The End of a Decade, with a Fair Starting Day

I'll let you know when my decade ends.

To do that, I'll first need to figure out when it started. ;)

Now, which starting point will allow me to maximize or minimize something interesting...

Oh, never mind; let's do this with a random-number generator: I get 2017.55793, which rounding to the nearest day (I'll round up), gives me a start to my decade of the 204th day of 2017.

My decade apparently started on 23 July 2017, so talk to me in 2027 about the end of my decade.

P.S. Happy New Year! (Well, in a few hours.)

A Pitch for My New Novel

As determined from my dice (and this handy chart), here is the pitch for my new novel: A dystopian fairy tale about a dissatisfied doctor's vacation to expose her social media addiction.

By the way, my d30 (where I rolled again for any results from 27–30) rolled 20 three times during this process, and its only roll below 18 was a single 14, with all but those two rolls in the 20s (including a few of at least 27). Clearly, this is a damage die.

Also, can we get a chart like this for cover letters and grant proposals, please?

P.S. A social media addiction should be contrasted with an antisocial media addiction.

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Ouellette.)

Humans as Random-Number Generators

I could really use a good random-number generator. :)

Weighed Random-Number Generators, Sports Commentary, and Dungeons & Dragons

Yup, there is a lot of truth to this xkcd.

I probably blogged about this xkcd panel before, but anyway here it is again. On a slightly related note, take a look at Slate's coverage of Aaron Clauset's (and collaborators) recent work on sports.

(Tip of the cap to MoMath [The Museum of Mathematics].)

Tidbits

I went to a Hong Kong style restaurant in downtown Shanghai today. (I ended up seeing a dedicated dumpling place while walking back to the metro station, so I'll either go to that one, or the one Mou Li recommended, or perhaps some other random one later. But anyway, there are dumplings in my immediate future.)

I very carefully avoided the menu item whose English translation was "Speculation Shrimp".

Also, the best exchange of the day went as follows:

Random Chinese Guy: "Where are you from?"

Me: "Los Angeles"

Random Guy: "Oh, France... [pause] Are you an artist?"

Back in the Old World

I arrived in Oxford today, and I'm really tired. I actually made it just in time for a brief SCR meeting. (Q: "How long have you been back?" A: "About 2 minutes.") It was held in the same room where I can get espresso, which definitely encouraged my attendance.

I had a shitload of snail mail waiting for me (a relatively light load at my apartment, but a ton at my office --- still no reimbursement from Charter, however), and about 50 or so e-mails had accrued in the roughly 24 hours since I had last checked. I went through a bunch of the snail mail, though there are a couple of things (principally ones related to e-mails I received while I was out of town) about which I need to ask people. A couple of the e-mails are also going to require some work on my part once I talk to the relevant people. I also need to do some marking (though that stuff is not yet on my desk) and some lecture organization, though that will need to wait until a meeting that is happening on Tuesday. I also should finish unpacking the boxes in my office, and I think I'll get through a bit of that tomorrow. However, I think I'll also have time to come close to finishing draft 3 of my grant proposal and I think I'll go to the local indie theatre and watch the Bob Dylan biopic. (By the way, I watched Tootsie on the airplane. I had heard good things about it for years, so I'm glad I finally had a chance to watch it. The film had some excellent performances---including one by Bill Murray, who displayed many of his now-famous mannerisms.)

Among the snail mail I got were the statistics (plus comments) from my student evaluations from my perturbation methods course last term. Thankfully, the students were very pleased with how I did (the evaluations were actually through the roof in the positive direction, so let's hope I can continue that). The only really big complaint was my messy handwriting, which has been a constant struggle with my teaching. I think my next lecture is in a room with a whiteboard rather than a chalkboard, and that will help things a bit. I'll try to remember to write bigger, however. Some students thought the course was too hard, but not as many as I was expecting. A few students asked for more examples, though given the limited time and all the stuff we have to cover, that may be hard to accommodate even though in principle I highly agree with the request. People should be cautious about encouraging things like my sense of humor in class, because that's the type of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to my playing "Tarzan Boy" over and over again. :) (On that note, I will be able to borrow season 3 of Angel from a local very soon and once he gets the rest of Buffy on DVD---he has some of it on video tape---I'll be able to continue with season 6 of that as well. Or I'll buy some of it, especially if I can find it at a reasonable price.)

