A post! ApostapostapostapostaPOST!
TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY.
FIRST: my mom got a job, my mom got a job!! Here at the U of I! Now she can leave the insanity of Tucson and come back to the place she calls home. SUPER HAPPY ABOUT THAT.
SECOND: I got a job, too! In addition to teaching in the second half of summer, I’ll be working as a data analyst for the College of Ag from May through July. Now I can finally get some real experience with real data (and lots of it!).
Better brush up on my SAS.
WOOHA!
SCHEDULE!
Shedulescheduleschedulescheduleschedule!
Check out that Tuesday/Thursday, eh? Depending on when I end up teaching, I may just have band on those days.
But I do want to add something else somewhere…not sure where…but somewhere. I don’t like this 12/13 credit thing.
IT’S HARD.
Maybe I’ll shove an art class in there if I can. Or another stats class. Though I’m not sure if anything that I haven’t taken/aren’t already taking is being offered.
SCHWING!
Here’s some sludge
From the depths of my braaaaaaaaaaaaaain (and the internet and my computer).
This was a book I found when I was searching for references for my Vancouver essay. Best title ever.
Hahaha, that first sentence. This is the Wiki article for Cerbera odollam.
Oh Amazon…
You know what’s hilarious/frightening? Going on Amazon, searching for some specific thing, and then ranking the results from highest price to lowest to see the most outrageous items ever.
Also, Amazon is currently out of their stock of Giant Inflatable Penis costumes. Just FYI. (No, I did not just buy them all.)
OH MY GOD it has 16 reviews.
“I am sure my brother will like it as he has always been a bit of a cock.”
“Never a dull moment at a party if you’re dressed as a huge penis.” Quite possibly the truest words in the galaxy.
“People kept calling me a knob.”
HAHAHAHAHA.
Edit: Oh Jesus, don’t Google “giant inflatable penis costume.”
THE SLOPE! THE SLOPE! THE SLOPE IS ON FIRE!
(Yeah, I’ve pretty much given up on my titles.)
So here’s a question that you may or may not have pondered: when we write the slope-intercept equation for a line, the m in y= mx + b is our slope, right?
Why the heck do we denote it with “m”?
There’s quite a range of theories.
According to Pat from Pats’blog, the word “slope” itself is derived from the Latin root slupan for “slip.” Which makes sense when you think of what the slope actually is.
A common myth is that Descartes first used m because it was the first letter of some French word related to slope, but according to a bunch of people who speak French (and we should probably trust them about their language) the appropriate word for slope is “pente.”
Pat digs up some info from Jeff Miller, who claims that the earliest use of m dates back to 1844 when Brit Matthew O’Brien wrote “A Treatise on Plane Co-Ordinate Geometry” and Irish George Salmon published “A Treatise on Conic Sections.”
Another possibility was pointed out by John Conway, who suggested that m could stand for “modulus of slope.”
But in the end, no one’s really sure exactly when and why we got to using m for slope. I’m sure there are a fair number of mathematical symbols we use that don’t have a clear origin, but I know I’ve never really thought about m for slope before. I guess that’s because when I first learned y = mx + b I always thought m was appropriate because if you follow the trace of the letter the slope changes a whole bunch.
I was a dumb kid.
V V V V V
Do you ever feel so completely stupid that you just think, “I can’t live like this anymore?”
In related news: I can’t write. I mean, I can put words on paper (screen?) and have them sort of make sense. But I can’t make them pretty or make people want to read them or provide them with some sort of impactful experience upon completing one of my stories.
It blows.
I’m an idiot.
I’m going to stop talking now.
Stupid Claudia Thoughts
I have come to the conclusion that I have the world’s ugliest legs. I mean, they get the job done, but holy hell they look like malformed parsnips.
Totally unrelated: I really like the word “scope.”
LIKE A GAUSS
This is the closest thing to “possible tattoo” that I’ve drawn. I need some sort of ostentatious bell curve on my body.
VROOM!
TWSB: Nature’s Bling
Ever wonder what the shiniest living material in the world is?
(Me neither, but aren’t you curious now?)
Well, apparently it’s this type of fruit that grows in the forests of central Africa. The plant, Pollia condensate, produces these iridescent berry-sized fruits in little clusters. And while iridescence is not too hard to find in the animal kingdom (jewel beetles, butterfly wings, the wings of some birds), its much rarer in the world of plants.
Investigation of the fruit at a microscopic level reveals that the outer part of it contains layers of thick-walled cells, each of which contains even more layers of cells and fibers. It is the distance between these layers combined with the angles of the fibers that amplify beams of light and create super strong colors. The technical term for this is “multilayer interface.”
