16 months (give or take) of the Math blog: a FAQ

So my goal of this post will be to try to answer questions people have asked me in the past and see if I can help people in absentia in the future (questions are paraphrased):

Q1: “Japan 101 is so hard to get into! How do I do it?!”
A1: To be honest, I advise against taking Japan 101. If anyone in the East Asian Studies department at Renison is reading this, they’re probably going to be really pissed at that, but I have a reason, and it’s not a negative one. The class is great. The profs (Fumie-sensei is back again so she’s once again the tutorial prof for 101) are awesome, the course is interesting (for those interested), and the material moves at a good pace (a bit slow for my liking, to be honest, but I can see the reasoning behind the structure). The problem is that the enrollment is so high and the course is so slow that you probably don’t lose much by simply buying the book yourself and studying from it on your own. The difference is that you don’t get credit for the course, but my position is that if you’re taking Japan 101 for the credit, you should be doing the East Asian Studies diploma. I find it hard to believe (but have no hard facts to back up my opinion) that 70+ people per term (200+ per year) are doing the East Asian Studies diploma and using Japanese as their language of choice (Korean and Chinese are also eligible languages). If you’re not planning on doing the East Asian Studies diploma, leave the room in the class for the people who are, because they need it for their degree. Instead, contact Maruoka-sensei (useful websites at end of post) and ask her to buy the textbook. The book is custom-written by Maruoka-sensei and can be purchased for about $35 from her at Renison. In fact, the same can be done with Japan 102 and 201 as well. The Japanese profs are nice people, and if you are having trouble studying on your own, it’s unlikely that they’ll deny helping you if you ask nicely.

Q2: “I’ve heard UW is really picky with the people they take and I’m scared about my marks! What should I do?”
A2: Don’t worry about it. I know people who got into UW CS (rumoured, at least where I’m from, to require a 95+% average in high school) with a mid-80s average. Most of the rumours are overhyped. Just do your best, and if it works it works, but stressing out won’t get you anywhere.

Q3: “I heard you took the advanced math courses. Are they really that hard?”
A3: Yes. I didn’t lie when I said I would have failed Math 147 if I hadn’t dropped it. The courses are a lot of work and they are quite difficult. However, if you feel you are up to the challenge and want the higher understanding, they are definitely more interesting than the regular counterparts in that sense. Also, I find the people in those classes are more closely knit due to the difficulty of the work; that is, you’re more likely to meet people and make friends in the advanced classes, and when I was frosh, I found this aspect quite refreshing. After taking the regular math courses, I found that this close-knit camaraderie does not exist there (or if it does, it either passed me by or was not as evident).

Q4: “Which CS class should I take in my 1A?” (this was a question I asked when I was frosh, so I feel it needs to be answered)
A4: Unfortunately, I can’t really give you a good, straight answer. The structure of the 1A CS courses are changing as of September, and the Java courses (125, 133, and 134) are being completely eradicated (or so I understand) in favour of a language called Python. I have no experience in Python, so I can’t speak to its difficulty, and definitely can’t speak to the difficulty of the courses themselves. I’m also not completely sure of the structure of how the courses will be done (i.e. I’ve heard certain courses are only open to CS majors, even in 1st year), so I can’t even offer an idea of the options. However, this is what I can say: If I could do my frosh course selection over again, I would have taken CS135 instead of 134, as the prof is better (saying nothing against Professor Case, she’s an incredible professor too, but I think it would have been more interesting with Professor Ragde, plus the material in that course is more interesting, and even if Prof. Ragde isn’t teaching it, the course has a reputation for very high-caliber profs). Take that as you will. If you’d like more information, Professor Ragde would probably be the best person to contact.

That pretty much covers the FAQ. Here are some important information you might want to check out, as they help with that all-important administrative stuff:

http://ego.uwaterloo.ca/~uwdir/Search.html – UWDIR. It has a listing of contact information of pretty much everyone at UW, sorted by name (including both Maruoka-sensei and Prof. Ragde). If you want to look up a prof’s name, or if you want to contact your classmates for homework help, this website is essential.

mathuo@uwaterloo.ca (e-mail) – Math Undergrad Office (MUO) e-mail. It’s generally better to get administrative stuff done in person at the MUO, but if you just need to get some information confirmed or have trouble with QUEST and want to see if something can be done by e-mail, that’s who to contact. Unless you have an open issue with them, though, it’s generally better to go in person (MC 4th floor).

