Ouch
Well, that was the most depressing study session ever.
So we spent six hours this afternoon “studying” for the big stats exam tomorrow. In those six hours, I learned:
– I am the youngest person here by about a year and a half
– I’m the only one without a significant other
– Everybody else seems to be a lot further along in life (aside from the school aspect) than me
– Aside from being in grad school, I am very, very different from these people
Yeah. It doesn’t sound that bad when it’s written down, but six hours of other people telling you about their lovers and their relationships kind of sucks when you’re the only one in the room who’s very, very lonely.
Wiggity Wiggity Wiggity BLOG
I FREAKING LOVE this stuff. Especially since patterns like this were big parts of my NaNo.
Yay. :)
“Hell no! Hell no! Hell noooooooooooo!”
Way too catchy. I never thought I’d be singing about Michael Jackson’s death in the shower.
Yellow is for Submarines
Oh my god, the “are you a genius?” section had my laughing like none other. Beautiful.
Sorry blogs are short, studying.
Blog 1,313: A Blog
HELLO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!
Now it’s time for NaNo stats!
Prime (remember, this is unedited)
Number of words: 50,027
Number of sentences: 3,507
Average sentence length (in words): 16.85
Average number of syllables per word: 1.6
Gunning Fog Index: 10.36
Fun times.
The Beauty of Non-Monotone Relationships
My graphs speak for themselves. They make me very happy. Also, they’re not supposed to be making weird patterns like they are, but it’s still cool.
Yes, this is my research.
This small accomplishment was very needed
Yay!
So I actually was able to finish my first NaNoWriMo, with a final official wordcount of 50,027.
It was totally awesome…going to do it again next year, hopefully with a better novel resulting.
That is all.
This had me laughing. So hard.
Colin Mochrie is so freaking hilarious. I love how Ryan just loses it completely a few times.
HEY!
HEYHEYHEYHEYHEY!!!
.Antarctica. :)
The plot needs to thicken by at least 7,500 more words!
OH MY GOD, Prime was not meant to be a novel. A novella, yes, but not a novel. My plot petered out at about 37,000 words or so, and ever since I’ve been pretty much connecting scenes and writing filler dialogue to see what comes of it. I’ve gotten some good stuff that might replace old stuff, but putting all this crap in detracts from the story, I think. But what the hell, I love writing this story.
Give Me Homoscedasticity or Give Me Death!
Oh Canada, you silly country, even your statistics books involve weed.
This was the conclusion the Psyc 366 book came to on a section involving confidence intervals: “You can be reasonably confident your results are due to marijuana and not to chance.”
Best. Phrase. Ever.
Good lord…
I think Sir Ronald Fisher is the statistics equivalent to Leibniz in my mind. Check it:
…this paper laid the foundation for what came to be known as biometrical genetics, and introduced the very important methodology of the analysis of variance, which was a considerable advance over the correlation methods used previously.
The freaking ANOVA, people.
In addition to “analysis of variance”, Fisher invented the technique of maximum likelihood and originated the concepts of sufficiency, ancillarity, Fisher’s linear discriminator and Fisher information. His 1924 article “On a distribution yielding the error functions of several well known statistics” presented Karl Pearson’s chi-squared and Student’s t in the same framework as the Gaussian distribution, and his own “analysis of variance” distribution Z (more commonly used today in the form of the F distribution). These contributions easily made him a major figure in 20th century statistics.
Do you know what the Z distribution is? It’s used for setting confidence intervals around correlation estimates. Since a correlation is bound by -1 and 1, any sampling distribution with a mean correlation other than zero has a skewed distribution, and thus requires unsymmetrical confidence intervals to be set. Fisher’s Z distribution is a non-linear transformation of correlations that FORCES THEM INTO A NORMAL DISTRIBUTION in which you can set symmetrical confidence intervals, and then you can TRANSFORM THOSE LIMITS BACK and get confidence intervals in the original sampling distribution of correlations.
Seriously, that’s pretty freaking amazing. This guy rocked. Go search him in Wikipedia and see the massive list of “see also” pages.
Ha!
Leibniz’ crater on the moon is bigger than Newton’s.
This makes me happy.
Yes, I’m that obsessive, deal with it.
Explain
I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time on the NaNoWriMo forums with the attempts to procrastinate writing more BS for Prime and in leiu of doing research for a project I have yet to care about.
What’s the big attraction with the fantasy genre, I must ask? Am I the only one who sees next to no appeal with fantasy novels? I think 95% of the novels for which I’ve read summaries on the NaNo website are fantasy.
Why?
I just can’t wrap my head around the appeal.
But then again, I’m a person who loves statistics, so I probably shouldn’t talk.
Today was the Wrong Day to Wear Parachute Pants: A True Story
If I were to sum up the entire amount of rain I’ve observed over the span of my life, I’m honestly not sure if the total would be more than the amount of rain I observed tonight.
Seriously.
It was raining as usual when I left the psych building, and it was still raining as usual once I got off the #41 and crossed the street to wait for the #7. The bus wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another 7 minutes, so rather than walk home in the rain (and this was one of the best decisions I’ve made, just wait), I decided to just stand there and wait for it.