But the coolest part of this whole thing is WHY scientists think these plants have such ostentatious fruit.
The fruit of the Pollia is of practically no nourishment—they’re dry, seed-filled husks. Thus, animals don’t naturally want to eat them. But Pollia tend to grow in the same region as the Psychotria peduncularis—a plant that also produces blue berries but whose berries ARE edible and ARE desirable by animals. So scientists who study the plants think that the Pollia evolved fruit that would imitate the look of the more desirable plant, thus tricking animals into eating them and thus spreading their seed around.
How freaking cool is that?
Sleep Deprivation Makes Me Cooooool.
Theory: Cinnamon Toast Crunch is Cap’n Crunch’s estranged son who, rebelling aginst his father’s wishes that he join the Navy, took up a life of stripping. His real name’s like Gary or something and “Cinnamon Toast” is just his stage name.
I’d like to know how that went down when Cap’n Crunch found out.
Like one day The Cap’n comes home from a long day of Crunchatizing and finds li’l Gary taking off all his cinnamon in a bowl of milk to the tune of “You Sexy Thing.”
“Dad! I uh…what are you doing home so early?”
“Son, what are you doing?”
“I, uh…just…”
“Get out of the milk, son.”
“But da—”
“Get out of the milk.”
Completely unrelated:
Forgot to post thiiiiiiis
I drew this on…Tuesday? Wednesday? I don’t even know anymore.
Will Will will Will’s will to Will?
Today I present The Stages of Claudia’s Reaction to a Math Test
Right before the test: I freaking love calculus! I totally know this stuff.
Looking over the problems: LET’S DO THIS!
Doing the problems: What’s a plus sign?
Right after handing it in: Crap. That went badly.
10 minutes after handing it in: I suck I suck I suck I suck I suck
Rest of the day: WHY AM I SO BAD AT EVERYTHING I LOVE?
Next day: I’ve disappointed myself.
Following day: I’ve disappointed the gods of calculus.
Following day: I’ve disappointed everyone.
All next week: I am a worthless soul who can’t do anything right. Why do I even bother, it’s not like I’m smart enough for any of this. [insert obnoxious amount of pointless angst]
Getting the test back: Oh, an A. Okay.
This has seriously happened three times this semester. Still trying to shake that damn math test anxiety that’s been following me since high school.
The math part of my brain (that ITTY BITTY LITTLE TROOPER) is internalizing some substantial portion of this awesome stuff. Why can’t the rest of my brain figure that out?
I never have this problem with stats. More proof that at least for me, stats and math are quite different things.
N-N-N-NAPIER
I should just change my (semi-)weekly science blogs to “In This Blog Claudia Blah Blahs about a Mathematician” because that’s pretty much what I do weekly anyway.
(It’s ‘cause of that damn birthdays site, man.)
Today’s feature: John Napier of Scotland!
Yeah, he was a cool dude. Did some stuff, you know, just a few small things like DISCOVERING LOGARITHMS.
Napier studied math as a hobby (his main focus was theology) but, wisely, turned more towards math upon discovering logarithms and subsequently publishing a book about them in 1614. He created tons of calculating tables that were used to make calculations involving e much easier. He also invented an abacus-like device that could be used to quickly calculate products and quotients of numbers. This tool was called Napier’s bones because it involved the use of 10 long rods printed with numbers. The rods, back in the day, were made of ivory and thus looked like long bones.
He also did work with decimal notation, refining previous notational standards set in place by Simon Stevin.
Despite natural logs being my natural enemy (HA GET IT no seriously my brain cannot handle them), I’ve gotta admit that discovering freaking logarithms is pretty damn snazzy.
Not “discovering calculus” snazzy, but snazzy nonetheless.
END!
N-N-N-NAPIER
10,000 Views!
I hit 10,000 views on Eigenblogger this afternoon.
Shoutout to you readers! Thanks, you guys, for sticking with this blog through all its crapspazzle.
Have some pics/gifs.
Crappity Crap Crapperson McCrapsty.
Our final essay in English is a “larger world” essay, meaning that we have to write about something beyond ourselves but still relate it back to ourselves in some way or another.
(I think I’ve blogged about this before.)
Anyway, before today my choice was between the calculus controversy and anosmia.
Now I’ve added in Antarctica.