I also listed reasonably closely to Travis's new mix CD today. It seems solid in general, and there are a couple of songs that sound really good. At the moment, I can't figure out what I did with the 2006 mix CD (the one at the end of the year, not the one that went with Coachella). I might need this one sent to me again, but we'll see if I faked myself out by putting it in a strange spot.

I have a couple more things to mention from the Joint Math Meetings. My student Alex, who attended the conference, e-mailed me to let me know that she did very well on her talk (I had to leave before then to catch my train) and that she got good feedback in terms of both ideas and opportunities. That is always excellent news! Alex also mentioned that my name was called in the Exhbitors Hall, which means I won something. That was news to me, so it also means that I wasn't there to claim it. I admittedly filled in a number of these things---more than usual, I think---so we'll see if this was one of the raffles where they'll send it to me later or if I got disqualified from not being there. The most interesting thing being given away (as far as I was able to figure out) was an iPhone.

One of the unfortunate things about this conference was that I was so busy that there were several people I know who I barely had time to say 'hi' to (or was so intent on going wherever it is that I was going) that I didn't even get to do that. Basically, enough things were going on that the social part of the conference had to be curtailed a bit. This is rather unfortunate, as that is one of the reasons I usually enjoy this conference. I did get a chance to have lunch with science writer Barry Cipra (who I know from numerous previous conferences) on Wednesday, but I had to miss the undergrad student poster session (which is usually one of the conference highlights for me) and a talk on mathematics in the social sciences to attend the entirety of the marathon nonlinear waves session on Tuesday. (I also couldn't see Terry Tao's talk on stability of solitons in the nonlinear Schrodinget equation, which occurred not only during the session but also during my talk. Because of the asinine scheduling, we lost half our audience for the 1 hour that that talk was going on.)

After the nonlinear waves session ended, the session organizer (a collaborator of mine) hosted a party at his place. He's from Mexico, so the party had traditional Mexican food that kicked my ass. (Well, I was able to handle the tortilla chips, the sparkling apple cider, and the desserts.) It turns out that there was a snake at the party: My collaborator has a pet boa constrictor at home---he also has pet black widows in his office, but I managed not to notice them at all when I was there for a while on Saturday---that was living up to its name on Tuesday because it constricted people. A couple people asked it for it to be put around their necks for pictures---I'll try to look for one at some point, so that I can post it---and then very sharply asked for it to be extracted from their necks. This snake is not as large as it would be if in the wild, so it was maybe 5-6 feet long instead of several times that length (in which case it would also have a larger cross-sectional width). Although the party was very fun, it conflicted directly with the Project NExT reception, which is another of my favorite Joint Math Meetings events that I had to miss this year. Why do the two best parties have to be at the same time? That's so frustrating. Some of the people I didn't get a chance to talk to are people I know from Project NExT, so as a result I missed out on a whole group of my peeps almost entirely this time around. All of us were very busy doing our own things this time, and in my case it seemed rather extreme this year.

I think that's it for the Joint Math Meetings blogging for this year. I'll add more if I think of it. Now I'll try to finish off my end-of-year reviews in the next few days, and then I can do things like review Rock Band and list a few songs to which I'd like to jam. (Pump it up!)

It's all about the meta-

I'm a bit tired and don't feel like writing too much at the moment. (I think I'll read a bit of Neuromancer, figure out which of my perturbation methods students should be in which sections [without a solution to the optimization problem discussed earlier today], and then turn on the Diamondbacks-Rockies game --- though with the game starting at 1:37 am, I won't actually be able to listen to very much of it.)

I feel like I should make a meta- post today, and I was given a great opportunity to do so because one of my colleagues said she wanted to do something interesting enough to end up in my blog. So if anybody wants to volunteer any good ideas, let me know. But I think the chance for me to go all meta- on everybody is good enough for me (though I think I have more of a fixed point than was in the movie Adaptation). Anyway, I'm always happy to help people out.

There are also games of Mah Jong planned for the future and requests for coming over to my place to play games on the Wii. (This is in addition to the students of mine who come over to play Wii games with me, because I'm just going to have to fail the lot of them if they refuse to do that.)