Anyway, that’s all folks. Signing off (and I mean it this time),

Lyle Waldman

A Crossroads

So I’m standing at a crossroads right now, and I’ve been thinking about this all weekend, and I think I’ve come to a conclusion. I was originally planning on walking away from this blog at the end of April for good, as I will be in 2B in September, and the likelihood of anyone taking any of the same courses I’m taking then who will actually care enough to read this blog will be almost 0, as my degree plan is somewhat niched (of the 5 courses I’m taking in fall, 1 will be a 2B CS, 1 a 2B Stats, 1 a 3rd or 4th-year CS (I haven’t actually decided what course it will be yet), one a 2nd year East Asian Studies non-language course, and I have yet to decide the 5th). However, I’ve decided to end the blog early. This will be my second-last post; my last post will be a short FAQ on questions I’ve recieved over the course of my term as UW Math Blogger for future reference. I have a few last comments, but first I’ll explain my reasoning:

My reasoning is threefold:

1) Upon deciding I was going to quit the blog in April, I thought about what my courses are this term. I’m taking 1 2A CS, 2 2B CSes, a 2B Japanese course, and a 2A Stats course. Of those, only 1 is open to all Math students (the Japanese course being open only with the right knowledge, which it’s doubtful a significant percentage of people reading this have), so most people reading this are either CS majors or are skipping over 3/4 of every post. I’m not the UW CS Blogger, I’m the UW Math Blogger, and I’d like to keep my content to its purpose, and I feel my content has passed its purpose.

2) Upon editing and reading past posts, I’ve found that my past posts were filled with a lot more humour and were more interesting to read than my later ones. I don’t like writing boring things, as I’m not (or I try not to be) a boring person, and I hate (yes, I used the word “hate”, because I really mean it) coming off as something I’m not, especially when it shows me in a false negativity (if it shows me in a true negativity, then whatever, I’m not perfect, and I know it).

3) I’ve recently been receiving quite insulting comments on my blog from a particular source. I’d go so far as to say these comments were harassing, but so far there have only been 2, and 2 is hardly reason to call harassment. I received a comment (I before E, except after C, Lyle… ) on a post I wrote a couple weeks ago that essentially said “you suck, go kill yourself”. Not in those words; it used synonyms. Not euphemisms, synonyms. The meaning was not blanketed in any way. I received a similar comment this morning from the same source on a post I made last night. What was troubling wasn’t that these comments existed – I know there are fools on the internet who have nothing better to do with their lives than troll random blogs – but that these comments were from a source I knew.

The source of these comments was taurine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (I don’t know if it’s WordPress that told me this or GMail that tracks it, but it was included in the e-mail notification I got when this message was posted); that is, these comments came from somebody on a Computer Science Club machine. The CSC is very picky about who gets on their machines; only members are allowed logon privileges. This means that someone from within the CSC wrote these comments, and since I know pretty much everyone in the CSC (I know the more active members anyway), I probably know this person. I don’t know who this person is, and frankly I don’t care; what bugs me is that such things are allowed to go on in the CSC (the members either know or have cause to know), and that people who treat me well (or at least decently…usually…) in person can be so underhanded and insulting when they’re anonymous. I know it’s a basic trait of the internet – anonymity brings out the worst in people – but I’d like to think that people I consider my friends, or at least positively-minded acquaintances, are as such. Just a warning to people who come to UW, that such people do exist here, and they do exist within the CSC (although, to be honest, there are not nearly as many here as in other places, and most of the CSC members are nice, at least to your face; since I don’t know who wrote this comment I can’t be guaranteed that one of the people who’s nice to my face isn’t a troll behind my back, but as far as I know they’re mostly good guys most of the time). Personally, I don’t want to be even tangentially associated with mean-spirited people though, so I won’t be renewing my membership after it expires at the end of this term (although this unfortunately means I’ll have to find another convenient room with a whiteboard when I need to study for a test, or I might have to *gasp* study in my room), but I feel that people should know all sides of a story before making a decision on how to spend their money and time at UW. The CSC is a useful academic resource for CS and opensource software help, but as a general social hangout, my opinion of them has unfortunately deteriorated substantially over the past couple months.

In general, when someone tells me to stop doing something, if I see no immediate reason to stop, I generally don’t, but given both this and the other 2 reasons and the fact that I have too much else on my mind at the moment to deal with it all, I’ve decided to just get it over with; it would have been done in a month and a half anyway.

So basically I figure that my travels here at UW are best told to people who I know will care and who I know I can talk to rationally and will respond in kind. I must confess that part of my reason for continuing the blog as long as I have (aside from the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed doing it until I started being harassed by the CSC) was to keep my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives and important people to me, updated on how I’m doing without having to call them all individually. That’s largely why I wrote so much and went so in-depth into everything. I suppose I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way from now on. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll start another blog on a different topic. If you see my name on anything in the future, I encourage you to post and ask questions or make comments. Just keep in mind my rule of thumb:

“If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”.

(and yes, the post I made about a week ago made me look like a hypocrite in that sense. I was. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it again.)

