Facebook Apps

I'll start with a confession: I have a Facebook page.

I've even added some apps to it, but unless you look at the list of apps on the left-hand side of my profile you can't tell.

The reason is simple: I find huge lists of apps obnoxious and most of the apps people post to be at best a bit silly and at worst ridiculous. Okay, some of them make some sense, like the ones where you can track the performance of your favorite teams from your profile. Others, like the ones related to biorhythms and fortunes are just electronic versions of the same nonsense which has been peddled for hundreds of years. On the whole, however, most of them are large and dedicated to one thing: getting more people to use them. Vampires vesus Slayers is one of my personal favorites on the list of worthless (I don't subscribe).

I came to Facebook as a way to keep track of friends and aquantences without most of the usual hassle of regular phone or written contact. Most of the people I know at college use Facebook as their prefered method of indirect contact. When it comes to casual communication between friends, I hear "Just Facebook me" more often than "Just call" or even "Email me". All I have to do is add someone as a friend and so long as they update their profiles halfway regularly it's easy to keep in touch. With the focus shifting to apps and entertainment, I have to wonder if the powers that be have lost touch with the real value of their site: keeping in touch.

Google, Medicine, and The Expert

I was reading an interesting article this afternoon from the New York Times about patients Googling for health information. It's just more evidence that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I rather prefer Alexander Pope's verion: "People who know only a little do not understand how little they know and are therefore prone to error."

I really divide these people into two big camps. First, those well meaning, humble folks with an active curiosity and desire to learn. The second are the instant experts who think a few minutes on the Internet qualifies them to diagnose rare diseases or some such thing.

The former are really not a problem as with a little patience and preparation they can become useful allies once steered toward good sources of information. I'm one of them and usually apologize in advance for asking questions that are "probably obvious" out of my own curiosity and if I'm going to cite a source, I cite a source. None of this "I read it on the Internet" garbage.

The instant experts (read: instant idiots) are dangerous and annoying. Dangerous because they can now do something they couldn't before but don't have a good understanding of the consequences, much like the infamous blind axeman in a classroom, etc. Annoying because they can't resist butting into what should be the purview of the expert.

God save us from inquisitive idiots.

Minnesota's Special Prosecutor

A while back here in Minnesota we had a major bridge collapse. Recently the local Legislature decided the wise move was to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate what happened.

I'll start with the facts.

1. A bridge collapsed.
2. It collapsed in summer.
3. Through the grace of God the casualties were light (and far lighter than they would have been in winter in this state).
4. Everything fails eventually.
5. People have been screaming about the decay of American infrastructure for decades.
6. Honestly, does anyone honestly expect politicians to invest in needed preventative maintenance over pork when forced to chose?

As for the loss of life, it was of course tragic.

At the end of the day, the bridge collapsed as all old structures do and for the same reason: insufficient upkeep. I had hoped some elected officials would, in the aftermath of the collapse, learn about total cost of ownership and maintenance. I probably hope for too much.

Appropriate Greetings and Salutations

Since today's Christmas Eve, for those who celebrate it, Merry Christmas.

For those who don't, have a nice day.

My Objection to People Who Object to "Merry Christmas"

It's Christmas season again, and also time to hear from almost everyone: "Happy Holidays". I don't in principle object to having a standard, secular holiday greeting to be used in cases of unknown sentiment, religious or otherwise.

What I do object to is twofold. First, the presumption that Christmas will never be a secular holiday, and therefore wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" will always carry a certain degree of religious insensitivity. The second is that "Happy Holidays" is a suitable replacement to be used even when religious sentiments are known.

As to the first, regardless of the religious origins of Christmas, there have been winter solstice festivals in hundreds of cultures for thousands of years. Same with harvest festivals, ceremonies equivalent to marriage, burial rituals, etc. Sure, there are tens of thousands of Christians out there who would object that Christmas is not some pagan holiday to be lumped in with your run-of-the-mill solstice festival, but in the modern secular state outside of overtly religious contexts, the coming of Christ the savior, et al. is no longer mentioned or even hinted at except, perhaps, through some oblique deconstructionist analysis of the imagery used in assosiation with Christmas, and of course, the name of the holiday itself. We don't hear people objecting that Mardi Gras (which is literally "Fat Tuesday" in French) is a religious holiday and wishing one a happy Mardi Gras is insensitive. Truth be told, it originates as a celebration of the last day before Lent. Why? Because it has been secularized and institutionalized. I, as an agnostic (and ex-Roman Catholic) take "Merry Christmas" the way I imagine a foreign traveler might take "Happy 4th of July"--not something to be offended at, merely as indication that some people happen to think it's a great day to hold some spectacular parties.

As for the second, just as Christmas has been secularized, it is still a very religious holiday for lots of people around the world, and the entirety of the significance of the season is that it's Christmas, the day the arrival of the Christ is to be celebrated by all sufficiently reverent Christians around the globe (allowing for time zones, of course). But when we say "Happy Holidays", we are automatically automatically lumping Christmas into the big basket of every other holiday that happens to fall between 15 December and 5 January (roughly). We are saying, in effect, it doesn't matter which holiday you're going to celebrate, none of them are really special or worth recognizing as such. Whether it's Hanukkah, Christmas, or any other holiday the effect is the same. Is it really less offensive to say all holidays are equal (and to the devout they are not) than to say only holiday X matters?

