mine told me about JET. JET is a program available (at the time, although I’ve heard rumours of policy change) to anyone with a Bachelor’s degree in anything and fluency in English to go to Japan and teach English to Japanese middle school students. I jumped at the thought of going to live in Japan for any period of time, especially if I could get paid for doing so. It was at that point that I decided I wanted to learn Japanese at some point during my life. When I got my application information from UW and found out I had the opportunity to learn Japanese, I got very excited. Apparentely, a lot of other people did too; QUEST (the course application service) opened at 7am, and by 7:30 the class was full. I didn’t even wake up that day till 8 am. At Student Life 101 at the end of July, I visited the East Asian Studies Registrar’s office at Renison College to inquire as to a waiting list or people dropping out of the class. I was told I would be put on a waiting list, but it would be unlikely to get into the class this term. Oh well. A month later, during Frosh Week, I once again visited Renison College to inquire as to Japanese. This time, the computers were down and I was not given a hard answer. Oh well. So I decided, as a last-ditch effort, I would go to class on the first day. Perhaps someone would drop out or the professor would let me in, or some miracle would occur that would result in my entrance into the class. Apparentely about 15 other people had the same idea. I was told that my name was way down the wait list and I wouldn’t be able to get in, as there were two spots for 15-odd people. The two spots filled, but people continued to wait. A bunch of administrative details got cleared up and a number of other people got in. There was left myself, a girl in 1A, and two 4th year students. The two 4th years were told they wouldn’t be able to get in because 1st years were given priority for a 101 class. One person was forced to leave the class because he was too advanced for the course material. The two of us remaining were asked who applied first. Because I saw the registrar at SL101, I was given the spot. So it goes to show; go to the UW SL events during the summer, you never know what might happen. As it turned out, the girl was let in as well, so finally everyone got what they wanted.

Because of this, I got to (I consider it a favor) drop Chem 120; I found that class had too many people in it and it was just far too difficult to learn anything in there. If you’re not worried about a 400+ person class in an auditorium so large that the professor has to use a microphone, by all means take it; it just wasn’t my thing (throughout high school, my entire school was only 250 kids).

On the other hand, my Japanese class is about 50 students total, with my tutorial being 26 or so. I find it easy to learn in this type of environment. The professors are awesome (although, to be honest, I still haven’t learned the name of my tutorial professor). I’ve made friends with some of my classmates, which I think is good, because now I have a study group (and friends in 2nd and 3rd year is never a bad thing). I’ve already managed to make a fool of myself though; in the second class, the professor called me to the front to practise greetings. I bowed as if I was praying (with my hands in front of me, palms together). Everyone had a nice laugh at my expense for that one. Oh well. I’ve learned my lesson now, and I’m not gonna do that again (bowing like that or sitting front row, right corner). The only problems I’m finding with Japanese is that Renison College is pretty much on the other side of campus from anywhere so it’s a trek to get to and from class, and there aren’t a lot of outlets to practise so it’s difficult to learn, which is why I’ve formed a study group (well, actually a 3rd year in my class formed it; I just became a part).

I would highly recommend Japanese to anyone who doesn’t know it already. The professors are awesome, and even when you make an idiot of yourself like I did, everyone has a good chuckle and no one remembers. The only thing is you’ll feel like you’re back in SK again, but if you like that kind of thing, go for it!

Philosophagizing

Yeah, I’m taking Philosophy and I’m a mathie. My dad took it when he was in university and recommended I do the same. So I did. So far it’s awesome. Professor Tremblay is really cool. We have great class discussions. I got to watch The Matrix for credit (The Matrix is my favourite movie). ‘Nuff said. Unlike the philosophy class offered in High School (which I didn’t take because of this reason), Professor Tremblay has decided to inflict upon us as little reading as possible to get his point across (whereas in high school the teacher was not opposed to giving 500+ pages of reading over March Break, and has done so). This is good, because I read very slowly, and it would take me forever to get through a thick philosophical text. But man…it’s been 2 weeks and I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I got to watch The Matrix…for credit. Holy mackerel. The only problem with Philosophy so far is that it’s at St. Jerome’s. My CS class ends 10 minutes before my Phil starts and the walk from the 4th floor of the MC is about 7 minutes from the 3rd floor of St. Jerome’s. Then I have to factor in time for packing up my stuff and if I need to ask my CS professor anything, well, so far I haven’t been on time for a class yet. But that’ll resolve itself, I’m sure.