Also, as of now, the e-mail box will remain unmonitored, so comments will go unchecked and unanswered. I apologize if anyone has questions. I’ll try to cover everything in the following FAQ. To all reading this (including the anonymous CSCer), my best wishes to you for all your future endeavors, whether a current UW student, a prospective UW student, or just someone who’s curious about what this windbag is talking about. On to the FAQ.

My Blog: How to read

So, from comments that have been left here and from talking to people in person who read my blog (yes, people really do recognize me), I’ve noticed there’s a general miscommunication between what I want to say and what gets read. Let me set the record straight: 

1) No news is good news. I’ve been told my blog is excessively negative. It probably is. However, there is a saying that goes “no news is good news”. I tend not to talk about the good things that happen academically, because I’m more focused on telling people about the mistakes I make and how not to do what I do. It’s easy to lead by example, but teach by counterexample, I’ve found. This is why my blog is so negative all the time and focuses on my mistakes. 

2) I do not spend all my time goofing off. Yes, I do goof off on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis. It is true, I will not lie. However, I learned an important lesson early in high school: It’s not worth studying material you know. If you study too much, you lose time better spent enjoying yourself (life is short, University is shorter!), and, more importantly, you lose concentration. Staring at a book for hours on end reading material you already knew doesn’t help anything, plus it makes you tired and not concentrate on the stuff you *do* need to learn. When I study, I review what’s been gone over in class and bone up on what I feel I need to bone up on. I do my homework when I need to do it, and it almost always gets done (except for that one CS240 assignment I’m still kicking myself over). That method got me an A+ average in high school and is so far working in University.

3) I’m not failing all my courses. I’m not a 100% student, but my cumulative average to date, including the C- I got in Math 145, is an A. I have more A+es than marks below A- (in fact, with the exception of the Circuits course I failed, which, due to some administrative magic, is counted (both towards my average and my credit count, although not towards my transcript) as never having been taken, Math 145 is my only mark to date below an A-). The reason I write as if I’m failing everything is because I’m used to having really good marks. To me, a B+ and a D- are equivalent in stature. It’s a pass, but it’s a pass I’m not happy with. This is especially why when I get an assignment or test back that has a mark below an A on it when I feel (rightly or wrongly) that the marking scheme cheated me, I get really mad, more mad than I probably should get. It’s my standards. They’re probably too high. I know.

So how should you read my blog?

1) If I enumerate things that went wrong on a test without outwardly saying “it was a bad test”, it wasn’t a bad test. I’m simply saying “if you take this course, watch out for these things”. If I do badly on a test, I’ll say “I did badly on that test”. Otherwise, the test was fine and I’m OK with what I got, but I didn’t get 100%. Similarly for assignments.

2) If I say “I need to work harder”, that’s an indication that I need to work harder and that it’s a problem with something I’m doing, and I plan to work on it. It’s my acknowledgement of my own faults, and a memo to myself to improve myself. I’m not perfect, I know I’m not perfect, and there are things I need to work on. This blog is me thinking to myself about things I don’t mind the rest of the world hearing about. I’m OK with the fact that I’m not perfect, but I do my best and I always try to learn whenever possible.

3) If I write about a problem that’s going on, if it’s in my power to deal with it, I’m in the process of dealing with it. I’ve learned many of the channels to go through to resolve administrative issues, and I’ve become decent at dealing with them. Just because I say something’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way forever. Again, it’s the whole “these are things to watch out for at UW” thing.

I’ll try to change my writing style to make my blog seem more positive and upbeat from now on, as I intend it to be, but in case I don’t, this is a short guide of how to read.

Lyle Waldman

Lesson learned

This is gonna be a short one:

I said some things in my last post about some people that I probably shouldn’t have said the way I said it. I changed my last post to reflect what I wanted to say without being insulting. Writing when angry is never a good thing. Lesson learned, sorry if I insulted anyone.

That is all.

Lyle Waldman

My CS245 Midterm and other stuff

I got my CS245 midterm back today. Holy crap, what the heck. Not even kidding. I got a B+ on it. I should have gotten an A+ if Prof. Trefler didn’t decide to be such a stickler for detail when he was instructing the markers on what to do (I did legitimately make one mistake). So basically he told us that there are these 2 things called soundness and completeness which equate 2 methods of proof (i.e. if you prove something a certain way, you can say “by soundness” or “by completeness” and you can state the proof a different way). He then proceeded to make us use soundness and/or completeness on pretty much every question on the exam, and every time we did the proof (correctly or incorrectly) but neglected to say “by soundness” or “by completeness” (using those words; leaving them out doesn’t count), he took off somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the weight of the question and did so for every question on the exam. Of course, since we were taught that it’s an equivalence statement and that the equivalence exists, myself, along with a good chunk of the class, lost a good chunk of our mark on this midterm because we forgot to put this in. Basically it’s equivalent to saying that since we’re given that a = b, then therefore a = b. It’s a dumb reason to lose so many marks, in my opinion. I can understand losing the marks once or twice, or losing a mark each time, but I lost a good chunk of marks EVERY TIME. I lost 10% on the midterm because of this. I talked to the TA in tutorial, and he said flat out that if I’d put that one sentence in, I would have gotten all those marks.

Then there was another question where part b followed almost directly from part a. I got full marks on part a and then said “by part a, part b is correct” (or something to that effect), which I asked the TA in the exam and he said was a valid answer, yet somehow I lost 3 marks. Prof. Trefler spent about 5 minutes staring blankly at my paper before saying “come to my office hour and we’ll discuss it”, which, to me, given his tone of voice, sounded more like “come to my office hour and I’ll spend another half hour staring at it before telling you to come to my next office hour”. I talked to the TA in tutorial, and he couldn’t figure it out either. He told me to see the TA who marked it, which I can’t do, because I have a CS240 midterm tomorrow during that time slot. I had no problems in CS241 when everything was automarked…

Of course, there was also the obligatory “I’ll make you memorize a definition you were never taught” question on the midterm which dropped my mark, along with the mark of one of my friends, by 4. This seems to be a trend in CS classes as it was done on both the CS134 midterm (in the multiple choice section, although the question was dropped after marking) and the CS241 midterm (a somewhat narrow and counterintuitive UNIX question).

OK, enough ranting. On to other things:

CS240: So the CS240 midterm is tomorrow. I have yet to study, and there’s really only 1 or 2 topics I need to study. Unfortunately, my notes on these 2 topics are awful, so I have to wait till class tomorrow when Prof. Cormack said he’d try to go over them. Once I get these 2 concepts, I think I’ll be ready for the midterm.

In other CS240 news, apparently the TAs are a bit disorganized. In the tutorial yesterday (yes, tutorial on Sunday), the TA went over a few topics. The tutorial itself wasn’t too bad, although some topics weren’t covered in as much detail as I would have liked. After the tutorial, I asked the tutor where I could pick up my written assignments (240 has a written and programming component to about half the assignments so far). He told me where to pick them up. I went there, but they weren’t there. Apparently the other TA either hadn’t put them out, or had lost mine. I hope he hasn’t lost mine, especially since one of the assignments was on one of the topics I don’t understand well. I’m waiting for an e-mail reply.

In other OTHER 240 news, I asked the TA about one of the topics I was confused about, to make sure I had my definitions right. He told me I had them slightly wrong and corrected me. When I proceeded to use the definitions he had given me to help out someone else, I was told by Profs. Cormack and Ragde (why Prof. Ragde is on the CS240 newsgroup so much escapes me, but nevertheless…) that my definitions were wrong. The TA told me so, though… :S *sigh* I just hope everything works out come April.

The CS251 midterm was last Thursday. I thought it was a good midterm. The first 6 (of 8 ) questions were pretty easy; simple binary math and boolean expressions. Nothing too serious. The last 2 questions were harder. The last question took me a good 1/2 hour because the solution was a bit counterintuitive. I got it in the end (or I think I did, although given how my 245 midterm worked out, I could have been completely off the mark), and the solution was really cool. I actually had to chuckle to myself when I got it. The second-last question was really wordy. I had to read it 3 or 4 times to make sure I understood what the question was asking. It dealt with 251’s Finite State Machines (similar to the DFAs from 241, but not the same, and it’s this difference that throws me off every time I see them). As usually happens when dealing with 251’s FSMs, I got thrown off for about 5 minutes before realizing how to do it, but I think I got, if not full marks, then part marks for sure. We’ll see, though. Hopefully Prof. Morton has them tomorrow, although I wouldn’t be surprised to not get them back till next week or so.

My JAPAN 202 midterm was also last Thursday. The midterm wasn’t bad, although I did well on the first test so I didn’t study a lot of stuff I should have studied (note to those taking Japanese courses: when the prof says “the test will focus on…”, just ignore the rest of the sentence; it’s usually not true. I should have learned this already, but haven’t). I can’t complain though, except the last question, which was 4 sentences on free composition, and I can’t do free composition even in English, especially not under pressure.

I’m a bit worried about Stat 230, since I think I screwed up the last test. I think the problem is that I’m trying to sort problems into subsets of solutions, instead of solving the problem as it is, which is how I got 99% in Data Management in high school. The material is the same as in Data. I’m going to try to get back into that state of mind for the next test and see how it goes. Unfortunately, since there’s no textbook for Stat230, finding practise questions is a bit difficult. I should probably ask Diana about this.

That’s about it for the academic stuff.

