Too tired to think of a catchy title

So another week has come and gone, and I’m finished all my homework (except for CS245) for the next 8 days or so, so I have some time on my hands. Time to update the blog.

In academic news, courses have been going well. CS240’s still a blast, although I was too tired to go to class on Thursday morning, so I slept through it…bad idea. I got the notes, but only after finding out that none of my firends in the class actually take notes so I had to get them randomly from I guy I sat beside. I’ll try not to do that again, but 8:30 class really is a pain in the butt. At least Prof. Cormack is entertaining though. I don’t know how that guy has that much energy that early in the morning…I do see him with a coffee in class though, so maybe that’s it…

CS251’s confusing. Not confusing in the conventional “I don’t get it” sense, but a lot of the information doesn’t look like testable material, and very little of it looks like testable material. I’m not sure what to take notes on. I’m trying to get everything down, and we’ll see how it goes come the midterm. The first assignment was bashit easy and took me about 1/2 hour for the first 4 questions. The 5th question took about 1 1/2 hours, but only because I redid it 3 times to make it look pretty for the TAs.

CS245 is insane. Really. I don’t get it. One would think boolean logic is easier than this. The problem I have with the course is that we’re not allowed to use blatantly obvious tools like truth tables and obvious theorems, at least not on the first assignment. I also don’t get a large section of the first assignment, and I’m going to see the TA about it tomorrow. It’s really confusing, but I’m sure once it’s explained I’ll be like “OH YEAH!” and then that’ll be it.

Stat 230 continues to be a review of Data Management. Midterm 1 is tomorrow afternoon (there are 5 “midterms” in the course, each worth something like 5% of the final grade, instead of the conventional “weekly assignment + homework + midterm” you see in other classes). There’s really not much else to say, except that Diana’s voice thing I mentioned in my last post has somehow become less noticeable of late, or maybe I’m just used to it by now. Or maybe I am crazy.

Unfortunately I didn’t get Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes yet this term. I’m still working on it though. She’s really quite funny, although most of the jokes don’t make sense when you translate them to English, or aren’t funny unless I add a large preamble to explain the situation surrounding them. I’m just waiting for the next time she gives a good 1-liner, although it doesn’t happen often

In related news, apparently Kazuki found out I put him in ProfQuotes last term in Japan 201. He was quite excited actually and said he’s going to take a copy of that issue of MathNews back to Japan with him to show his friends. That’s kind of exciting to me to hear.

In other related news, apparently the Math faculty isn’t as organized behind the scenes as they would have you (and me) believe. My first marking assignment for Math 136 has already had 2 major snafoos: First, my supervising grad TA didn’t give us the assignment specs or the marking scheme (the latter being of utmost importance for a marker), the second being that the solutions set, marking scheme, and assignment specs he did give us turned out to be for a different section of Math 136. So basically I have to mark 30-ish papers by Friday and don’t yet have the assignment, marking scheme, or solution set. The guy whose paper I did mark before realizing this is probably going to be really pissed when he sees I gave him a 5.5/37…shows me to mark in black ink…I’ll write him a nice note and remark his paper and hopefully he won’t be too angry…I’ll probably get an extension on the marking as well, cause there’s no way I can have it done by Friday (actually I probably can, but I’d rather get an extension )

In not-quite-academic news, clubs have started up again. KonJa once again has Monday and Thursday meetings, which kind of screws up my plans with CTRL-A. Oh well, not like I’m exec anyway. The last meeting was on Monday, and the next one is this coming thursday, and we’re going out for dinner afterwards. Next Friday’s the term-ly cooking day, and this time I’m going to make sure to not walk back home at 1:15 am in a blizzard half-drunk. That was a bad idea the first time, and I learned my lesson.

In other other news, Linux is being a pain in the butt. Weird things happen to my comp from time to time. I think I’ve got it all resolved, but I’m probably going to format again anyway cause I didn’t set it up properly the first time. I can’t wait till my Dell warranty expires and I have an excuse to get a Macbook…*sigh* Ubuntu is still better than Windows though. It’ll be even better when Heron comes out and they finally fix the standby issues with Gutsy so I don’t have to do a full shutdown every time I put my computer away or risk it running out of power…

So that took a whole 20 minutes of my time. I just can’t justify going to bed before 2 am on a day when I don’t have to get up till almost noon…maybe I’ll play some Wii or something…

Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

A New Hope (and year)

So, I wasn’t going to write a new post at least until Monday or so, but I’m bored and I have an hour to kill, so I figure I may as well.

So I’m back on campus now. My courses this term are Stat 230, CS240, CS245, CS251, and JAPAN202R. So far, everything’s gone pretty well. A bit of first impressions:

Stat 230 so far looks like a review of Data Management from high school. For those who have taken Data Management, you’ll know it’s a common-sense bird course. For those who haven’t and want some free common-sense marks, take it. Basically it deals with probabilities and statistics, like how many times you can roll a “7″ on 2d6 on average. Well, that’s what it seems like anyway. I hope it gets more interesting. The prof (or “instructor”, since she said she doesn’t have a PhD) is pretty decent. Her name is Diana (she told us to call her by her first name), and she seems really nice. She also teaches quite well. About 15 minutes or so into each lecture, though, her throat seems to dry up and she gets kind of a hoarse quality to her voice which is a bit distracting, but bearable and not noticeable unless you’re looking for it (everyone I mention it to says I’m crazy, which I probably am, but for other non-related reasons).

