quique12

Nice week in New Hampshire

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:43:38 GMT

This week was a really good week. Yuliia and I got Richy (our dog) on Sunday and we've been enjoying him all week. It was funny that the first thing he did home was pee, but since then he has been a good boy. He is already house trained so that first incident was because he didn't know this was his home yet. Richy is a mix of Newfoundland and Labrador, he is a big black dog (91 pounds), he is very calm and gentle. It is fun to play with him, I ran around with him and we play ball and Yuliia is extremely happy. It is great to have a dog home.

This week I've also worked hard on my math. I wrote a clean version of my Burgess result and I am looking at other sources to look for problems to solve in this area. There are a lot of really cool papers around. Very exciting stuff.

I've also been playing sports. On Tuesday on our soccer match we were outnumbered and were losing 6-0 at halftime. We forfeited to play the next half with split teams. Once the number was fair, the game was more fun and we won 2-1. On Wednesday, we lost 6-2. It was frustrating, but the other team played great. I could have played better at goalie (I got in late so only 4 goals were on me), but they were a good team and they had many chances against me. On Friday I played racquetball with Greg. I've lost games to Greg, but never two in one session. This time he won 15-11, then I won 15-6, then we won 16-14. I was up 11-3 the first game and 14-8 the third game yet I still lost. I completely choked on that first game. On the third game I think Greg just played great. I played well and I couldn't finish him. There was a very memorable point when up 14-13 where I prevented him from tying me by hitting a diving shot, jumping up and sprinting in the other direction then sliding to hit the floor inches from the ground into the back wall to bounce all the way to the front wall. A great point, however in my match point I missed an easy volley where I tried to destroy Greg with a low shot but my shot missed by almost a foot. He got serve and I couldn't stop him again. When he was up 15-14 I won back serve and had a chance to tie but I missed again. It was a great game.

Besides that I've been reading a lot and watching Babylon 5. There is a long list of reviews I am planning to write soon. It is so long that I might get lazy about it, but hopefully I'll do it this week.

Life is good.

INTEGERS Conference

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:05:44 GMT

On Sunday Carl, Anne (his wife) and I hiked Mt. Cardigan. Carl told me that he liked hiking so I invited him to go hike the beautiful Cardigan. Yuliia was supposed to join, but she didn't feel well. The hike was fun. It was very windy at the top, so Carl decided to sit down at a nice view while Anne and I did the last part to get to the top. I had a really nice time.

On Monday I did some errands getting ready for my trip to Georgia. Tuesday we got up early to get to Boston. I was shocked to see the trees and the grass being white so soon (October 13) on the ride to Boston. There was a lot of traffic so we barely got to the airport in time. The flight was uneventful. When we got to Atlanta we left our baggage in storage while we went downtown to tour a bit. We walked around Peachtree street and around the Centennial Olympic Park (amazing!) and then we went to eat dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. I loved it. There were all kinds of delicious meats brought to our table. Yuliia ate a lot and enjoyed it too. After the dinner we walked some more and then headed back to the airport where we would meet up with Paul, Mits and Lola. After some confusion with the rental car, we got a nice big car, Grand Marquis, and then drove to Carrollton, the home of the University of West Georgia.

Wednesday was the first day of the conference and there were lots of really cool talks. I enjoyed a talk about 5-regular partitions (partitions without multiples of 5), I was very excited about seeing Hendrik Lenstra giving a talk and I enjoyed the talk by Paul about perfect numbers. He gave a great talk.
At night we went to have dinner to a Hawaian restuarant to celebrate Mel and Carl's birthdays (the conference was in honor of their 65th birthday). I ordered the Mahi-Mahi and it was delicious. I had a great time talking with all of our crew (which in this dinner included also Dominic, Carl and Jean Marc).

On Thursday I had a great time listening to Kevin Ford talk about some really cool results in primality theory among other talks I enjoyed that morning. At lunch break, we went to a Southern sandwich cafe which had very tasty food. Everybody was very nice. After the lunch break I got to see other cool talks, among them Florian's proof that there are no multiply perfect Fibonacci numbers and Mits' talk about finding the fourth digit on the density of abundant numbers (.2476...).
At night, Yuliia and I went to have dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse. It was our anniversary, but we will probably celebrate with a nicer dinner sometime this week in New Hampshire. I am very happy to get to the first anniversary in my marriage. The year has been wonderful.

After dinner, I worked on rewriting my talk. I wanted to make my introduction better and add a slide on giving more steps on the proof. I finished editing my talk at 4am, which was very good.

On Friday, I was very focused on thinking about my talk so it was very hard to follow the talks before my talk. It was unfortunate, because Ron Graham was giving a very cool talk about juggling sequences. I wish I could have been there 100% in the talk to get more out of it. Then I gave my talk, listing my results on Burgess. I finished 5 minutes early, so I could've added stuff, but I think overall the talk went okay. I did a better job at the Number Theory seminar at Dartmouth, but it was better than my talk at Maine/Quebec.