This weekend’s going to be pretty busy for me. Luckily I don’t have any urgent assignments for next week, since Super Smash Brawl is coming out on Sunday, and I, like all Wii-owners, have been looking forward to it for about 1 1/2 years since the Wii’s launch (and even before that). I’ve made plans with a friend in residence to stay up all night playing Brawl on release. I, luckily, don’t have class till 12:30 on Mondays, so I can stay up till 4 am and still get a good night’s sleep before class. I don’t know about him. But oh well, it’s Brawl ^_^

This Saturday is KonJa’s Karaoke trip to Toronto, which I’m planning on going on. It was a blast last time. Hopefully it’ll be the same this time. There’s also the Japanese Speech Contest at UofT that I want to go see (a friend of mine from JAPAN 102 is in it), although I may not be able to due to trip timing to Toronto. We’ll see.

Anyway, I have a KonJa meeting in 5 minutes. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

A brief realization…and news

First I’ll get the usual boring academic crap out of the way:

Nothing has really changed in any of my classes. As predicted, I destroyed the JAPAN 202 Quiz 1 (1st midterm, whatever). I beat the class average by about 10 marks (about 20%). I made a stupid mistake though; I forgot a grammar point from 102 and used the wrong verb tense in one place and lost a mark…it was kind of silly…otherwise, though, I did well.

I figured out I need to start working harder in CS240. I’m really upset at myself now. For Assignment 5, I only got about 50% on it, not because I didn’t know how to do it, but because I didn’t have enough time to debug. After the due “date”, I e-mailed Prof. Cormack and told him what my solution was *supposed* to be (obviously not what my solution *was* because as-is my solution didn’t work), and he e-mailed me back telling me I had the right solution, meaning if I’d spent more time debugging it, I would have got full marks. On one hand it means I know my stuff, but on the other it means I need to start working harder in that class to get my assignments done on time.

I have a bit of a problem with CS251 this week. It appears Prof. Morton (apparently he does have a PhD) posted the next assignment 2 days before Reading Week (yes, Reading Week, basically the University equivalent of March Break), and made it due at noon the day after Reading Week finishes, meaning it’s going to be nigh-impossible to get any help on it. He also decided to put a bashit-insane problem on it that I have no clue how to even begin, which makes the problem a bit worse. I tried asking about it on the newsgroup; they won’t give us extensions, but hopefully I can get some help. Other than this, I’m going to try to take it easy during Reading Week.

The EASIA250 problem has been resolved. MUO sent me to talk to the Associate Dean of Co-Operative Education for Math (don’t ask me why I had to talk to the Associate Dean of anything; it was supposed to be a simple problem, but whatever), and he was a really nice guy about it. He let me override into the class with no issues. The only problem he said would be that I couldn’t do JobMine this term (i.e. I can’t get a co-op job through UW, meaning I have to either find one on my own or I can’t get a co-op credit for the term). I knew this was going to happen though, so I’m not upset about it; I’d planned for this when I decided to do EASIA250 in the first place. I still don’t know why MUO were such bureaucrats about it though when it was such an easy problem.

LunarFest was a blast. I went to it on Wednesday night. Every year, the Alliance of Asian Clubs puts on this event. There’s generally a daytime and nighttime part to it, the nighttime being a fashion show and a party at a local club. Only one other person from KonJa was there (although one of the models was in KonJa, so technically 2). The fashion show was great; after working on a similar project in high school, I was thoroughly impressed with the amount of work that went into this. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as the stuff I did in high school, but I could still see how much work there was.

After the fashion show, me and the girl from KonJa went to East Campus Hall, a building way on the outskirts of campus where the Fine Arts classes are, where she and her friend changed for the nightclub party. I’d never been to East Campus Hall before, but it was quite a nice building. I couldn’t imagine spending 6 hours a day twice a week in there though like the Fine Arts people do though. Heck, I can’t even play video games for 6 hours straight!

The nightclub party was…well, a nightclub party. For those unlike myself who like that kind of thing, it was great. I, unfortunately, am one of those people who get uncomfortable in clubs, hence it wasn’t my cup of tea. I stayed there until about 1 am when I went home and slept for my midterm the following day (CS245).

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. I had a CS245 midterm on Thursday that I wrote on about 6 hours of sleep and about 1 hour of studying. The test has yet to be returned, so I can’t say for sure yet, but all I know is that I answered every question, overanswered at least half of them, triple-checked my answers, and walked out an hour early. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but I’m confident to say that I did well. I think it’s reasonable to expect so though, since I saw at least 5 or 6 people walk out before me.

Basically the midterm consisted of “prove De Morgan’s Law 3 times in 3 different ways, draw 2 truth tables, and answer some true/false questions”. Since I had already proven De Morgan’s Law on Assignment 1, it was pretty much a breeze for me.