CS240 is AWESOME. Professor Cormack is basically a toned-down version of Professor Zorzitto, teaching a class I can feasibly get a 90% in. He is bashit awesome. I started keeping ProfQuotes again, and in 1 class I got 4 things from him. It was great. We’ve had our first assignment in the class so far, and it looks like Prof Cormack is going with the approach of “anyone can ace this course, but only really really good people can get all the bonus assignments I’m putting out”. I think I got the first bonus, but won’t know until next Thursday or Friday when the marks are released.

CS245 is my least favourite course so far this term. Professor Trefler is perhaps one of the most boring lecturers at UW (at least who I’ve had anyway). Pretty much the entirety of my rant from last term on Professor Hoffman applies also to Professor Trefler. He speaks REALLY REALLY slowly, which makes him look unprepared, and he doesn’t try to keep the class’s attention. Quite literally, I have yet to stay awake through one of his classes, despite them being in the middle of the afternoon on a day in which I get to sleep in, and only 1 hour in length (as opposed to CS240 which is at 8:30 AM and for 1 1/2 hours). The course subject is mathematical logic and its applications to Computer Science. Prof Trefler takes the first 10-20 minutes of class (remember, the entire lecture session is only 1 hour) and spends it reviewing the last class. Then he takes the next 30-40 minutes and very very slowly (not in great detail, but he just talks at turtle-speed) goes over something that could and probably should be discussed in less than half that time. Totally lame.

CS251 is kinda meh so far. Professor Morton (although rumour has it that he’s also an “instructor”, although I don’t think he ever mentioned it one way or the other) seems decent enough. He seems to be excited about the material and he understands it well, although I don’t know what there is to understand about boolean algebra, which is all we’ve done so far. So basically so far it’s stuff you’ve probably seen in Grade 9 or 10 CS in high school (although it hasn’t managed to put me to sleep yet despite it being the same day as CS240). The course is quite obviously meant to be taken with CS241 though; everything about it screams “USE ME IN AN ASSEMBLER!!!” Professor (instructor? Andrew?) Morton even went so far as to spend a good 20 minutes in the first lecture discussing MIPS architecture (the architecture used to design with in CS241). But overall, I can’t complain. It looks like the first assignment should be quite an interesting one.

JAPAN 202R is, as always, awesome. This term, Misato-sensei is teaching the 3-hour lecture. She really is a blast to have as a prof. She doesn’t talk instructionally to the class; the whole thing is very social and informal. Or maybe because I’ve talked to her outside of class, I know her in a non-instructional setting so I feel that way anyway. But either way, it feels better than with Maruoka-sensei in 201. She spends more time than Maruoka-sensei talking in Japanese, but by 202 we’re expected to understand most of what she says, and even when we can, she always subtitles herself for us (and she has no Japanese accent and speaks English like a first language, so she’s easy to understand…I honestly don’t know what her first language is, because there’s a rumour that she used to be a professional English-Japanese translator). The 202R textbook is a real textbook, not one that Maruoka-sensei custom-made (like the ones from 101-201), although it’s not used that much since it seems everything is done by handout. I’d prefer if the text was used more, but whatever.

In other news, some clubs have already started doing stuff. CTRL-A had their first meeting on the first day of class, and is electing their exec tomorrow (technically today) evening. I’m running for president, vice-president, and e-communications officer (i.e. the guy who sends out the weekly e-mails). I’m going to be cosplaying Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist at Clubs Days this Thursday if I can get the jacket from one of the other club members; I picked up a replica pocketwatch from Pacific Mall in Toronto yesterday (technically 2 days ago). KonJa and Cheese Club are apparently starting meetings next week, meaning I’ll be missing the first Cheese Club meeting Oh well…there will always be more cheese.

Also, I have already completed half my goal for the term: I’m going to, hand over fist, by tooth, nail, and any other means necessary, get Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes again. I did it once in 102 and her reaction was hilarious. She promised not to let it happen again, so I of course took that as a direct challenge to myself (given that I was the person who put her in there the first time). And nobody challenges me like that. Half the battle has already been won: she said something ProfQuotes-worthy in class last week. Now we just have to see if the MathNews editors are like-minded. And yes, I totally will rub it in her face when it happens (jokingly, of course). Last time she found out without me telling her though, so we’ll see if she finds out again.

Anyway, it’s 2:15 am now, and I have class in about 10 hours (yay late mornings!), so it’s bedtime. As always, my e-mail address is still uwmathblogger@gmail.com (I have no idea why it hasn’t been admin-locked yet, but it hasn’t, so I’m still using it), so feel free to send questions, comments, or money. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman