It’s one of those “boring to talk about” points in time.

I’ve got an econ presentation Tues. It would be nice if I attempted some Continuous homework this weekend, but totally unnecessary… There’s always plenty of stuff to do for comps and research, but for some reason, they don’t feel totally overwhelming right now.

I totally bombed some cookies last week by trying to sub oil for butter (yes, I should totally know better. I’m sure there’s a Rose Levy Berenbaum book out there that tells the exact proportions to make it work.) So I’ve got Cookies Unlimited on hold at the library. I think cookies are more complicated than bread, and they’re pretty much the only thing I try to altitude adjust.

This is the my favorite thing I’ve seen about the current economic hoorah:

“If unusually many airplanes crash during a given week, do you blame
gravity? No. Greed, like gravity, is a constant. It can’t explain why
the number of crashes is higher than usual.” – Lawrence H. White on Division of Labour

Maybe putting 2 yr plans on weekly updates isn’t the awesomest idea – but I’m getting a better grip on the stats language I’m using which makes everything much less frustrating.

Semester long goals for research (end date – May 2010):
1. Seriously, get all the standard estimation techniques (and our awesome side ideas) coded up
2. Come up with a test suite of standard data (why is it called a suite? It makes it sound like it has a sofabed.)
3. Evaluate techniques and come up with a reasonably easy to view way to report results.

Semester long goals for comps (end date – March 2009):
1. Finish first pass through MGB problems (there are many I can’t solve)
2. Finish reading Applied Regression Analysis (see prev. entry)

That gives me ~ 3 months to beg for help on the remaining MGB probs and review EDA.

Actually related to this freaking week:
1. Get most of econ slides together and run by teacher.
2. Deliver my actual action items from our last research meeting.

Random:
glindagood – we’re doing population models in continuous modeling! I think of you whenever she’s up there groping for examples.

I found this cookie recipe via someone who has an overlapping LibraryThing library (yes, I am super procrastinator – was that not obvious?) and it’s pretty awesome. If you like things a touch less spicy, drop the allspice.

“[I]f we see a man who is poorly dressed we may hypothesize, H0: “This man is poor.” If the man walks to save bus fare or avoids lunch to save lunch money, we have no reason to reject this hypothesis. Further observations of this kind may make us feel H0 is true, but we cannot accept it unless we know all the true facts about the man. However, a single observation against H0, such as finding that the man owns a bank account containing $500,000 will be sufficient to reject the hypothesis.”

So… I feel terrible posting the same todo’s every week.  I guess that’s probably the whole point behind making it public, or at least having a record of it. If I was brave, I could look at these and see exactly how long I’ve been stuck on my research. So. This weekend, everything else goes on hold unless I get a major code breakthrough. No more doing everything-but-research and feeling ok because I got so much done. It’s more important to do the stuff that matters. Even if that’s the stuff that’s really scary to face up to the fact that I may need help on.

Worked from school one morning this week so I could go to OR seminar (which was very statistical – glad I went.) The office staff let me take up space in the lecturer office, which worked out ok – seem to safely have it to myself for at least the morning.

1. Econ: read the other 3 papers, check the #s on one more hypothesis, frame up midterm report?
2. Research: check some algebra, bang on code
3. Comps: Finish reading Rao, do at least 3 MGB probs
4. Continuous: 3 more hw problems

I’m more and more glad that I decided to sit in on Continuous. I think it’s going to be a huge help in understanding Functional Data Analysis (which I’m trying to do for work because it just seem so cool! (yes, I am a huge dork. )) and in not dying in Functional Analysis next semester (which I am still convinced I desperately need if I’m ever going to publish a stats paper with a proof in it.)