So that’s basically the story with academics for now. But I came to a realization while I was watching the fashion show at LunarFest that I’d like to share, which is really my reason for making a post at 1:30 am (aside from having nothing better to do):

University life is really different from highschool life, especially if you’re away from home like I am. In high school, you (or at least I) find that you do much of your socializing at the behest of some combination of parents, other relatives, and the local transit system. In university (or at least at UW), I find this is not quite true anymore. For example, I went to the LunarFest fashion show, something I wouldn’t normally do, by myself, mostly because I could. I mean to say that you don’t really get that kind of an opportunity in high school, where most people’s socializing consists mainly of alcohol, clubs, video games, malls, or some combination of the 4 (movie theatres are lumped in with malls). Unless you actively look for such things, there’s no way to really find out about weird and interesting things that go on outside of those 4 standbys. In University, you get exposed to a lot of different things because they’re widely advertised on campus. Things like LunarFest or CTRL-A shows.

Also, since so many people (at least of the people I know) live on or around campus, unlike in high school where your friends, like you, are at the behest of parents and/or local transit, you can kind of make your own social schedule in university. If you feel like staying up in the V1 caf playing cards till 1am like I did on Monday night, you can do it. You have a lot more freedom here, and that’s really cool.

Anyway, a brief YAY READING WEEK!!!! to all, and until next time,

Lyle Waldman

So much news, so little time…

So it’s been about a week since my last post, but so much has happened already…I have half an hour before bedtime (2:30 am for me these days since I have only afternoon class on Wednesdays), so here we go:

Boring academic stuff:

Classes are basically same-old same-old. I completely died on the first Stat 230 test, which I pretty much figured. The marking TA made no comments though so I asked Diana to get me a remark, or at least some idea of what I did wrong. She hasn’t returned it yet, but we’ll see what happens. We’re covering distributions right now which I vaguely remember from Data Management, although it looks like I might actually have to start studying for this course soon.

CS245 continues to be boring as all hell. We’ve spent about a week talking about proof by induction (the 3rd time I’ve learned it! I think UW has a mandate to teach it once a year or something…) and then talking about predicate logic (basically the equivalent of function calls in logical statements). It’s like doing Math 145 all over again except SLOWWWWWWWWWW. The midterm for CS245 is tomorrow (technically, since it’s Wednesday now), but I’m not sure what to do. The first assignment was kinda tough, but then I got it and did it and got 96% on it (I made one mistake in about 5 different places, but now I know not to do it again), so I’m not sure what to do. Maybe after class tomorrow (today) I’ll have a better idea.

CS251 continues to be boring. I’m not sure what to study for this course, quite frankly, since the prof (lecturer? instructor? Not sure…) keeps going on and on about these ridiculously complicated diagrams we can’t possibly be expected to memorize (and in fact he said we’re not expected to memorize), yet that’s really all he keeps going on about, so I’m not sure what to study. I’m doing decently on the assignments I guess, and he said the tests are based mostly off the assignments, so I’m not too worried.

CS240 is getting really really hard. Apparently, enough people screwed up the end of assignment 3 (the stupid Calculus crap mentioned in my last post) to warrant a special tutorial session on the usage and meaning of the various analyses. I was planning to go, but unfortunately it happened to be on the (as of yet) coldest day of the winter (more on that later), so I didn’t. Assignment 4 was even harder. The first 2 questions were ridiculously easy (one was a brute-force search, the other was a simple math formula using application of stuff from class), but the third part was ridiculous. After spending 4-5 hours on it and getting absolutely nowhere, I took a 66% on the assignment and forgot about it. Even some of the better people in the class who I’m friends with couldn’t get it. It was really really hard.

My first Japan 202 midterm was last week. I’m going to be getting it back tomorrow. That’s really all there is to say about that class for now.

On to club developments:

First and foremost, I’m now an official member of the CTRL-A exec. The External Relations Officer decided he couldn’t keep up with the workload anymore, so he resigned and we had a re-election, which put me in his place. This is really not that much of a big change for me since I’m already organizing joint KonJa-CTRL-A events. Now I just do it in a formal capacity and also have to contact the “anime industry” to get permissions for series CTRL-A shows. It can’t be too hard…I think…looks good on a resume though…

This week, KonJa is part of an Asian Club Alliance event (the Asian Alliance is basically the unification of all East Asian-related clubs on campus). It’s called LunarFest, and it’s supposed to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which was apparently last weekend or something (I dunno; I can only keep track of 2 New Years…I’ve already got one in January and one in September…). Today they sold food in the SLC, and tomorrow there’s a fashion show followed by an after-party. Our former Science blogger was in the fashion show last year, and it looked kind of interesting, so I figured I’d check it out. I probably won’t stay late at the after-party though, what with a midterm the next day and all. But I dunno; we’ll see.

And now the miscellaneous stuff:

So I’ve achieved my goal this term. After trying twice so far, I got Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes. The quote (with reference to the kanji 道) was:

“This part means “neck” and the kanji means “road”, like finding a head on the road”

She found out. It wasn’t quite as amusing as when I got her in 102. She was thankful I didn’t use another quote I could have used (that one might get her into real trouble; it was hilarious but somewhat off-colour for a classroom, so I won’t post it here).

