Monday always seems so long. But I made it through another one.
Last night I went to bed around 9:30 or so. I was going to get up at 6 to read over some things before class. But that didn't happen. My alarm went off at 6... and I reset it for 6:30. I was still tired even after that much sleep. Oh well! I had to get up.
We talked more about derivatives in finance today. It's an interesting concept. Instead of putting value on something concrete (like a house) the value is put on an agreement that derives its value from something concrete. Almost like the values in on the idea of the exchange, but not on the actual assets being exchanged. Anyhow, after finance Tim and I went to the Atrium. We talked about finance and life con, a little bit about cooking, I told him about the wedding. People seem very hesitant about some of the ideas we've presented, but no one wants to say "I think that idea sounds terrible." Personally I like all our ideas, which is why I think that most people won't say anything. Oh well. I guess we'll see how it turns out.
During life con we discussed a little bit about... I'm not entirely sure what. Some about numerical integration and the characteristic function and how Mr. Dean used that as an actuary. He claims that all math can be used as an actuary. I would like to see how group theory and number theory can be. I should ask him tomorrow.
After class I went to the store to get food to make dinner tonight. I hosted a small party with my math friends because it is Kathryn's birthday. So I decided to make some ham with a honey glaze. I wasn't sure entirely what to do, so as usual I looked for a recipe online and got a few of the ingredients, making do with whatever else I had. I ended up making a glaze (not really...it was too watery to be a glaze) with honey, pineapple juice, and sugar. Then I sliced the ham, put all of that (and the pineapple) in a cake pan and put it in the oven on 200 for around 4 or so hours. It turned out really well. I've also realized that I really like doing stuff for people's birthday. Which will work out well because Kimmy really like celebrating her birthday.
I also talked with my apartment manager today about subleasing. He wished me luck and said that once I find someone they can come in to sign papers so I am no longer legally obligated to pay rent. So I put an ad on craigslist... we'll see if this goes anywhere.
Anyhow, I'm jumping ahead. I met with one of my students at 3 to go over some questions he had on the homework for tomorrow. Then I filled out a thing for my interview tomorrow. I really haven't research the company that much. But quite frankly, I haven't found research to be super beneficial. I'll still look them up a little bit, but usually they just go through my resume and the questionnaire they have. By the time they're finished there's time for a couple questions. In the past I've asked them about their experiences at the company, but I don't need a lot of research for that. I want to also ask if there is any other information they would like to see that I haven't already stated. I need to word it better, but that sort of idea. It can't hurt.
Then we had stats. Yup. She had a extra credit quiz in the middle of it... I think because she didn't think we were paying attention. I got about halfway through, but my mind just blanked on how to finish the transformation. So I might get a point or two. Better than nothing.
After class we went back to my apartment and ate dinner. After everyone arrived...which apparently took a while. Oh well. The ham turned out really well. I was pleased. The top pieces were a little dry because they hadn't been sitting in the liquid, but for the most part it was good. Everyone said they liked it. Compared to their standard frozen meals, I bet it tasted pretty good. After dinner we had dessert (provided by Erica and Jordan). I don't know how it started, but everyone had a nice bit of 90s nostalgia. I always feel really left out whenever people do that because they start talking about all of these TV shows that they watched growing up. And no one can fathom that I haven't watched them. And then people get all defensive when I tell them that I tried watching it recently, but I think it's garbage. The concept of something nostalgic not being good now seems to be foreign to most people.
Most people left reasonably soon after dessert. Kathryn stayed around and talked with Clifton and me for a while. More accurately, Kathryn listened while Clifton and I had one of our famous conversations. Clifton and I like to just dissect life. Kathryn is more of an observer. And that's ok. He and I had a lovely conversation how we were raised and stuff like that. It was good. Then I took Kathryn back to her apartment (because I gave Dustin and her a ride to my apartment, but Dustin went home with Timbo). When I came back... I considered finishing my lesson plan and researching Indiana Farm Bureau... but I think I'm just going to go to bed. Maybe get up a little early? Or perhaps just use the time in between classes. We'll see. We certainly shall see. But for now I rest. Fare thee well.