Computer Science: The reason I’m here

When I went to Campus Day in March, it was recommended to me by an upper-year student that I take the most advanced CS course offered to me. So I took CS 134. On one hand, it was a big mistake. On the other, it was a great idea. In Grade 12, I did Java. By January-ish in High School I had learned Linked List. So far it’s been a month and we’ve barely got past the idea of pointers. For those of you to whom this is complete gibberish, the idea of pointers is one of the basic elements of Java; something you should know before you even begin programming, because it can cause a lot of problems if you don’t. Professor Case says we’re going to do Linked List next week, which is hopefully true, because it’s about time we look at some real code (we’ve been doing debugging and basic theory for 2 weeks). Oh well. It is, after all, the most advanced course offered at my level. I would definately not recommend the CS 125 or 133 courses to anyone who knows a modicum of Java, though, if CS 134 is any indication, but for those who don’t know an int from an Integer, go for the basics.

The Stage Band

In high school, Music was one of my favourite courses (next to CS and a couple of my Math courses). It was also one of my best graduating marks. When I learned there was a music course at UW that involved no theory, I was in right away. When I learned I could take it on top of an already-full course load, I was overjoyed. When I learned the class was Monday night, 6:30 to 9:30, not so much. But there’s always a bad side to everything. I’ve only gone to one class so far (there was confusion surrounding the first week), so I don’t have much to say yet. I like the pieces we’re playing, as they’re mostly jazz and my training was in jazz, plus the professor is cool (any professor who makes jokes in class is cool in my books, as you can tell). I’ll probably be able to give a better opinion on this course in a few weeks once I’ve been to a couple more practises.

Obligatory Student Life stuff

There haven’t been that many Student Life events since Frosh week. There’s always something going on at the SLC though. A couple weeks back they had a poster sale where I picked up a couple sweet posters, and last week there were various sales and clubs and stuff. I didn’t go to most of it, but I looked by the DVD booth, where I picked up a copy of Paycheck (great movie…if you ever get the chance, watch it). I spend a lot of time in the Arcade though. Last weekend, we recovered our DDR machine from its “summer home” (which, rumour has it, was U of T), and I’ve spent a lot of money there.

That’s all for now. As always, if you have anything you’d like to hear about, let me know. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

Frosh Week!

Frosh week at UW was great. I know a bunch of other people at other universities, and even though they told me all about their frosh weeks, I was still not expecting the kind of frosh week I get at UW. Frosh week at UW was divided between res events and faculty events. Most of the events were icebreakers; learning people’s names, programs, interesting facts, etc. but some of the events were really fun. Throughout all of Frosh Week, a giant pink tie (the symbol of the Math Faculty is a pink tie for the uninitiated) hung from the side of the Math and Computers (MC) building with a bunch of orientation leaders “guarding” it (what anyone would or could do to a 40-foot-tall tie hanging from the top of a 6-storey building is beyond me, but apparentely the Engineers have figured it out).

The highlight of my Frosh Week was the last faculty event. It was called a “scavenger hunt”, but it wasn’t really. As a team (there were 5 or 6 frosh teams) we performed a bunch of tasks; some of us did puzzles and trivia, others ran around doing favors for the frosh leaders, and then there were mini side events. My personal favourite was when I went down to the 2nd floor of the MC to sing “The Saga Begins” by Weird Al Yankovic to one of the frosh leaders. Another guy from another team joined in. It was really cool…I knew I learned that song for a reason

During Frosh Week, Metric performed on campus. The general consensus among the goers was that it was one of the most underwhelming concerts most of us have ever seen. They left two of their biggest hits for the last 2 songs of the concert, with most of the remainder being songs that most people I talked to had never heard of (and, personally, I thought were pretty lame…then again I’ve never even pretended to be a Metric fan). The lead singer spent more time facing the band behind her or facing the stage floor than facing the audience. It was almost as bad as the time I went to see the Our Lady Peace Healthy in Paranoid Times release concert in Toronto.

Frosh Week ended with a Toga party. The stage was still set up from the Metric concert and they organized to have a MuchMusic video dance on the same green. It was essentially the same thing as any other party, except everyone had bedsheets wrapped around them. The exception is the music (in my opinion, but not in the opinions of many others I talked to), which was much better than usual. To give a small sampling of a few of the tunes I was excited to hear: Crazy Frog – Axel F, Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit, System of a Down – Chop Suey, Smash Mouth – I’m A Believer (from Shrek), and Gnarls Barkley – Crazy.

Overall, a good experience.

Once again, if any of you would like to hear more about anything in particular, let me know! Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

All about me!