In the afternoon, I was very happy to see András Sárkozy give a talk. Sárkozy is the mathematician with the most Erdos joint papers. He gave a cool talk about the Erdos-Fuchs theorem. Another talk I enjoyed was Dominic's. In fact, I took some mental notes to be sure to incorporate some of his techniques, as I think he is a very good speaker.

At night, we drove to Alabama so we could say we have been in Alabama. Then after standing there for 10 minutes we drove back to stop at a Waffle House. The food was fantastic and very cheap. I enjoyed very tasty hashbrowns. After dinner, we hung out talking. It was a really good time.

Another thing I did a lot while in Georgia was jump in the bed. I jumped from the TV desk, I freefell from the couch, I used the elasticity of the bed to flip, I did all sorts of jumps. It was so much fun. Yuliia took hundreds of pictures and I had hours of fun.

Saturday was another really cool day. There were some cool talks in the morning. Lola gave the last talk of the conference and when she finished, we started our journey. After picking up Yuliia from the hotel, we drove to Atlanta to eat a Rias diner, which had some very tasty vegetarian options (Lola is vegan). After eating, we drove to Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain has a relief of three confederate heroes. Our plan was to see that and then drive back to Atlanta to the Coca Cola museum. When we arrived at the park, we saw some signs and started walking. We figured maybe there was a hike needed to see the monument. Once we were getting close to the top I was skeptical that we would see any monument as I recalled Carl telling me he hiked the mountain with Erdos and that from the top of the mountain you can't see the monument (as it is sculpted on the side of the mountain). The top had really spectacular views of Atlanta but no view of the monument. The views of Atlanta made it worth it even with the cold wind slapping our faces. The hike was a mile, so it took us over an hour to go up and down which ruined our plans for the Coca Cola museum. At the top of the mountain we had figured how we would get to the monument. Once we got there, I was very unimpressed. It was cool, but not super cool.

From there, we were a little nervous about making it to the airport in time, but we did make it in time (barely). The flight back was uneventful. Now I am at home relaxing with Yuliia and Richy (our new dog). Life is good.

Doggy Dog

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:57:28 GMT

Since I've been back from all this travelling. I have been working on writing a paper on Burgess, got some math meetings out of the way and played lots of soccer. The math is going well.

The soccer went as follows: On Tuesday my team won 4-2, I played well and had an amazing diving save. I also played a friendly game afterwards where we won 9-3 and I out first two goals (while being the goalkeeper). On Wednesday we tied 3-3, which felt like a loss, as we were up 3-0. I played well, but if I had played great we would have won. Those 3 goals they scored on me were savable. Hard or very hard to save, but savable. On Friday, I played poorly as a forward, mainly because I don't have cleats and this tournament is outdoors, hence cleats are necessary to run well. We lost 2-1 in a close match.

The other important event this week was adopting a dog. Yuliia and I have been wanting a dog for some time and after discussing it with our landlord we filled a form to apply for adoption of a dog of the Humane Society. Surprisingly, the next day we get a phone call that some dogs are up for adoption (they had told us that there weren't any available when we filled the form) and invited us to see them. We saw six dogs. We considered three dogs and the next day we saw all of them again (first day we spent two hours at the shelter, second day we spent three hours). We walked them and played with them and decided on getting a young Newfoundland (mixed with Labrador). The dog is smaller than normal Newfoundlands because of the mix breed, he is between 2 and 5 years old. He weighs 91 pounds. The dog is very sweet. He is house trained, doesn't bark, and he is very gentle when walking. Yuliia and I loved him and we adopted him. Since we are going out of town next week, the humane society will keep the dog one more week, so while he is adopted, he hasn't been to our house yet. Yuliia and I are looking forward to having him home.

Maine-Quebec Number Theory Conference

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:46:58 GMT

After leaving Cd. Juárez, I was one day in New Hampshire, a day I spent with Yuliia. The next day it was time to go to Orono, Maine.

Michael, Mark and I left New Hampshire at about 2pm. During the long drive, we saw the beautiful white mountains and enjoyed the foliage season. Mark and I talked about many things (mostly politics and math) and before we knew it, we were in Orono, Maine. That night we went to have dinner at the only restaurant that looked decent. The food was good.

I was procrastinating at night, not writing my talk, but at some point I checked the schedule and realized my talk wasn't the next day (Saturday) but two days from it (Sunday). I went to bed with great joy.

The next day, I enjoyed the conference. In the breaks I worked out some stuff about my research which made it much easier to plan the talk.
After the talks ended at around 5:30pm, we went to a pizza place for the "banquet". There I mainly spent time talking to Andrew Pollington, a number theorist who worked at BYU many years, but now works for the NSF. It was fun talking to him and his wife. I got to learn about what working at the NSF entails, how they liked Utah and hear fun cricket stories.
I had a really good time at the pizza place (even though the pizza was horrendous).