On a related note, I was hanging out in MathSoc the other day talking about getting Misato-sensei into ProfQuotes (without using her name since nobody in MathSoc is taking any Japanese classes to my knowledge, and definitely not the people I was talking to) when a guy turned around and asked me “is that Misato you’re talking about?” Turns out he was her husband. I’d seen him once before at my Japan 201 exam, but it was kind of random meeting him in MathSoc. We chuckled about it a little bit.

Speaking of meeting people randomly, I saw Professor Willard today in the Davis Centre when I was passing by. He still remembers I write this blog and said he might look it up again sometime. So here’s a shout-out to him if he decides to read it!

(And because I know I’ll probably get e-mailed about it otherwise, I suppose I’ll shout out to PR as well while I’m shouting out to profs).

I forgot to mention a detail of my little Linux adventure in my last post. I had a couple tax forms I needed to print out for my marking job (FYI for those considering: marking sucks. Don’t do it. It’s not worth the money. I’m doing it mostly cause they wouldn’t let me do tutorial centre instead), so I was trying to print them out through Ubuntu. The Ubuntu PDF reader froze up when I tried to print, so a friend of mine in res printed it out for me. He asked for a shout-out, so here it is. Sorry, I don’t use real names here (except mine and my profs).

Other happenings…hm…ah, right, a good rant about MUO now and then never hurts anyone. So here we go:

So I went by MUO (the Math Undergrad Office) the other day to hand in my course override form for EASIA250. It turns out that normally people don’t take terms off to do educational stuff (I dunno) and MUO tells me I need a stream change to do the trip (i.e. I need to take 8 months off school and come back in stream 8 so I can work for 4 months). I had already spoken to the Math Co-Op Advisor about this towards the beginning of the term, and she approved everything already. Apparently MUO won’t believe me, so they have to double-check. Problem: Renison College is asking for $300 from me by tomorrow (Thursday) as a non-refundable deposit, but I don’t know if MUO is going to approve my trip. I e-mailed the co-op advisor again and she said if MUO contacts her, she’ll approve it, but I have to wait for the OK from MUO before doing anything. Stupid MUO. If they cost me this trip, I’m going to be SOOOOOOO pissed at them it’s not even funny. Normally I’m too lazy to act on my own for these types of things, but I’d seriously consider going to the Dean or Needles Hall if MUO screws with me on this one.

In other other MUO-screws-me-up news, I apparently failed my first work report. Don’t ask me. I got this job and my previous writing job, but apparently I can’t write an academic paper. I think my marker had some issues when she was marking my paper…she failed me on improper formatting and stupid grammar stuff. Improper formatting. Apparently MUO has this standard, and if you try anything else, it’s a fail. Don’t ask me; I didn’t make the rules. So I have to go and get the stupid thing revised again and then find some way to edit the stupid thing. I’m probably going to end up bootcamping my Mac and installing Office 07 on it since I have it lying around (legit, by the way) anyway. Damned MUO…

And finally, the saga of the computer continues. So far the Mac’s been good. It’s really loud (hardware-wise I mean), but otherwise not bad. I got an app that monitors my system resources which tells me that if I try to use a certain program, it uses 100% CPU power (i.e. if I didn’t have Core Duo, it would lock up my computer on me). I think it’s a minor thing of updating the file, but I don’t know for sure. It’s a known bug with Leopard though, apparently. Other than that, I think I’m pretty much fine. I need to reboot more often; my comp takes a while to power cycle (it’s still significantly shorter than Windows or Ubuntu, but still a bit slow compared to how it was when I bought it. I dunno though; everyone I ask says “don’t worry, it’s fine” and if my grandmother who quite literally got every virus known to man on her computer under Windows can use Mac without problems, I suppose I shouldn’t worry. Hopefully nothing will be wrong, and if something is, the Apple people are much more knowledgeable than anything I got for Windows or Ubuntu.

Anyway, this post took much longer than I hoped it would, so I should be going to sleep now. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

The other operating system…

Wow, it’s only been a week since my last post but a lot has happened. So since I’ve got about 40 minutes to kill, I may as well write some more. First, the boring academic stuff:

So I went to the CS 245 tutorial last week and asked about the assignment. Even the TA had no idea what the last question was supposed to say. It was quite silly really. As for the other questions I couldn’t get, one of them was supposed to be done exactly like I thought, but it was really counterintuitive. The other one was just ridiculous on the whole; the prof said it could be done in 18 lines or so, but my solution pushed 50, and I’m still pretty sure I did it wrong. It was kind of silly. In class, we’ve spent the last week learning proof by induction. It’s always good to revisit old skills, but this is now the 3rd time I’ve learned how to do this (high school, Math 145, CS 245). It’s kinda silly. At least hopefully this week’s assignment won’t be brutally stupid like last week’s was.