11.14.2011
11.13.2011
Day 176
This is the third day in a row that I've had to post from my phone, and I can't say I'm a huge fan. I'd much rather type this from a computer. I would be doing that today accept for some reason I can't load any webpages. I still have an internet connection because I can play games on the Internet... But no webpages. Yay. Anyhow, my day.
I got up around 6:30 this morning. Last night I passed out while evoelse was still watching tv. I'm too old to be staying up late all the time. Anyhow, I got up at 6:30 and left a bit after 7. I had to go to family video first to return the game so that Kimmy wouldn't have to. Then I stopped to get coffee. I was finally on the road leaving mount vernon around 7:40. And it was pretty uneventful. I remembered thinking about some of something I wanted to say, but I have forgotten. And I knew I would forget it, which prompted me to think about how much stuff we must forget. Sometimes we know we have forgotten something, other times we have forgotten that there was a thing to remember. Blogging has definitely helped me remember things, but I know that I forget plenty of things over the course of the day. I get very philosophical when I drive. I also have started singing to myself a lot. Which doesn't work out well because most of my songs don't have words. So I've gotten better at whistling. Even when there are words I don't usually know them. I am remarkably bad at catching song lyrics. But I'm by myself and I don't have to know all the lyrics! Heck, I can even pretend to have a British accent and no one can stop me.
When I got back to Muncie I went grocery shopping. I had to get a few things that made it more expensive than normal. Like flour, sugar, and peanut butter. I got the big jar of peanut butter so even though it was expensive it will last longer.
After shopping I went to Mancino's for lunch with Jessie and Richard. That was good. I told them about some of the Wedding plans Kimmy and I made yesterday. They also told me about the single room apartments in their complex. I think they said it was around 540 a month? Which is really good. Way cheaper than living in Windermere. So we'll probably live there next year.
After lunch I came back, did some cleaning, did some grading, made some pizza dough. Then I played Just Cause for a while. Ate dinner. Did some lesson planning. Cleaned my kitchen. I called mom and dad and ts them a little bit about the wedding plans. I think I was supposed to ask mom something on behalf of Kimmy, but I have entirely forgotten what that might have been. Oh well!
I'm probably going to bed soon. I'm really tired. Yup. Good night, friends!
11.12.2011
Dayvl 175
Well, I just wrote a long post, but it somehow got deleted. I am not amused. This will not be quite as long.
OK. I woke up way too early. Like 715. So i showered, updated my blog, then decided to go for a walk. Including stopping at my car to get breakfast.
After that I went to the cafeteria to see if there were any events. There weren't. So i went to the library and did work. Then... I came back to James' apartment and took a nap. Before noon. I'm awesome.
Lunch was good. I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, like Laura Poast and Bennett Briles. After lunch Kimmy and I went to Sips to meet with Jeremy about wedding stuff. It was amazing. He had some fantastic ideas that we'll be using.
After that we came back and looked at some budget stuff, but my brain was done for the day. So then we are. Then got a game at family video and played that for a while. And then I came to James' apartment and... Here I am! Sorry for the short post. I have no idea why/how my other post got deleted. Bleh. Night!
Day 174
Yesterday was a pretty long day. I got up early to pack and finish getting ready for my trip to mount vernon.
I had finance. We got out tests back and I did alright. I didn't miss any one problem completely, just a little bit on multiple questions. One of them was especially frustrating because I had misread the question. This was frustrating because I'd reworked this problem three times, but none of those times did I catch that I'd misread it. Oh well. I think I can still pull off an A in the class, but I'll need to do very well on the next exam and final.
In life contingencies we talked more about the expected value of a portfolio of identical policies at given points of time. The basic idea is that the closer you get to the payout date, the higher the expected payout us for the insurance company. But early on after the policy starts the expected gain is very high. The implication is that most of this early profit has to be saved to ensure that the death benefit is available when it is needed.
After class I took Dustin home and then headed to Mount Vernon! I don't remember too much excitement. I stopped in London, Ohio to get some coffee at gas station. It claimed to have Jamaican blue mountain coffee. But it tasted nothing like it. I got to mount vernon around 240 and decided to see if any of my professors had classes. It just so happened that Dr. Whitaker was teaching number theory, so I paid them all a visit. I tried to sneak in, but my friends saw me and started laughing. Dr. Whitaker turned around and said "Joel Pagano! How are you!?" all surprised-like and things. I said that I was doing well. He was quite a bit thrown off. At the end of his lecture we had question and answer time with Joel. Mainly Dr. Whitaker just asked me things about grad school and recommendations for soon to be graduates. My best advice was to buff up your resume with volunteer experience. Anything that will set you apart from everyone else. And for future actuaries (which I think was just Courtney) I highly recommended taking exam P before going to grad school. After class I sat around and talked with Lindsey and Courtney for a while. They were avoiding soccer practice, and I was happy to help.
Then I went to the math department to talk with Dr. Noonan, but he was not there. I had a book of his to return. So i wrote him a note and put both in his mailbox. And talked with Sheryl about life. I've realized that I'm just really bad at answering the "how have you been?" question. I mean... What am I supposed to say besides "grad school is hard" and "I'm engaged"?
Kimmy was still in class so I went to go find Adam and Tyler. They weren't in their apartment so I just chilled with Tyler's little brother. We watched some classic war movie on TV. When kimmy was out of class she called me and we found each other. Woo! We went to go see our friends in academic support. Deanna was gone, but we were able to talk with Deborah. Then we went to Birch F lobby and made dinner. Well, heated it up. I'd previously made meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was tasty.
After dinner we went to Kmart. Kimmy wanted an FM transmitter, but they were too expensive. So we looked at movies for a while, but didn't get any. So we came back to her apartment and watched a movie. When it was over we had a great discussion about education and the family structure. It started off with my frustration at the class I'm teaching, which is similar to the frustration she has from doing SI. And then (as our conversations often do) we talked about everything else that's even remotely related. It's very nice to have such stimulating conversation. I don't get that very often.
Then we went to the 586 and got food. Joel was working so I gave him a fantastic over the counter hug. After food and things I went to Zach's apartment and hung out with all those people. They were watching a movie. So i joined. James and i actually ended up talking about some of the same things Kimmy and I were discussing. So that was all sorts of goodness. And then... I stayed up way too late and went to bed!
11.10.2011
Day 173
La la la. It is night time, yes it is.
Today was another full day. We had finance this morning. As usual. We talked more about duration. We started talking about it last week before our exam, but I was so focused on studying for the exam (and my other exams) that I kind of missed what duration is. Or why we care. I'm starting to get a vague idea. Hopefully we get our exams back tomorrow... I'm hoping that I did well. At least an 80 would be preferable. It's been frustrating knowing that there were a couple that I missed...and I've known this for the past few days. But I'm really banking on some partial credit. Gaaahhhh!
During life contingencies we did some more stuff with future loss random variables. We spent a long time looking at the use of the exponential function as a survival model. It apparently has this very interesting feature that it will always have a constant force of mortality, which will be a very handy thing to remember on the actuarial exams. That way we won't have to re-derive the force of mortality every time.
After life con I went to go teach. I had this really great idea to keep a dull subject a little more interesting by using the same example throughout the topics. But it ended up just making it slightly less boring and abstract. I really hate teaching statistics. It's so dry. I feel like this class could be really good if it focused less on computation and more on understanding. Blargh. Maybe I can try to teach it differently next semester. We'll see. And as a bonus, apparently almost none of my students know how to do conditional probability...meaning that they don't know how their books and/or emails work. So you know. Yay.
After class I worked on stats with Timbo. Pretty much from the time class was over until 3:30. So I guess that would be about 3 hours. It took a while to make sure all of my math was correct. It's all pretty frustrating because I did all the work myself, but none of it is original. All of these derivations have been done numerous times... so I don't even feel like there is a need for me to be doing it. Which in reality there isn't. Except for the grade. So...do it I shall! But I believe that I am all finished with it. So that's good.
When I got back I tried to play Borderlands with Nick. But I haven't been able to connect to the server.... which is dumb. I had soup for dinner. I honestly don't like Campbell's chunky soup as much as I like the Aldi's Soup. So yeah. That was dinner. Then I started making meatloaf for dinner tomorrow. I'm taking food with me to Mount Vernon so I don't have to buy food when I get there. I thought that would be a good idea. And cheaper.
After dinner I finished up my stats project. Just re-writing all the things. Then I just kind of relaxed. Played some Team fortress. Tried to let my brain rest after a long day of stats. I cleaned my bathroom. Did some dishes. And now I'm going to pack for the weekend and go to bed! Night!
*EDIT*
I would like to mention that the other day I bought this hand soap with lotion in it and it was one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. Cherry blossom, I believe. I highly recommend it. That is all.
Today was another full day. We had finance this morning. As usual. We talked more about duration. We started talking about it last week before our exam, but I was so focused on studying for the exam (and my other exams) that I kind of missed what duration is. Or why we care. I'm starting to get a vague idea. Hopefully we get our exams back tomorrow... I'm hoping that I did well. At least an 80 would be preferable. It's been frustrating knowing that there were a couple that I missed...and I've known this for the past few days. But I'm really banking on some partial credit. Gaaahhhh!
During life contingencies we did some more stuff with future loss random variables. We spent a long time looking at the use of the exponential function as a survival model. It apparently has this very interesting feature that it will always have a constant force of mortality, which will be a very handy thing to remember on the actuarial exams. That way we won't have to re-derive the force of mortality every time.
After life con I went to go teach. I had this really great idea to keep a dull subject a little more interesting by using the same example throughout the topics. But it ended up just making it slightly less boring and abstract. I really hate teaching statistics. It's so dry. I feel like this class could be really good if it focused less on computation and more on understanding. Blargh. Maybe I can try to teach it differently next semester. We'll see. And as a bonus, apparently almost none of my students know how to do conditional probability...meaning that they don't know how their books and/or emails work. So you know. Yay.
After class I worked on stats with Timbo. Pretty much from the time class was over until 3:30. So I guess that would be about 3 hours. It took a while to make sure all of my math was correct. It's all pretty frustrating because I did all the work myself, but none of it is original. All of these derivations have been done numerous times... so I don't even feel like there is a need for me to be doing it. Which in reality there isn't. Except for the grade. So...do it I shall! But I believe that I am all finished with it. So that's good.
When I got back I tried to play Borderlands with Nick. But I haven't been able to connect to the server.... which is dumb. I had soup for dinner. I honestly don't like Campbell's chunky soup as much as I like the Aldi's Soup. So yeah. That was dinner. Then I started making meatloaf for dinner tomorrow. I'm taking food with me to Mount Vernon so I don't have to buy food when I get there. I thought that would be a good idea. And cheaper.
After dinner I finished up my stats project. Just re-writing all the things. Then I just kind of relaxed. Played some Team fortress. Tried to let my brain rest after a long day of stats. I cleaned my bathroom. Did some dishes. And now I'm going to pack for the weekend and go to bed! Night!
*EDIT*
I would like to mention that the other day I bought this hand soap with lotion in it and it was one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. Cherry blossom, I believe. I highly recommend it. That is all.
11.09.2011
Day 172
I almost forgot to update today. I have no idea how that happens. Like I haven't been doing this for a while or something.
Anyhow, this morning started off pretty normally. I set my alarm for 8:30 and woke up at 7:15. So instead of taking advantage of it... I just lounged around until I had to go to my office. I think it's actually a good thing because I ended up having a very full day. After I got to my office Timbo and I worked on our stats project for most of the time. One of my students came in for a few minutes to get help on the extra credit assignment. When she left Timbo and I worked some more on the assignment. I actually feel pretty good about it. We were working on deriving the moment generating functions of four different continuous distributions (gamma, beta, exponential, and chi square). We pretty much split them in half and tried our best to derive them by hand, but checking our work online. We did well for the most part, but after we started finding the various moments (mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis) some of the answers were slightly different when we worked them out by hand and when we checked them with Wikipedia and Wolfram-Mathworld. So I'm not really sure what was going on there. But oh well. Timbo was having an especially difficult time with the beta distribution, so we looked in up online and realized that there is no easy way to derive the moment generating function. According to Wikipedia (which was one of the very few places online at even mentioned it), it was the sum of a bunch of products...
, to be specific (where the capital sigma represents the summing of the things following it and the capital pi represents the product of all the things in the parentheses. We had no idea how to find the various moments given that form so we decided to just ask Dr. Begum in class.
I had planned on staying on campus all day, but I forgot my statistics notebook at home. So I had to go get it. While I was home I did some grading. It didn't take long at all. Most of my students seemed to really get this stuff. Tomorrow will be quite different though....
At the beginning of stats Timbo asked Dr. Begum whether there was a better way to derive the moment generating function for the beta distribution. She suggest he use Mathematica. Which he already done and yielded nothing. She didn't really have a suggestion other than that... so... hopefully she gets back to us. Because I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to get that nonsense from a simple little integral....
After class I was walking back from class when Richard came up to me. Apparently he was out of class early. So after I took Dustin home I went to Jessie and Richard's for dinner. Jessie had made a chili with chicken in it. It was pretty tasty. Much better than the can of soup I had planned on eating tonight. We had a good time. After dinner I went to Wal-mart to get some stuff. Like a toothbrush. When I got home I prepared my lesson for tomorrow. I'm going to try really hard to keep things practical. I'm going to use the same example throughout the entire class...so hopefully that helps. I guess we'll see!
Alright. I'm going to bed now. Night!
Anyhow, this morning started off pretty normally. I set my alarm for 8:30 and woke up at 7:15. So instead of taking advantage of it... I just lounged around until I had to go to my office. I think it's actually a good thing because I ended up having a very full day. After I got to my office Timbo and I worked on our stats project for most of the time. One of my students came in for a few minutes to get help on the extra credit assignment. When she left Timbo and I worked some more on the assignment. I actually feel pretty good about it. We were working on deriving the moment generating functions of four different continuous distributions (gamma, beta, exponential, and chi square). We pretty much split them in half and tried our best to derive them by hand, but checking our work online. We did well for the most part, but after we started finding the various moments (mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis) some of the answers were slightly different when we worked them out by hand and when we checked them with Wikipedia and Wolfram-Mathworld. So I'm not really sure what was going on there. But oh well. Timbo was having an especially difficult time with the beta distribution, so we looked in up online and realized that there is no easy way to derive the moment generating function. According to Wikipedia (which was one of the very few places online at even mentioned it), it was the sum of a bunch of products...
, to be specific (where the capital sigma represents the summing of the things following it and the capital pi represents the product of all the things in the parentheses. We had no idea how to find the various moments given that form so we decided to just ask Dr. Begum in class.I had planned on staying on campus all day, but I forgot my statistics notebook at home. So I had to go get it. While I was home I did some grading. It didn't take long at all. Most of my students seemed to really get this stuff. Tomorrow will be quite different though....
At the beginning of stats Timbo asked Dr. Begum whether there was a better way to derive the moment generating function for the beta distribution. She suggest he use Mathematica. Which he already done and yielded nothing. She didn't really have a suggestion other than that... so... hopefully she gets back to us. Because I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to get that nonsense from a simple little integral....
After class I was walking back from class when Richard came up to me. Apparently he was out of class early. So after I took Dustin home I went to Jessie and Richard's for dinner. Jessie had made a chili with chicken in it. It was pretty tasty. Much better than the can of soup I had planned on eating tonight. We had a good time. After dinner I went to Wal-mart to get some stuff. Like a toothbrush. When I got home I prepared my lesson for tomorrow. I'm going to try really hard to keep things practical. I'm going to use the same example throughout the entire class...so hopefully that helps. I guess we'll see!
Alright. I'm going to bed now. Night!
11.08.2011
Day 171
Woo hoo! What a day.
No finance this morning, but I still had to get up fairly early. Yesterday I forgot my lunch bag and Stats book in class, so I had to go by Dr. Begum's office to get them. After that I just went to the computer lab to write my lesson plan. When I was done I put together a proposed schedule for the rest of the semester. I should be finishing with all of the material that I need to cover before Thanksgiving if everything goes well. Then I can spend the two weeks after Thanksgiving reviewing, taking a test, and doing presentations.
Let's see. We had life contingencies. We finished up talking about the portfolio price premium principle or whatever nonsense that was. We finished that chapter and began talking about the next chapter. Chapter 7. It's the last one we'll be discussing this semester.