I didn't end up going to the games night tonight because I went to the pub and then to dinner with my colleagues. Plus, we have plans for future board games (blokus was discussed) and I have gotten a space in a Vampire campaign run by some person I'll meet during the first session. I hope to get into a D & D campaign at some point, but it will be interesting to try Vampire.

Sworn in

Today was the first meeting of Somerville's Governing Body, which included the swearing in of the three new members (including me). Actually, the younger SCR members (which includes the three of us) have been sticking together (sitting together at things like the Governing Body meetings and so on), which is a very good thing. I know the least about the Oxford system, so I'm pretty sure that I'm the most clueless person among us. In any event, I think I've talked to most of the young people in SCR at some point, and the ones I've talked to are all really nice. I should find out if they like board games. Once my games arrive, I'll bring some to one of the Monday night dinners and see if I can convince people to play. (Alternatively, once my UK finances are in order --- I have a bank account now, but it has no money in it --- I can get a copy of the British Isles edition of Apples to Apples that I saw at the local Border's. Like just about everything else around here, it's expensive (25 pounds), but I really want to get it so I'll buy it anyway after I no longer need to preserve cash for immediate use.)

At the Governing Body meetings, one has to wear one flavor of academic robes (I'll need to wear another flavor when I serve as the Examiner for a doctoral student in December), but one can put it over whatever one is wearing. I don't own my own set yet, so I borrowed one that was way too big for me (not that I would know how large these things should be). I had to jump through a couple of hoops to get it (I think the Porters don't all yet realize that I'm faculty rather than an undergrad), but I was able to get help to get one in time for the meeting. My regular clothes were visible underneath the robes, so I looked absolutely stunning taking my oath in my 'magic missles kill people' t-shirt. I thought that was classy --- the perfect mix of formality and casualness --- and provides just the ingredient that Oxford has always needed! Today's meeting was an absolutely mind-numbing 2.5 hours, though several people told me that most of the meetings take far less time. My fellow new Fellows were about as lost as I was. We're all trying to learn things as we go and catch up with the people who have been here a while. I don't think it will be bad, but it takes to get up to speed when one is new.

I already mentioned that I'll need to buy some fancy clothes for the Examination in December. I signed up today for a dinner (which is, of course, free) on November 7th in London with the Baroness Jay, who is a Somerville alum. (This is a fund-raising affair and several of the tutorial fellows will be going.) That's black tie, so I'll need to buy stuff for that as well. I hope that some of this clothing can overlap with the specific stuff I need for the Examination, so I can buy as little of this stuff as possible. One option would be to avoid dinners like this, but I think the idea of having dinner with a member of the House of Lords is pretty cool and is a neat type of opportunity that not many people get a chance to do. Plus, I'll get to explain to her my network analysis of voting networks that can also be used on voting in the English parliament (to look at party realignments, for example, as my SURF student found for the US Congress this summer). (I have been told where I can get relevant data sets, though I haven't tried to find them yet.) That will be really cool.

In completely random news, I saw a flier today advertising a new radio station that is starting in 8 days in Oxfordshire. It's name should be familiar to many of you: JACK fm. They're really spreading rather widely (and doing so pretty fast).

I think that's about it. I'm considering working on my grant proposal a bit tonight. We'll see if that happens. Also, I have my first tutorial sessions tomorrow. That will be fun. I'll get to interact with my students more. I've run into a couple of them here and there (including one math major at the ice cream place I like) since the official meeting last week, but then tomorrow we can start interacting a little more closely.

iTunes Prose (random 11)

In a twist on the usual random music selections from iTunes to determine fortunes, New Year's resolutions, and so on, I offer the following alternative. This idea dawned during an IM conversation I was having with Lemming during which I was quoting even more song lyrics than usual.

I loaded up iTunes, played the first 11 songs (it was going to be 10, but one of the songs didn't have any lyrics), took some lines from the songs (and the title of the song that didn't have any lyrics), and composed a story using them. I was originally going to make a poem, but I decided that prose would be a lot easier.

Here is the story. I actually kind of like it, especially given the constraints under which I was working. I hope you enjoy it.

Now, let's play a game. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to figure out the identity of those 11 songs (artist and title) and which lines go with which for the 10 that have lyrics.

Mad props go out to Lemming for his major role in coming up with this idea.