Sunday, November 29, 2009
...and the question is, what do i do now, that i am finally able to objectively see it for all it is.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Maybe this will help.
Your greater-self,
The Universe
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Theorem: Every natural number is INTERESTING.
Therefore, every natural number is interesting. ■
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Consider a simple two dimensional choice dilemma
Suppose you have two choices, option A and option B, A ≠ B. The constraints are such that you cannot choose both. Each one of these options is equally appealing, yet choosing each will lead to a drastically different outcome. Each outcome, in its turn, is just as appealing as the other, i.e. you know that you can be happy with either outcome. An economist, then, would say that you are indifferent towards either one of these choices, since each choice gives you the same utility (fancy word for satisfaction). Except that in real life you’re not “indifferent” in the true meaning of the word, because (i) you can’t compare these utilities, since outcomes are so different that we’re talking apples and oranges at this point; (ii) when you choose A, you will never know what it’s like to have chosen B and vice versa. Therefore by choosing A you have eliminated the possibility that you could ever have B (and vice versa).That does not leave a lot of room for indifference now, does it?
Q: How would you make your choice?
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
It's not only the boy that gets neglected these days though. My chores pile up, my house doesn't get cleaned as often as I would like to, my social life suffers and even scheduling a half an hour coffee date with a friend suddenly becomes next to impossible... And it doesn't look like it's going to stop in any foreseeable future, given the particular career path that I have laid out for myself. And yet, I know that I am neither the first one nor the last to be faced with this sort of problem. So please tell me, ambitious people of the world - how do you manage to balance the professional and equally important personal lives without losing sleep, sanity or both? I would gladly give up most of my meager grad student stipend to find out the secret...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
How to discredit a country in three easy steps
Well, I couldn't resist, how could I?
via Armenian Observer
The question of the day
Update: the degrees of freedom in RE model are the same as in OLS: N-the number of parameters estimated!
Friday, September 04, 2009
Frustrated
Remember earlier this week I wrote about that AM-GM inequality proof? It was part of an assignment for my Analysis class that was due on Tuesday. The professor started the class by outlining a few of the important points that were to lead to the proof. After he finished writing up the sketch, he said that students who hadn’t completed the proof could have a few more days to think it through and finish it. All but two students took back their homeworks. Prior to that I overheard some of my fellow classmates complain about it, saying something along the lines: “Dude, I took a look at it and it looked ugly, so I didn’t even bother doing it…” Fucking unbelievable.
Let me say that the majority of students enrolled in this course are either grad students at the Math Department or upper-level undergrads aspiring to become grad students at the same department. Let me also say that in my book, a grad student in Math is only two steps away from a genius (part of the reason why I feel uncertain about this whole PhD in Math is because I feel nowhere close to being two steps away from being a genius). If you have gotten as far as grad school, you must fucking live and breathe Math every fucking second of your life. Proofs? They must be the proverbial bread and butter that you’re supposed to be living on day in day out. Sure, the problem looks quite ugly at first sight – all the more reasons why it should deserve more than ten minutes of your time before you decide to completely give it up and say “Fuck it, this just looks too hard…”
I was one of the two students who didn’t take the homework back. I am not trying to brag – after all it did take me three days to work it all out. But I did it, nonetheless. I do know that had I had one of the missing components of the proof, I would be able to finish it sooner. But a big part of it was because it did take me a while to realize that what seemed hard and ugly at first glance was actually something elegant and extremely simple. When I look at it now, it does appear very simple – simple enough that anyone with some rudimentary knowledge of algebra should be able to see it. But I also know that I had to spend all that time to be finally able to see that simplicity. That’s how math works. That’s the whole secret. Unless, of course, you’re one of these geniuses who can’t be bothered with what seems to be ugly and complicated.
I am frustrated because I find it off-setting and even offensive that most of my classmates didn’t attempt to iron things through. I am even more frustrated because a lot of them didn’t even seem to feel bad about it. Maybe not everyone is as compulsively crazy about math and school in general as I am, but there’s got to be something that sets apart a whiny undergrad from an aspiring scientist. Or am I just plain wrong? Please help me out here, will you? And if you need more facts, here’s a part of the proof itself.

Thursday, September 03, 2009
Nine millions bicycles
Sevada seems to be into chick music these days. I am not a particularly big fan of chick music – too loaded, too emotionally charged for me. But then, sometimes there is just that one song that is so perfect in its simplicity and so harmoniously melodic that I can’t stop listening to it over and over and over again…
More on Katie Melua here.