After life con I taught my class. Today went well. We talked about the schedule for the rest of the semester, then some about Z-scores. I'm trying even more than usual to keep a balance between mathematical rigor and understanding. I think I'm getting there...now that the semester is over :/
After teaching I went back to my apartment to study. On the way back I noticed that I had a voicemail so I tried to call it. My voicemail password got changed somehow, so when I got home I had to spend about 20 minutes trying to reset my password. I also had chalk on my hands which was making my incredibly irritable. But I finally got all of that fixed and got my voicemail. It was for a company I applied to last night. The lady from HR called to ask a few questions. And of course that wonderful statement kept coming up. "I noticed that you hadn't included your passed exams on your resume..." Sometime I really want to say something like "Did I forget that? Oh silly me. I have my FSA... did I not put that on there? It must have just slipped my mind!" Anyhow. I won't be interviewing with them.
Dustin came over and we worked on stats. I found out that apparently one of our classmates has three offers for internships. Not just second interviews, actual internships. It really makes Dustin and myself wonder what we're doing wrong in an interview. We're happy for him.... but I just want to know what I can be doing better. I might set up for a practice interview at the career center to see if there is anything that I can fix.
Anyhow, Dustin and I did stats for a while, then Timbo came over and we did some more stats. He brought tuna helper over for dinner. It was pretty good. He's really the only one of the people I invite over that offers to bring food or help clean. I don't really mind that no one else does, I just think that it's interesting. I certainly do appreciate that he does brings food and helps clean though. After dinner he and I went to Family Video to rent a movie for tonight, but they didn't have the one we wanted. So we went to Wal-mart, got snacks, and I bought the movie. It was very cheap and I've considered getting it for a while. When we got back we worked on stats for a little bit longer. When Dustin came we watched the movie. It was good. When it was over they went home and I updated my blog (which brings us to now).
And now... I'm tired. So I'm going to bed. Good night!
No finance this morning, but I still had to get up fairly early. Yesterday I forgot my lunch bag and Stats book in class, so I had to go by Dr. Begum's office to get them. After that I just went to the computer lab to write my lesson plan. When I was done I put together a proposed schedule for the rest of the semester. I should be finishing with all of the material that I need to cover before Thanksgiving if everything goes well. Then I can spend the two weeks after Thanksgiving reviewing, taking a test, and doing presentations.
Let's see. We had life contingencies. We finished up talking about the portfolio price premium principle or whatever nonsense that was. We finished that chapter and began talking about the next chapter. Chapter 7. It's the last one we'll be discussing this semester.
After life con I taught my class. Today went well. We talked about the schedule for the rest of the semester, then some about Z-scores. I'm trying even more than usual to keep a balance between mathematical rigor and understanding. I think I'm getting there...now that the semester is over :/
After teaching I went back to my apartment to study. On the way back I noticed that I had a voicemail so I tried to call it. My voicemail password got changed somehow, so when I got home I had to spend about 20 minutes trying to reset my password. I also had chalk on my hands which was making my incredibly irritable. But I finally got all of that fixed and got my voicemail. It was for a company I applied to last night. The lady from HR called to ask a few questions. And of course that wonderful statement kept coming up. "I noticed that you hadn't included your passed exams on your resume..." Sometime I really want to say something like "Did I forget that? Oh silly me. I have my FSA... did I not put that on there? It must have just slipped my mind!" Anyhow. I won't be interviewing with them.
Dustin came over and we worked on stats. I found out that apparently one of our classmates has three offers for internships. Not just second interviews, actual internships. It really makes Dustin and myself wonder what we're doing wrong in an interview. We're happy for him.... but I just want to know what I can be doing better. I might set up for a practice interview at the career center to see if there is anything that I can fix.
Anyhow, Dustin and I did stats for a while, then Timbo came over and we did some more stats. He brought tuna helper over for dinner. It was pretty good. He's really the only one of the people I invite over that offers to bring food or help clean. I don't really mind that no one else does, I just think that it's interesting. I certainly do appreciate that he does brings food and helps clean though. After dinner he and I went to Family Video to rent a movie for tonight, but they didn't have the one we wanted. So we went to Wal-mart, got snacks, and I bought the movie. It was very cheap and I've considered getting it for a while. When we got back we worked on stats for a little bit longer. When Dustin came we watched the movie. It was good. When it was over they went home and I updated my blog (which brings us to now).
And now... I'm tired. So I'm going to bed. Good night!
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