Buddhist Marketer

Nerdy stats joke

Yo, stop bein’ an outlyin’ H₀!

—

At the risk of more deeply etching d0rcas mal0rcas into my forehead, I’m pleased to announce that I’m taking the following classes next semester:

• Regression and forecasting models
• Statistical methods in sampling & auditing

There weren’t any seats left for Linear Algebra and Matrix Methods but after having a discussion with a current Strategy & Economics doctoral student at NYU Stern, the theory and proof classes of yore would be better for me anyway.  Besides, I’ve already taken linear algebra like ninety seven times.

That said, if I end up at Yale for my PhD, I am so taking Math 230 again.  Eigen haz maff do-over!

In breadth, the material covered in the year-long Math 230 sequence is approximately equivalent to that included in Math 120, Math 222, and Math 250 - multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and “vector analysis”, including the theory of differential forms on manifolds. However, Math 230 takes a more fast-paced and rigorous approach to the material. Math 230 is also intended as in an introduction to mathematical proof; students are expected to read, comprehend, and write their own mathematical proofs. Math 230 is for those willing to work harder (and risk lower grades) to go more deeply into the material.

I’m getting excited just thinking about it.  mmmmm

The emotional roller coaster of seeking approval

I just want to do good work, find mathematical models that can represent observed micro- and macro- behaviors, prove that my idea that in the age of the network economy the importance of distribution > the importance of brand, be able to go off in search of answers to that which has caused me intellectual dissonance during my past ten years in corporate America, and contribute to the universe in a manner that celebrates my comparative advantage.

I hate the idea that I could be locked out of the club, yet again.

I thought the ups and downs of a doctoral program wouldn’t start until I was actually in a doctoral program.

Good heavens; no wonder girls aren’t good at math.  Dwelly McDwellersons!

From the blogosphere, echoing James Baldwin:

When you spend your life hearing that you’re not able to do something because of who you are, even if you want to believe otherwise, there’s going to be part of you that believes it.

My self-apppointed to-do list:

1. Rustle up some paint color chips from Home Depot
2. See if I can squirrel my way into classes skewing math-theory next semester, perhaps at the CUNY Grad Center
3. Find a good game of pick-up ball
4. Bake a pie
5. Try not to dwell on the last problem of the GRE math section, whose blank I didn’t have time to fill in because I accidentally clicked the HELP button and spent half-a-minute trying to figure out how to click out.  Damn you, 790!

If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t care, but I do, and so I do.

* sigh *

Ambivalence + 2

I started drafting this post on August 3rd and haven’t finished it yet, so here.

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -

The Flaming Lips’ One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21

Earlier in The Ambivalence Series:

My first inclination is a deep feeling of ambivalence, of not being sure if I would even feel sad if he were to die. In a way it would be a nice closure, at last, for an abrupt ending for which I never received a reason, even a lame one.

But this can’t be right, can it? What kind of a crum-dum isn’t sure whether or not she cares if a man she once thought she loved croaks from cancer?

Maybe I am that crum-dum. Only one way to find out.

Equations.

This from my 7/10/2008 post, Ambivalence: the math, which is followed by:

I get out my list of events and assign two numbers to each entry: one number for giddiness and one number for grumpiness. I try to keep to a max value of 1 for either column, but, let’s be honest:

1. I am female
2. This is my chart and I am the boss

As I think of the values, I try and think, “How did I feel at the time the event happened?”

from my 7/14/2008 post, Ambivalence +1.

So, here I am with my table of data. I consider normalizing any event that contains a rating (giddy or grumpy) >1 such that the max value = 1.

“No,” I decide. “Hormones is hormones.”

What I never consider is simply adding the positive column and comparing its sum to the negative column. That would just be silly.

I know myself well enough to know that additional data points shape all previous data points. Which is to say, memories of the first date were that much brighter after the second date, which had a (+,-) of (0.6, 0). It’s as if each new event were squares of colored cellophane stacked on a light box, and as the relationship unfolded, so too did the cumulative hue of affection.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” I tell myself. I’m in the office, off the clock, and it’s late enough that the building’s air conditioning has clicked off. I’m undaunted. I’ve got feelings to crunch.

So, here’s the question. I know the cumulative affection rating is not simply additive. The most recent event is the event that has the most powerful impact on the running “How do I feel about this person?”

But how much more important (in terms of overall affection) is the most recent event versus all the events that have preceded it?

It’s exponential, I decide. I click over and look for basic parabola equations. (Remember those?) I find a Wikipedia entry on exponential weighting and find a smoothing function. “Could this be what I need?” I wonder.

What I want is an equation that describes this … (may or may not be continued)

Baby, have you noticed the sky is rearranging?

(Play this in the background)

I flick the TV off, am up past my bedtime, but am jangly from an evening run and couldn’t-sleep-last-night and tomorrow-is-the-first-day-of-school.

The city’s quiet even though I have a window yawning big-wide-open. Manhattan is not supposed to sound like this. But tonight’s chorus is the chorus of Maine, the chorus of Indiana, the chorus of Berlin. As if, in anyplace with four seasons, the scaffolding of mid-August is the gentle braiding of singing crickets and solitary locusts and whispering autumn.

Hopelessly into you
’cause you know how to
Unwrap my feelings ’til I’ve
Opened up from inside
No reason to be shy
Every reason to be mine

Tomorrow night. Linear algebra. Not since 1994.

I’ve been in classes since. Couple of MBA classes five years back. Five semesters of writing classes. These are nothing. I mean, they’re not nothing. But to grip from De La Soul, with math, stakes is high. Three thousand feet high and rising.

Numbers whirling, dancing, shift, shimmy, spiral. My first love. A safe space, an ordered space, where rules mattered, reason breathed, and action n+1 was predictable.

Fall into a head space
Deep into a new place
Spinning out of control
You should know
I don’t want to be safe
Every reason to be mine

I kill the lights, worm my way deeper into my couch, and look out my window. Wow. How did I miss those clouds? The city bounces off them. Makes their spirits glow amber.

Nothing’s really sane but everything’s amazing
Slowly taking over me
Baby have you noticed, the sky is rearranging
I feel it move in me

I remember, from childhood, late night drives with Dad from Chicago after free White Sox games. Past the orange lights of the big city, looking out the window at the clouds, that color! Back home to Indiana, darker, darker, darker, the sky soon blanketed us, no more brightly lit service islands, now just two white arms of light feeling their way around the highway in front of us.

And still, all the way home, the chorus of crickets and locusts and wonder.

Look at the sky, I think.

And tomorrow -

And tomorrow.

Lyrics: William Orbit’s Spiral, from Hello Waveforms

Linear Algebra SOS

Call for help on some hot linear algebra action. Ten minutes into Strang’s lecture on Open Course Ware and I’d like to raise my hand.

• Who figured out that n equations, n unknowns could be written as matrices? Or, is it simply definitional and I need to shup-n-memorize? Why does this work?
• Related: for this column picture action, who figured out that these coefficients were vectors? Where can I find the proof so that I can wrap my head around the derivation?
• Does anyone know of a Linear Algebra gimp that I can keep in my closet and yank out as needed? I promise to yank following a motion path as represented by … RDRR! j/k

That’s all for now. Thanks in advance.

(And for those of you who were curious: linear algebra is in fact different from the ‘baby math’ that we took in middle school.)