Not a minute later, the sky exploded. It literally went from an average rain storm to a FREAKING TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR in about a second. It was like god was pouring an infinite bucket of water from the sky, it was crazy. Within two minutes there were rivers of water flowing down Dunbar wide enough to paddle a canoe down them. The wind was blowing like crazy, the traffic lights were swinging, people driving didn’t quite know what to do…
It was insane. Then, just as suddenly, five minutes later, it stopped. And the bus showed up. My pants were SOAKING wet, like I had jumped in a lake or something.
Crazy times. At least I still had power this time.
NaNoOhNo
Hahaha, dammit, I’m still way behind for my wordcount. The plan in place will get me to 50,000 by the 30th, but the little graph is discouraging me…
Also, I may run out of plot.
What a crappy day
Well today sucked. Or rather, this evening sucked. I stay at school until about 6:30 and as soon as I get up to leave, I realize that it’s extremely windy and rainy outside—I mean, even more so than normal. And of course, as soon as I get outside the psych building, this BIG gust of wind comes down Lower Mall and takes my little pink umbrella off into the stratosphere, so I’m standing there in freaking POURING rain thinking, “awesome, it’s a 15 minute walk to the damn buses.”
So half an hour later (of course I get to Dunbar JUST AS THE BUS LEAVES THE BUS STOP, THANK YOU BUS KARMA), I’m on the #7. I get to my block and notice that it’s suspiciously dark down my street. Then I realize, “great, the power’s out.” ONLY ON MY DAMN STREET. The rest of Dunbar is still washed in blazing light. So at this point I’m motherfucking cold and finally, after getting to my house, realize that there is NO light in my apartment, as well as no source of possible light aside from my cell phone and compy (once I decided to turn it on and finish my NaNo wordcount for the day).
So I’m like, “okay, so it’s dark, no big deal. I’ll just read…nope, too dark to do that. Okay, then I’ll just play Portal…oh wait, can’t do that. Damn, it’s cold in here, at least I can turn my heater on…FUCK!”
So at the moment it’s 1 in the morning, still no power, and it’s about 45 degrees in my apartment. I’m not kidding. I can see my damn breath by the light of compy.
Fucking Canada.
Waiter! There’s heteroscedasticity in my samples!
This entire blog is interesting, but this post is great. The image of this woman running out of the store with the employees following her is hilarious.
Shazaam! A blog!
= The Grand Beginning =
Current, exact Location: My apartment in Vancouver
Temperature: Cold
People around are: No one
Music playing: None
Weather is like: Rainy…as ALWAYS
Day: Friday
Date: March 2nd
Year: 2007
Time: 11:07pm
Mood: GREAT!
= You =
Your most popular name is: Claudia
Race: White as white can get?
How old are you? 21
When were you born? February 2nd
Your starsign is: Aquarius, bitches!
Most known qualities of this starsign: Open-minded, humanitarian, eccentric, whacko
Can you be stereotyped? Probably. Can’t everyone?
Describe your dress style: Crayola on LSD
Favourite item of clothing: My orange tye-dye pants. Or the 70’s-style bell bottoms.
Most worn item of clothing: See above
Currently wearing: PJ pants and a shirt
Make up wearing: Foundation
Jewellery wearing: The chain Aaron gave me
Favourite item of jewellery: See above
Any distinguishing features? Yes, but unfortunately they’re bad ones
Height: 5’2”
Eye colour: Hazel
Hair colour: Black
Hair style: Obnoxious
Hair length: Long-ish
Scars: Many
Any disabilities? Can’t smell
Glasses/contacts? Glasses
Can you drive? Ahoy
If not, do you intend to?
Pasttimes: Obsessing, being a dork, stripping, pretending to be as talented as Weird Al when fitting new lyrics to existing songs.
You love: Leibniz, statistics, philosophy, color, Sleepyhead, Metalocalypse, ridiculous clothing.
You hate: Hate
Friends: Eh
Online friends: ?
Boyfriend/Girlfriend: None
You as a person: Me?
Your words/phrases: “Crap!”
Your phone is: Who the hell knows?
Your room is: Itty bitty
Describe your house and its surroundings: Hahahaha…crappy
Village/town/city: Vancouver
House number: Like I remember
= Family =
Parents: Bob and Karen
Stepparents: None
Sibling/s: None
Step-siblings: None
Pets: Annabelle, Romeo
You live with: No one…sad day
Grandparents: Bob and Emily, and Joyce
First cousins: Too many to count
First auntie/uncles: Blake, Lance, and Vicke
Mother’s age and starsign: 50-something, Taurus
Father’s age and starsign: 50-something, Capricorn
Sibling’s age and starsign:
Your mother looks like: Not me, that’s for sure
Your father looks like:Drew Carey with dark hair and a moustache
Your sibling looks like:
You get on best with: My mom
= Relationships, of any kind =
Best friend: Nick and Sean
Friends: The Papins, Nick, Matt, Maggie, a bunch of others
Work friends: None
Most fun: Nick
Funniest: Probably Sean
Best laugh: Matt
Best hair: Sean
Best voice: No idea
Best vocabulary: Probably Nick again
Smartest: Their all a bunch of smarties
Most ignorant: Hahahahahaha (Rob)
Deep conversations with: Nick
You see most often: Sean?