Hi everyone, and welcome to the UW Math blog! My name is Lyle Waldman and I’m the UW Math blogger this year. Those of you who frequented the UW Forums this past summer may know me as Ertai87, and for those of you who are prospective UW students, I strongly recommend joining the boards next summer (and no, they’re not paying me to say that! ).

So, before I start writing about my UW experiences, I think it’s important for all of you to get to know a bit about me.

My name is Lyle Waldman. I’m from Toronto, Ontario, and have lived there my entire life. Before going to UW, the farthest I’ve ever permanently moved is 4 houses down the street. I lived in northern Toronto, though, so the setting around my house is very close to what I’m finding at UW. This makes UW a very comfortable plave for me to live, because it’s not that different from home.

Throughout my educational career, I’ve been through both public and private schools. I was certified as gifted after SK, and had to go to my local school for Grade 1 before I could enter the gifted program at a public school in Toronto. For grades 2 and 3, I had an awesome, awesome teacher, and I learned a lot. Grades 4 through 7 were the opposite. I found I was learning distressingly little, did not like my classmates, and was overall not having a good time. On top of all that, I was a mid-70’s student, and my parents were pressuring me to raise my grades. When I entered Grade 8, I changed schools to go to a private school in northern Richmond Hill, Ontario (about 45 minutes north of Toronto). This school would be the school I would graduate from. As soon as I started at this new school, my GPA rose about 10%. I eventually graduated from this school with a 95% average. I personally found the private school system to be much more engaging that the regular system; the teaching was better, my classmates were nicer, everything was just superior.

Since Grade 2 I’ve been involved in playing Trading Card Games (the most famous of which is likely Magic: The Gathering (also known as “Magic Cards”)). I’ve played, at one point or another, pretty much every game ever published, but I’ve only played 3 games on an ongoing basis, including the one I currently play. I’ve also been involved with music since I was very little. Since before I can remember, I played piano (rather, I was forced into playing piano by my parents who likewise had it inflicted upon them by their parents. As you can see, piano was not my favourite of instruments). Like everyone else I know, I played recorder through most of elementary school. Before starting Grade 7, where I would have access to real instruments (not recorders), I quit piano. In Grade 7, I picked up the Baritone. for those of you who have never heard of a baritone (like myself before I started playing it), it’s like a miniature tuba. It has a similar range (and therefore similar parts) as the trombone. After Grade 7, I decided that when I played O Canada, I wanted it to sound like O Canada, so I picked up the Clarinet. It was after this summer that I changed schools, so I was forced to drop the baritone. I played the Clarinet for 5 years, through the entire music program at my school. When my cousin moved to New York, he gave me his Electric Bass. A couple months later, I picked up the Bass, and have been playing it ever since, after I dropped the Clarinet at the end of high school. I was very involved with the music program at my high school; I played in the high school band every year (even when I was in Grade 8 and 13; the band was for Grade 9 through 12 only…I’m not going to explain here why I did Grade 13…it’s a long story). I was a founding member of my High School Jazz Band, the Jazzmanian Devils (don’t ask me; I didn’t pick the name ).

So now you know pretty much everything there is to know about me, except my UW experiences. I’ll begin by telling you all a bit about my course selection. In high school, we were offered a Computer Science course in Grade 10, where we learned Microsoft Visual Basic. I enjoyed programming and liked the teacher (I would have a fight with said teacher at the beginning of Grade 13 and do not consider us to be on speaking terms anymore despite the fact that she is the mother of a friend of mine), so I continued to take it until Grade 12. In my high school career, I learned Visual Basic, C and C++, and Java. I enjoyed programming so much that I decided in Grade 12 I would choose CS as my major.

The CS program at UW comes with 2 electives in the 1A term (that’s 1st year, 1st term). Many of the people I’ve talked to, when I tell them my electives, give me a funny, sideways look, because I did not choose a single Math, Science, or Engineering course as an elective. For electives, I’m taking Phil 100J (Introduction to Philosophy) and Japan 101R (1st level Japanese). I was also able to take Music 116 (Stage Band) on top of a full course load, playing Electric Bass, so I am taking 6 courses in 1A (and if you come to the Stage Band concert at the end of November, you will be able to see me perform! So come!).

So now you know pretty much all there is to know about me. I felt this post would be a nice introduction to my blog, and I hope you all enjoyed it. Feel free to reply to any of my posts if you’d like to hear about anything in particular. I’m always open to feedback.

Until next time

Lyle Waldman