We had to do a short writing exercise about a childhood obsession. I picked Antarctica by mistake. I say “by mistake” because now that I’ve rambled on about it for only 5 pages I just want to keep going. Which wouldn’t be bad except for the fact that my copies for my workshop are due in a week.
I think I’ll just stick with the calculus controversy. It’ll give me an excuse to dive back into Philosophers at War.
And Leibniz.
Mmmmm. Leibniz.
Today is the worst day of the year
So April Fool’s Day makes me want to stab people. But Google’s April Fool’s nonsense is actually pretty great.
This would actually be useful to losers like me whose noses don’t work.
Wubwubwubwubwub
Uh oh, I downloaded Minecraft.
Damn you, Achievment Hunter. Damn you.
Anyway.
1) Put your iTunes on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.
Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey
Nothing Else Matters by Apocalyptica
I Predict a Riot by Kaiser Chiefs
Lucky by Lucky Twice
Eugene by Andrew Birds
Royksopp Forever by Royksopp
2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?
Do they have to be living?
3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.
“An indication of how much agreement there is between sets of scores may be obtained by squaring the correlation coefficient.” (A Psychometrics Primer by Paul Kline)
4) What do you think about most?
The future. Connections between things.
5) Ever had a poem or song written about you?
Not that I’m aware of.
6) Do you have any strange phobias?
None that I think are particularly strange.
7) What’s your religion?
I tend toward hylozoism.
8) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?
Walking!
9) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?
I dig Muse.
10) What was the last lie you told?
I can’t remember.
11) Do you believe in karma?
Eh…sorta.
13) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?
Being a total idiot; trying not to be a total idiot.
14) Who is your celebrity crush?
I’m sure you can guess.
15) How do you vent your anger?
Destructively.
16) Do you have a collection of anything?
Souls.
17) Are you happy with the person you’ve become?
PFFFT NO
18) What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?
Babies crying (visceral response: puncture own eardrums); brown noise
19) What’s your biggest “what if”?
What if I were smarter?
20) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?
Meh. I don’t think anyone can really know at this point.
21) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.
Right arm: TV (my desk is in a weird spot). Left arm: the lamp.
22) Smell the air. What do you smell?
I will stab you.
23) What’s the worst place you have ever been to?
Surrey.
24) Most attractive singer/s of your opposite gender?
No idea.
25) To you, what is the meaning of life?
Statistics!
26) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?
I CAN drive, I just don’t anymore. And no.
27) What was the last movie you saw?
Sunshine. Again.
28) What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?
Uh…appendicitis? Does that count as an injury?
29) Do you have any obsessions right now?
HAHAHAHAHAHA
30) Ever had a rumor spread about you?
Yes. We’ll not talk about it here.
31) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?
I really try not to. What’s the point?
32) What is your astrological sign?
I’m an Aquarius, fools.
33) What’s the last thing you purchased?
Tower of Pimps shirt! Yes, I’m obsessed. No, I don’t care.
34) Love or lust?
Loooove!
35) In a relationship?
All alone.
36) How many relationships have you had?
I’ve had three “relationships”…I guess you’d call them that.
37) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?
I don’t have one.
38) Where is your best friend?
I don’t have one.
39) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?
Making dinner. ‘Cause normal sleeping/waking patterns are for LOSERS!
40) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?
Meh.
41) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?
If my boss isn’t the type to understand such a situation if I were to explain it later, then I’m working for the wrong type of person.
42) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?
a) Maybe
b) Exactly what I’m doing now
c) Hell no
43) What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?
Sleepyhead! Even though it and all of its remixes remind me of Van Land.
44) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?
Ask me that once I’ve found one.
45) How can I win your heart?
Don’t be a jerk. Have an obsession (for some reason I find that very attractive). Be a kind soul.
46) Can insanity bring on more creativity?
Don’t ask me, I’m nutso.
47) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?
A SPECIFIC one? Probably to live with the guys in the house. There are several “strings” of decisions that go along with all my education crap, but I don’t know if those count.
48) What would you want to be written on your tombstone?
“Here lies what was, for a moment, a bit of universe in the form of a human.”
49) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “heart.”
Drawing! ‘Cause I draw lots of hearts.
50) Basic question; what’s your favorite color/colors?
Orange, lime green, hot pink, yellow.
51) What is your current desktop picture?
The Companion Cube from Portal.
52) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?
Spontaneous ‘Splosion McGee, son of TNT Terrence McGee and Ballistic Boom-Boom Barbara McGee (I need to lay off the sugar, yo).
54) You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?
I changed my mind. “She accidentally ate some radioactive vegetables” is the phrase I want on my tombstone.