You hang out with: No one, really
You drink with: Aaron, the few times I drank
You talk most with: Sean and Nick
Shares most in common with: Nick?
Shares your humour: Nick
Most miserable: Sean certainly thinks he is, hahaha.
= Music =
Bands: Cut Copy, Battles, Apocalyptica, freaking DETHKLOK
Artists: Owl City, Ben Charest, Sia
Others you listen to but don’t consider favourites: Way too many
Genres: Electronic/techno, metal, math rock
Music videos: Atlas by Battles, Tonto by Battles
Songs: SLEEPYHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Albums: Not much of a “whole album” person, except for Deep Forest perhaps
= Movies =
Movies: Apollo 13, Armageddon, Mystery Men…that’s about it
Genres: Meh
Actresses: Meh
Actors: Tom Hanks!
Last movie watched: Watching Titanic right now
= Literature and creativity =
You are creative in what ways: I like to rewrite lyrics to songs, I like to pretend I know Flash, I draw like I’m on LSD
Last proper novel read: The Plague—Albert Camus
Favourite novels: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Age of Reason, An American Tragedy, The Brothers Karamazov, The Caine Mutiny, Candide, The Chosen, Crime and Punishment, Flowers for Algernon, The Great Gatsby, The Interpretation of Dreams, Native Son, On the Beach, This Side of Paradise, Waiting for Godot, Watchmen, Watership Down
Favourite authors: Freaking Jules Verne, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Favourite childhood novels: Funnybones. I freaking adored that book, it was hilarious
Poets: Poe? I don’t read much poetry
Poems: The Raven, Ode on a Grecian Urn…again, see above
Artists: Dali, Escher
Paintings: The Persistence of Memory, Relativity
= Love =
Marital status: Sad
Boyfriend/girlfriend: More sad
In love with: Leibniz
How much and why: Do you really want to get me started on this?
Are you romantic? Possibly
Romantic songs: The Bad Touch? Hahaha
= Other/Misc =
Can you draw? Pfft
Colours: Orange, lime green
Shampoo/conditioner: Herbal Essence…the curly hair kind I think
Hair products: None
Hair dye: None
Single/double bed: Single
Furniture: A rocking chair…a desk
Email: I’ve got like six
S/N .. None
Internet servers: No idea
Colour curtains: No curtains
Colour carpet: Dusty white
Colour duvets: DUVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!!
Pillows: Two
Favourite way of insulting: Taking their pants
Pubs: Koener’s? That’s the only pub I know
Restaurants: Shari’s!!
Take out: Subway
Healthy food: Tofu?
Junk food: M&Ms!
Meals: M&Ms!
Breakfast: M&Ms!
Animals: I like hippos. They’re cool
Religion: Atheist
Veggie/carnivore: Carnivore
Subjects in school: Band (high school), stats (college)
Way of affection: All possible?
= Last time… =
Showered: Afternoon
Bathed: No idea
Cleaned teeth: Morning
Brushed hair: Few minutes ago
Listened to music: Most of this afternoon
Watched a movie: Right now!
Wrote a letter: Long ago
Received a letter: A week or so ago
Wrote an email: Last night
Received an email: Today
Spoke to someone: About half an hour ago
Said what: “Bye”
Sang: This afternoon (Peace of Mind FTW)
Walked in the rain: Do you know where I live?
Felt unwell: The last four months
Danced: I dance while I make noodles
Got drunk: I haven’t been drunk yet
Ate food, and what: A few hours ago, noodles
Went to a Gig: A gig?
Watched TV: Awhile ago
Argued: Last night
Talked to someone online: Few hours ago
Said “I love you”: Few hours ago
NaNoWriMo Update Central!
Word count at which I’m supposed to be: 25,000
Word count at which I actually am: 15,035
Percentage of story so far written that is dialogue: 92.1%
Let me reiterate from blogs prior: my story is about NUMBERS. Numbers do not have physical properties. Thus, I cannot write about physical properties—visual, action-based, or otherwise—in this story.
Thus I’m stuck with dialogue and the thought processes of my MC (yes, yes, I know numbers also can’t talk or think…shut up, it’s my world!). And since I’m a stickler for interesting, realistic dialogue, I’m finding it very difficult to create quantitiy over quality with my dialogue.
I’m also finding it very difficult to refrain from making obscene amounts of math puns throughout this.
Must…refrain from math puns…must…refrain…
Numa Numa Song + Marching Band = Bliss
This…this is awesome on almost every single scale on which awesome can be measured
I love how almost the entire audience in front of the guy taping is doing the arm thing.
This just made my month.
Eigenblogger 
I’m going to go to the clinical part of the building and laugh at their small sample sizes
Hahaha, oh, internet…