Chipping away at the great block of the Unknown

Really aiming for brevity this time as I am so tired (not having got to bed as early as I might recently) and I have a nine o' clock lecture tomorrow.

So: today. More Computational Statistics; not too bad- the stuff with the computer was easy but found the statistics behind it tough- for example, where (in the sheet we were given to work through for the computer class) you had to work out the mean and then say whether the mean was actually usefull in this instance, I could do the first part no problem but could only guess that the answer was 'no' for the second (because otherwise they wouldn't be asking the question). I think I was in the minority in having read the notes handed out last time before today's lecture (as recommended) though; I was able to answer a couple of the questions he asked in class because of that although silence on other people's part probably had a lot lot more to do with 80 to 90% of the class being non native speakers and still adjusting to studying in English, so probably not having achieved the confidence to call out answers yet- and indeed some students coming from cultures where you don't call out the answers in class- than my brilliance compared to them. Not to say I was the only one who answered though- there were a few others who contributed, and who actually answered harder questions that I didn't know about.

In all we had three hours of Computational Statistics; it seems to be the thing to clump lectures and classes for the same course together, in contrast to my undergraduate degree where there were generally three lectures a week per subject possibly with a problem class in addition, and they would all be on different days. Anyway, my stomach and bladder were both pretty happy when it was over. I grabbed a sandwich in the Quad Cafe, which seems to be cheaper than the overpriced Garrick that I tried the first two times, and which was completely full- I had to sit on some steps. Then with half an hour or so to spare and barely any work to do (and that computer based) I decided to explore around the Quad Cafe a little. I got no further than Alpha Books, which in spite of sounding like a Christian propaganda organisation is actually an indoor second hand bookshop (I'm not sure if it's private or run by LSE) which I discovered sells fiction as well as textbooks. I succumbed to four books- I've started on Pale Fire by Nabokov (whom I have thought is very good for a while) and it lives up to expectations.

Then I had a meeting with Jeremy- as our personal tutor and lecturer for Computational Statistics asked us to call him- about course choices- we all had to have one. He didn't have a problem with the options I'd chosen and actually commented that it was pretty well balanced, which was rather a fluke as at this point, not having studied the courses yet, I have only a hazy idea of what they're about. Given the chance to ask any questions, I said that I was a bit worried as I hadn't done any statistics before about possibly being out of my depth. He pointed out that I had been answering questions in class and that with my maths degree I should be able to cope with the standard of work; I hadn't been sure if he'd noticed my answers as the class has about thirty or so students and we've only had a couple of lectures, and in any case, some lecturers aren't good at remembering people. I was half pleased to have made a good impression and half worried that I wouldn't be able to live up to it, as at the moment the background to the Computational Statistics is stuff I have at least vaguely covered (though not well enough to know things like when the mean is usefull or several other important things) and when we move onto something I haven't done I don't think I'll know the answers any more. And I wanted to tell him that the maths degree wasn't too much to go on what with my being bad at methods in spite of it, but I refrained.

After that came the first lecture for the fundamental statistics course, a two hour slot. The content for this week turned out to be not terribly taxing- probability, admittedly very mathematically treated- but the lecturer has an extremely boring voice, the kind you end up fading out without even realising you're doing it, so that you then have to remember yourself and start concentrating again, as well as several other traits that are going to make this particular course a struggle to stay awake, focussed and enthusiastic. He made a mistake in one of the examples from the problem sheet we were working through- which I don't blame him for; most lecturers who go through problems in real time instead of working them out beforehand and writing them into their lecture notes then copying onto the board tend to come a cropper at least once in a course- mistakes are easy to make in any calculation or other mathematical problem and very hard to correct when trying to lecture to a room full of people. Anyway, he just wasn't getting where he could have gone wrong, and I looked up from the problem I was attempting (I was trying to see if I could do them myself as I was worried about my level of statistics, so was doing them in the lecture attempting to keep ahead of him) and saw that instead of the sets where A threw more heads than B (in 3 coin tosses by A and 2 by B) he'd got written down the sets where B threw more than A. So I thought he was trying to work out the probability of A throwing more than B by working out the probability of that not happening and taking that away from 1, since there were fewer of those sets, but realised that he'd need to include the sets where they threw the same number for that to work. So I pointed out that he hadn't got those (he seemed quite open to suggestions of what might be wrong), but it turned out that wasn't what he was doing, and he thought I meant that 'more than' should be interpreted as 'more than or the same number as', and said that he didn't think that was how it was to be read. So then I realised he'd just accidentally thought it was the probability of B throwing more than A rather than the other way round that he needed to work out, and after a suitable interval I managed to convey that, fairly tactfully, by a puzzled 'The calculations seems as though you're trying to work out the probability of B throwing more than A' He managed to sort it out then, and I was pleased to have got something right but frustrated that I hadn't been able to explain the reasoning behind my first idea (which would also have produced the right answer) as it looked like I was wrong at that point. But I was mostly a bit embarrassed and hoping that telling him had been the right thing to do.

Back in halls, I worked with SC2 on the leaflet(s), posters and letter we want to send out to all flats in Lillian Knowles, as well as sorting out what else we needed to do. The leaflet was in substance what I'd already written before realising there was another sustainability champion, but it needed a good introduction and the contents needed rephrasing to make them sound less dictatorial and a different layout to make them more attractive. We were both having difficulties with what to say in the introduction and letter at the beginning and if working on it seperately would probably not have got very far but together we managed to come up with something pretty good, friendly, persuasive and positive. So it looks to be a good team.

And finally, I have now met all six of my flatmates, the last two having come in while I was in the kitchen (an hour or so apart). So here, for future reference, is the list:

Flatmate 1: Boy, tall, Canadian.
Flatmate 2: Boy from Denmark- also pretty tall
Flatmate 3: Girl from Hong Kong. Studying Criminal Justice masters
Flatmate 4: me
Flatmate 5: Boy from Ireland- not sure if it's Northern Ireland or Ireland the country. Forgotton his name.
Flatmate 6: Boy from Lithuania. Forgotton his name too though is the one have been talking to most after Flatmate 7
Flatmate 7: Girl from Taiwan. Have already got quite friendly with her through conversations while cooking our respective suppers

Flatmate 1 said he'd planned with some of the others for us all to go out for a meal sometime- possibly on Thursday.

Tomorrow's 3 hour lecture is Time Series. This has as a prerequisite that basic statistics class we started today. I.e. it probably won't be comprehensible till we've actually finished that course in the autumn. I am fully prepared for this and shall be taking notes while attempting to stay awake for looking back over in December :)

Oops. Looks like I missed brevity. And I missed out loads of details I would have included given more time...