Uh…superpower. Hmmm…can I have super-intelligence?
55) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?
A specific half hour on July 25, 2009.
56) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?
None of them. They’re all important.
57) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?
Bach! (I don’t know)
58) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?
ANTARCTICA!
59) Ever been on a plane?
Yup.
60) Give me your top 5 hottest celebrities
Leibniz, Leibniz, Leibniz, Leibniz, and Leibniz.
Yeah.
WATCH PORN
No, that wasn’t a command. I meant “watch porn” as in this beautiful nonsense right here:
This is the Aeternitas Mega 4, designed by Franck Muller, and is apparently the most complicated wristwatch ever made (it’s also like 2 million dollars so yeah).
The Aeternitas Mega 4 is an example of haute horology, which is basically like extreme pimping of a car, except the car is a watch and the pimping is like, “let’s see how many dials we can put on this thing!”
MOAR!
Yeah, this is pretty much awesome.
TWSB: Mendel’s Boxcars
Matt, I think you’ll dig this (if you ever get a break from babies, haha).
BoxCar2D is a program that learns to build a little boxcar using a genetic algorithm. Starting off with a population of 20 cars in generation 0, the 20 cars all run (or don’t, some of them are pretty pathetic, haha) and those that run the longest “reproduce.” If you let it run long enough, you really see pretty dramatic improvement from the 0th to the nth generation. There is also a mutation rate in play that you can set on a sliding scale from no mutations to “100% mutations”, where all components of the car are changeable.
I’ve got a run going in the background as I type this. It’s on generation 6 and some of the cars are running for a whole minute.
Read about the algorithm here.
Check it out, it’s really cool! You can also design your own.
Claudia + 0 = 0
Wow, I am extraordinarily stupid.
IN OTHER NEWS:
I’m conflicted over what I want to write about for my “big” essay in non-fiction. We don’t have a lot of guidelines, but one of them is that the topic be “bigger world” oriented—that is, it’s something that exists outside of our own lives but at the same time is something we can relate to a personal experience or trait or idea.
I’ve got two ideas in mind:
1. Calculus. Yes, again. I had a lot more I wanted to say in my original essay that I couldn’t due to page limit restrictions. But this essay is longer, and it’s the perfect opportunity to expand my older essay. The only problem is, apart from me being a math major, I really don’t have a way to “personalize” the calculus debate. Unless I talk about my beyond creepy obsession with Leibniz. And I don’t know what my English prof would think of that.
2. Anosmia. I’ve never really written about it in any serious manner, and that’s actually what I was planning on doing my long essay on in beginning non-fic, but then I was like “oh hey, I wanna write about LEIBNIZ!” and so that changed. The problem with this option is that since I’ve never really thought about writing about anosmia, I don’t at the moment have any idea of a cohesively structured essay. And my workshop is April 17th (or something) so I’d need to bang that noise out fairly quickly.
Bah. So I don’t know. Weekend shall be spent mulling in a puddle of self-directed anger.
LIKE EVERY WEEKEND THIS SEMESTER UGH.
Missing: Shade of Blue. Reward if Found: Possible Counterexample.
We started Taylor series proper today, and it’s like the seventh section in a row we’ve spent on series. When our teacher wrote “Taylor Series” on the overhead some guy said, “god, when are the series going to end?”
And without thinking I said, “Never, they’re infinite!” And my teacher looked at me like, “You did not just make that joke.”
Made my day.
Also, happy birthday to Karl Pearson!
No, really. I destroy colored pencils.
Here’s a craptastic mess of circles! Enjoy!
I’d dedicate this to your NEW BABIES, MATT AND LINDSEY (congrats!), but they deserve a better drawing. So once I draw a good one, it shall be dedicated to them.
Claudia’s Extraordinarily Short Blog Post
I get visibly upset every time I see helium balloons now. There’s a helium shortage, people. Do you want a festive party or do you want to keep your MRI machines running?
I’d suggest hydrogen balloons as an alternative, but birthday candles + hydrogen encased in thin balloon film skin = mini Hindenburg time, so yeah.
EeEEeeeEEEEEeeeeeeee
Happy birthday, Pierre-Simon Laplace!
Considered the “Newton of France”, Laplace is another one of those guys who just did EVERYTHING. He did a lot with probability—both Frequentist and Bayesian—and he’s even got a distribution named after him.
Anyway.
I know at least three of my readers dig The Oatmeal. Today I read a comic of his that I’d never seen before. I advise you to read it as well if you haven’t yet come across it.
Eigenblogger 