My approach is simple: If I don't know what someone's preferences are, I'll say "Happy Holidays" and if it doesn't seem impolite, I'll ask. If I know, I use that holiday, especially if it's in season. Example: for my Christian friends, it's always Merry Christmas, for my Jewish ones, Happy Hanukkah. Simple.

Another one bites the dust

That would be another finals season.

This one was in fact surprisingly relaxing. I had plenty of time to do other things, and completely wasted it. But they're all done now, so there's no going back.

Prepping for a Math Final

It's taken seven semesters, but I think I've finally figured it out. While it's a great thing, I wish I knew a while ago what I know now.

The basic process is like this:

1. Find during the semester another textbook in the area. Classic books in the area are usually a good choice.
2. The prof (or experience) should indicate what the spread of material is for the test.
3. Go through the other book, identify each relevant section, and work as many problems as possible from that book, using its examples and exposition.

If done right, this should result in you having retaught yourself the entire course in a week or two from a different but similar perspective.

The remaining problem is textbook selection. This is tougher. For my compex analysis course, we used Saff and Snieder's book and I prepped out of Churchill. It turns out Churchill is so cannonical that Saff and Snieder is in some sense equivilent to it. This turned out really well since the prof followed the book very closely and specified the problem areas in a fairly granular fashion. Ergo, Churchill became a source of problems more than alternative viewpoint.

On the other hand, for a course where the prof is more prone to do somewhere a bit off the beaten path with tests, it would probably be better to find a book which approaches the area in a different way than the origional so as to be more or less orthogonal in both approach and problems. Then working the other book is very much like relearning the entire course and may expose one to an additional perspective that may come in handy come test time. Having worked out of Royden for my second semester or reals, I would probably use Baby Rudin as my "orthogonal" text.

Haiku #1 and #2

I must admit that aside from my otherwise aesthetic feelings towards the format particularly, poetry holds a certain cathartic value for me. Some feelings, some thoughts are so deeply held it seems they are only fully recognized in poetic forms.

At some point, I suppose, I’ll have to reckon with my own little contradictions—a man who strives after the rigorous logic of mathematics as the key to life simultaneously giving voice and comfort to his deepest passions in poetry, not exactly the most logical or deterministic form of expression. Perhaps if I wrote in Lojban . . .

Regardless, here are number 1 and 2, in that order:

A vibrant blossom.
softly its gentle beauty fades,
withering to dust.

Hope of love and joy,
once cast aside by fearful hearts,
crumbles into dust.

Another interesting feature of haiku and poetry generally is the need to encode information though subtext, metaphor, and other lingual constructs in order to convey the complete message. For instance, while neither of the above are per say particularly cryptic, unless one knows me and my life at time of writing (within a month of this post), what's really being spoken to will remain unclear. Presuming the analogy to cryptography can be sufficiently fleshed out, one interesting information theoretic question might be this: Given a particular amount of poetry, how much total information could be unambiguously conveyed? The idea certainly lends a new twist to "literary analysis".

One of My Favorite Comics

If you havent read my (very short) list of favorite webcomics, xkcd is on the list.

It's actually pretty eclectic, but usually has a pretty nerdy under- (or over-) current.

For instance, this one (which I am conviced is the litmus test for mathematical insanity).

http://xkcd.com/230/

Here's how it works:

Do you find this:

1. Pathetic: who works on math while having sex?
2. Funny, but would never interupt sex to work on a proof.
3. Funny, and would be so distracted it would be hard to enjoy the enconter until you write it up.
4. Funny, and would interupt sex, but not write on your partner's body if short of paper.
5. Funny and you would absolutely do it.
6. Not funny--this is legitimate, normal behavior.

I would say if answer number one, you're probably normal. If you answer six, well, I'm not sure even someone like Nash would have gone that far.

I'm about a 4.

Haiku

I've decided one thing to do before I die is learn and practice the art of Haiku.

Why Haiku? Three reasons. Those are the challenge, the experience, and the convenience.

As self expression goes, a single thought into 17 syllables is fairly trivial, craming it into exactly 17 is non-trivial, and doing it well is very challenging. Mix with my own semi-perfectionist nature, and this gets interesting fast. Example: "W.T.F" is a complete thought, but how would you express the same thing in 17 syllables?

I can't explain it, but there's something about the experience of Haiku which is simply amazing from start to finish. The setup, the suspense, the contrast . . . it's just awesome to finally look at even a decent haiku (much less a good one) and simply enjoy the way it works on me.

Third, poetry takes lots of itterations before it's anywhere near good. Haiku's being as short as they are, the cyclic rate for a complete set of revisions is high (even if the number of revisions is longer). This is more compatible with my lifestyle as I much more frequently have 15 minutes (which can be enough to ponder a single word choice) here and there than the hours it would take to consider the implications of a single work or comma on a larger poem.