Other than that, most of my classes are doing well. I had my first major Stat 230 test a little while ago. I don’t know who the proctors were; there was an Asian woman and a big guy with a red beard who gave the impression that he was the course coordinator. If he was, I don’t like him much. When he gave us the instructions (e.g. use a pencil, don’t cheat, the usual crap), it sounded like he was barking at us more than talking to us. Bad first impression. The test kind of sucked too…for someone who got 99% in Data Management without studying, I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped (I don’t know what I got yet, but it wasn’t 99%).

CS240 is also getting a bit annoying. Last week’s assignment had a full 5 questions requiring asymptotic analysis. That is, it required Calculus. I hate Calculus, especially after Math 138. I spent a good 3 or 4 hours on those 5 questions, and I’m not even sure if I got them right. I guess we’ll see.

In other news, I recently bought a Macbook. That’s right. A Macbook. I, who swore never to use Mac OS because I used Windows for so long and couldn’t possibly get used to Mac OS, bought a Macbook. Why? Ubuntu wasn’t working for me, and Windows leaks security like a sieve. Also, Mac is built on Unix, so its terminal shell looks and feels a lot like Linux, which I liked. But why didn’t Ubuntu work? A number of reasons, but the last straws were that after I formatted it (yes, I felt the need to format Ubuntu), the Ubuntu PDF reader froze when I tried to print from it (this is problematic when every assignment is required to be downloaded from the web in .pdf format) and the good text editor can’t read Unicode. Why can’t it read Unicode and why do I care? Well, on Tuesday night I spent about 1 1/2 hours on a Japanese assignment that was due for Thursday’s class. I finished it, saved it as “.doc” (because .doc is easier to share than .odt, the default type), opened it on Wednesday night to print, and all my Japanese characters had turned to question marks. Yeah. 1 1/2 hours wasted, and I had no time to redo it. Luckily, Misato-sensei gave me an extension, so I rewrote it and e-mailed it to her when I got my Mac (which doesn’t have the same problem when I use the basic text editor called TextEdit, basically an equivalent to Windows’ Wordpad). It would be easy enough to just not use .doc and do everything in odt, but this will cause a problem in about a month or so when I have to do the final term skit and have to be sending and recieving Japanese .doc files from my group members who probably will all use Mac or Windows. A couple friends of mine didn’t have these problems on Ubuntu, but after having a lot of problems already and then formatting and having more, NEW problems, I can’t be bothered to keep fixing it. All I know is that Misato-sensei uses a Mac, Prof. Trefler uses a Mac, Colin (my TA from CS241 who knows pretty much everything about operating systems) uses a Mac, and I could continue all day, and I’ve never once heard anybody have problems with Mac like I’ve had with Windows or Linux, ever. Not to mention all my programs (Starcraft, Warcraft 3, iTunes, etc.) work natively on Mac, unlike the hacks I need to get them working on Ubuntu.

So far my only complaints with Mac are that it only has 2 USB ports (I’m used to having 4, but I bought a hub to deal with that), it doesn’t have a serial video port (it has something stupid called mini-DVI and I need to buy a $25 adapter to use my Macbook with my monitor, which I’ll do if the Macbook proves to me to be to my liking), some of the moving parts (most notably my CD-ROM drive) is louder than it was on my Dell, and for some reason my “Y” key doesn’t like working properly unless I hit it extra hard from a certain angle. I’m going to go by CampusTech on Monday to try to get the latter 2 problems fixed.

Speaking of Japanese, EASIA250 looks like a pain in the butt. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m going to be doing an international program to Japan in May through UW called EASIA250. It’s worth 1 credit towards the East Asian Studies diploma, which means I don’t have to take any Science courses (yay!). I go to Japan for 3 weeks. The first 2 weeks are intensive language classes 3 hours/day, 5 days/week, which will hopefully be helpful for my speaking ability, and the rest of the time is spent touring. Apparently Misato-sensei says we’ll be visiting Nintendo of Japan HQ in Kyoto while we’re there, which sounds awesome (of course, I’ll have to remember to save my 1-UP shirt for that day ). It’s a lot of work though; I have to write a presentation before we go and then a 10-15 page paper when I return. It’s a real Arts course. But honestly, I get 1 credit towards the EAS diploma, an opportunity to improve my Japanese, a visit to NoJ, and, hell, a trip to Japan (I’ve never been outside North America, not counting the Carribean), so I’m stoked anyway.

In about 1 hour I have a meeting in the Comfy Lounge where I’m going to be interviewed to be a Frosh Leader next fall. I spent a lot of time on campus during frosh week when I worked at RIM, plus I’ve been on the Frosh Forums as a contributor and I’ve been doing this job, so I think it’ll be pretty cool to be a frosh leader. Anyway, that means it’s time to get dressed. Until next time,

Lyle Waldman

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