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.)

1. via Bon Appetit as mentioned here
2. On cupcakes made from this recipe (without the lemon zest). No whipped cream. Strawberry goo recipe modified by: instead of food processor, mash with potato masher right in saucepan. Do not waste time and energy by straining resulting sauce. These two modifications make the sauce a 1 pot recipe, with the most complicated bit being hulling the strawberries.
3. This pound cake recipe, topped with strawberry goo as modified in 2. Cool Whip, but only until we get around to whipping the real cream. Cool Whip is noticeably less good by itself, but is overpowered by the strawberry goo enough that it is fine as assembled. The only reason this is not perfection is that the cake stuck like crazy to the bundt pan. 

The pound cake (it’s a little light for a pound cake, but still dense enough to count as one) is perfect for my recipe collection because it tastes great but requires only ingredients I always have on hand. Not so much the case with the cream cheese or the sour cream in the other cake recipes.

Meeting advisor downtown in a couple of hours.

It has not been the world’s most productive week. (Other than amazing bread baking breakthroughs. Sadly, I’ve been overrising my bread since day one, screwing up the texture.) I’ve spent some quality time with R for my research, mostly finding out how badly I misunderstood how this stuff worked… which in its own sick way, does count as progress – learning something always counts as progress.

Luckily, we have Monday off too, because I still need to:

1. Read tons of stuff for econ. Probably also sit down with dataset and run the list of ‘if we try to use variable X we lose Y observations due to missing values’. Order of priority is not clear, and research buddies for econ are on an epic roadtrip this week.
2. Study for comps. Current silly plan – do some regression reading and work 3-5 MGB problems every weekend. Til forever.
3. Research stuff – must make progress with R code.
4. It would be awesome if I tried the homework for continuous modeling. Even better if I do the reading…

Also (in no particular order):

1. Make the case to the dept/graduate committee that _all_ graduate students need office space. (For example, there’s a seminar at 11:30 on Tues. If I can work from school, that doesn’t interrupt my workday. If I have to travel on both ends, that’s at least a 2 hour break, more like 3 since the bus schedule won’t fall perfectly. )
2. Start talking to new stats faculty about a readings course sometime next year.
3. Talk to the guy teaching functional analysis about sitting in next semester.
4. Convince math and/or econ that functional analysis and history of economic thought should be on the same days of the week so my spring schedule is not completely insane.

I’ve talked about the fact that I adore LibraryThing before – and I do adore it just for itself – but as an extra special bonus, they have something called the Early Reviewers program, which boils down to publishers sending people free books.

Every month, a bunch of publishers pledge as many books as they want. People then request ones that they’re interested in, and LibraryThing magically chooses who gets what based on things like whether you’ve written reviews for books you’ve gotten before, what books are listed on your account, how many books you’ve already gotten, etc. Sometimes there’s a 2nd round in a month, but it’s usually only a few books.

For July, I got a book from both the regular round and the bonus round! It took about a month from hearing that I’d won for the books to arrive. (The publishers ship the books directly.) I’ve read and reviewed both now (short form – really liked them both!)
The Lemur by Benjamin Black
The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss

Any LibraryThing member can join the Early Reviewers program – you don’t have to be paid. (I paid up because I wanted to be able to import more than 200 books at a time from the various other places I had kept track over the last 5 yrs.)

Who doesn’t like free books?

We have next week off because 90% of our campus is in the security zone of the DNC. ALSO my rec center (where judo class happens) is closed next week for annual repairs. So I should have lots of time to dig into my research project (motivated by meeting my advisor next Friday!) and read a bunch of stuff for my econ lit review. and maybe spend some quality time with the elliptical and try to do more handstands.

Also, I’m feeling the urge to bake, but have no idea what. Ideas? Maybe it’s time to make strawberry pie…

1. write paper proposal for econ
2. work on research
3. study for comps (now with expected date of march/april 09)
4. continuous modeling homework

JSM totally ate my brain. I learned a lot, got a lot of ideas, have a lot of business cards to follow up on. blaargh. I am totally able to be starstuck by statisticians, which I find hilarious.

Before that, I found this recipe. (did not make their frosting. only made 24 cupcakes) Very very rich and wonderful. Kind of the texture of the Guinness cake. Talking about making them again without the lemon and making a less labor intensive version of strawberry shortcake goo.  Also talking about pureeing strawberries and adding them to the batter. That seems kind of perilous.

I’m really not excited about the class I’m sitting in on being MW evenings. But because I’m just sitting in, going to about 3/4 of the classes will probably be plenty.

Yeah. So… school starts in 10 days. And most of my time between now and then will be spent at JSM. Theoretically I’m meeting my advisor and project sponsor today, but it’s not confirmed yet. Half of me is gibbering that I MUST GET MORE DONE, and the other half thinks I should have some nice weekend time before school starts. As you can see, only one half is talking in all caps.

This week’s awesome finds:

• Aurora Feint for the iPod Touch 
• LibraryThing I hate camelcase naming. But I love obsessive statistics and free books – supposedly my first Early Reviewer book is on its way!
• Apple Banana Cupcakes cupcakes is a misnomer, but they are YUMMY. I made with brown sugar instead of white. 
• the X in OLS is a DESIGN MATRIX. Experimental design is just a funny way of looking at ANOVAs are just the Network Flows of OLS. mmm. I love when things boil down to something I already understand.

Summer school officially ends next Friday.

Luckily, we’re not paying any attention to that, but fall does start up in less than a month.

Part of the “how thesis hours work” that we talked out was that I would write a paper each session on what I’ve done. In this case, I think the paper is going to be heavy on explaining my plan for what I will do, since I’ve spent so much time being stuck. But developing a plan counts as doing something, right? So I want to spend some time this weekend on that paper.

I think I got unstuck on the coding too, so I’m feeling much much better about everything.

I wonder how my advisor would feel about me taking my comps in the spring. At the current rate of studying, I’ll barely be through math stat review, let alone my other subjects. There are time when I wish I had background in some of these things. I need to sit down with a calendar and think about how badly I don’t want to study over Xmas this year.