Facebook Externalities

Facebook: n. Website where you excersize limited (but somehow sufficient) powers over a webpage to post your entire life for large segments of the world to see which has somehow come to dominate the social scene of college-aged/-bound Americans and similar demographics in other parts of the world. Massive time-suck for people who would otherwise do things people used to do, like read, excersize, or just plain not be online sharing their ENTIRE LIVES.

Why again do people do these things? Network externalities. Here's one example. Person "A" has friends from work, high school, their college, other colleges, their hometown, the local youth group, etc. and everyone is in the process of going their seperate ways. Let's suppose the group of people is so large that letters/phone calls at a reasonable frequency are simply too hard to do (or too expensive). Let's further imagine that "A" is okay with loosing day to day or week to week contact with people, but once every month or so would like to to know how, say, "B" is doing. Except for those willing to do mailing lists or their own websites, etc, before things like facebook, "A" would keep and close touch with "C", loose touch with "B" in a couple years, and most everyone else in a few days to weeks.

Enter Facebook. Now "A" can make "B", "C", "D", and all the rest "friends" (no relation to the actual level of relationship in almost all cases) and maintain as close a relationship as desired but almost guarenteed a higher one than without it--assuming "B", "C", "D", etc are all on it too. Moreoever, if another person, say "G" becomes friends with "A" but is not on Facebook, it is less valuable than if "G" joins with even nominal participation (say once per week/month).

End result, Facebook is more valuable to its users when there are more users. So much so I no longer get the question "Are you on Facebook?" I only hear "I'll Facebook you".

Things I've Noticed About My Code

I'm not a professional coder nor even a talented amateur--strictly a weekender. The day I hack the Linux kernel is the day pigs fly. Nonetheless watching myself evolve as a programmer must be something like a caterpillar watching itself turn into a moth. Hopefully I'm getting better.

Some things I've noticed:

• Whitespace has become something I'm almost religious about.
  
• Same for indentation. (Is there a difference?)
  
• The more I code the smaller each discrete piece becomes, even to the point of being only a few lines.
• I've started writing bits of code I know I'll use over and over again (or don't want to keep coding out each time I need) as stand-alone functions/procedures to be called as needed.
• I've now officially reused code from another of my projects.
• Comments have become much more frequent and structured. If there's anything even vaguely cryptic it comes with a comment. Significant blocks of code come with comments.
• I tag the start and end loops and conditionals with numbered comments to help me keep track of them (this is in addition to whitespace and indentation).
• I version my software, but I'm not yet to the point of using a versioning system like svn.

I have to wonder if others notice these same types of things in themselves.

Most of this has come about because of my couple of somewhat coding intensive research projects. Two summers ago I wrote a couple thousand lines of SAS code to process a dataset and over the last 7 months I've written a few hundred lines to do some computational geometry and statistics in R. Just looking back at my own code has taught me how annoying poorly written code can be.

Tea

Tea is amazing. Coffee can be pretty good (or even great, but I can't afford "great" coffee). I've been very impressed by tea though, because of two things:

1. It's amazingly portable. Anywhere there is a source of hot water tea can be made by the cup or gallon assuming one has a sufficient supply of tea. The best part is that tea comes by the bag and so it is easy to have not only sufficient, pre-measured tea on hand but a wide variety to chose from with minimal extra weight.
2. Good tea is still pretty cheap. Again, I've never had "great tea", but the run of the mill pre-bagged store-bought stuff like Bigalow, Celestial Seasonings, Salada, or Twinnings is all quite good and sells for less than $0.15/bag which means under $0.15 per cup prepared. I can only imagine what kind of pricing decent tea has when purchased in bulk.

Either way, it's good enough for me to drink at least a quart of the stuff per weekday, and sometimes a half gallon per day on weekends. Hmmm . . . tea.

Heading into finals

Final exams . . . grrrr . . .

I have two thoughts. First, I have to do as well as possible. Second, I'm going to spend a fortunate on caffeine.

Why I'm Now A Bayesian Who Will Use Frequentist Methods

Why I'm a Bayesian: Absolute Continuity with respect to a probability measure. The Improper Prior does not have it, and you need it for Bayes Theorem to make sense.

Why I'll Still Use Frequentest Methods: I'd say there are two reasons. First, convenience. Frequentist methods by removing the question of prior are certainly easier. Second, for large samples or very weak priors, Frequentist methods are a reasonable approximation, especially where the prior is unknown or would not contribute much.

Climbing the Putnams

The Putnam Competition. Six hours, 10 math problems. Mode score: 0. Median Score: Usually 0 or very close to it. Grand prize: Harvard Scholarship. Do I expect to win it? Not at all.

This begs the question: What kind of person (or even math major) will volunteer to compete in a competition they have almost no hope of winning? My answer is this: Because it's there.

Of course, having now taken them (and completely zeroed out) twice, I can honestly say the only reason I take them is because they're there.