After I got to the hotel room and procrastinated a bit, I worked on my talk, which I finished at about 6:30am, thereby eliminating my sleep time.
The talk itself didn't go that great, mainly because I was tired and drank coffee (something I never do) which made me talk faster and not be in a good condition to give jokes and other things. I gave this talk again a week later in the Number Theory Seminar and did a much better job.

The ride back with Mark was also very nice. The conference was a very good experience.

Theater and Music

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:36:30 GMT

When I left Querétaro on Sept. 27, I went back to Mexico. I arrived at the airport a little before 8pm and my mom drove us to a plaza where an African singer was playing as part of the Fifth Chihuahua Festival of Art. The music was great and I was very excited that Juárez organizes such a cool festival, a festival that offers free music every night for over a week, bringing artists from all over the world. I only got to see Habid Koite (the African singer), but it was nice to know that this was offered.

A couple of days later I went to a play called "Ni el Sol ni la muerte pueden mirarse de frente" ("Neither the Sun or Death can look each other face to face"), a play by Wajdi Mouawad, a French-Libanese playwright. I didn't like the play at all. While the play used cool tricks like using projectors, playing with shadows and other things, the play had an incomprehensible story, a story which also seemed lifeless. The actors couldn't instill any life to that dialogue. I was confused for a lot of it and wished it ended sooner. However, some critics liked it and it seems that with more knowledge of mythology (like knowing who Cadmo is), it would be more interesting.

In my time in Juárez between the Ibero and coming back to New England I had a good time with my family (visiting also my uncle and father).

Trip to San Miguel de Allende (Ibero American Mathematical Olympiad)

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:28:18 GMT

This year Mexico got to be the host of the IberoAmerican Mathematical Olympiad which would be held in Querétaro. As a coordinator, I would have to be in San Miguel de Allende the first days of the competition, since I had knowledge of the exam we had to be isolated from Querétaro.

Yuliia and I got to San Miguel de Allende on the 18th. The next day, we walked around. The town is very beautiful. We had a really good time. The hotel ("El Atascadero") was wonderful, a beautiful room, a beautiful building, a nice swimming pool, great service and fantastic food. I enjoyed all the meals there.
After realizing they didn't require me on the 20th, I took Yuliia to Guanajuato, my favorite city. I have always dreamed of taking a girl to Guanajuato with me and now it came true. I had a great time walking in the town, walking up to the Pipila. I also saw something I hadn't seen before, which was the Quijote museum, a really cool museum with art relating to Quijote.
In San Miguel, Yuliia and I had a good time swimming and relaxing in the beautiful town. I had little to do as my only job was to create a grading scheme for the problem I would grade (problem 2), which was a day's worth of work.

Yuliia left on the 22, I went with her to the airport (in Mexico City), then I went to Querétaro. Because of accompanying Yuliia to the airport, I didn't get to sleep (we left at 2am for the airport, got there at 8pm and I got to the hotel in Querétaro at 1pm).

That night in Querétaro I started grading. The next day it was time to coordinate (this is where you discuss the grades with the country leaders). The whole day was full of work. In a span of 24 hours I worked 22. It was very fun. I was happy to see many solutions to the problem. A translation to English of the exam can be found here. A sad thing about the test is that problem 5 had been posted in mathlinks a month before, hence the question wasn't quite original.

The winner of the Olympiad was Perú, beating Brazil by 1 point. Spain was third, followed by Argentina and Mexico. While I am not that happy with Mexico getting fifth place, I am happy that Memo (a student from Chihuahua) got a gold medal. It is the first time that a student I helped prepare gets a gold medal in the Ibero.

In Querétaro I had a very good time talking with David, Joshua, Bernardo and others. I also had a good time beating everybody in Ping Pong.
I walked downtown with David and enjoyed it. Querétaro seems to be a very lively town. There was a plaza with a mini-orchestra playing tango, a plaza with people dancing capoeira and other plazas with other things. Very pleasant night.

The time in San Miguel/Querétaro was wonderful. I had a very relaxing time where I could talk to good friends, share beautiful places with Yuliia, get inspired mathematically and eat magnificently. I am very happy to be a part of the Ibero.

Mexican Independence Celebration

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:33:30 GMT

A very late post, but since the celebration was memorable for me I want to write it down, as the phrase goes in Spanish "más vale tarde que nunca". On the night of the 15th we went to the university to celebrate "El Grito". I actually missed "El Grito" as I wasn't expecting it to be at 11pm (since 11pm is midnight in Mexico City), I was expecting it at midnight. The main motivator for me to go was to show the celebration to Yuliia.

On the 16th, my mom had a big party at home. It was very fun. We played several games, we danced and at the end we sang karaoke. There was a lot of really tasty Mexican food.
It was a really fun night.

Spending time with family and the NFL is back

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:14:23 GMT

Sunday and Monday had a lot of good NFL games, I got to watch a bit of some of them. I am very happy the NFL is back. The highlight for me was the Denver touchdown out of a tipped pass. I was happy the Colts won.

In the morning, Yuliia and I cooked pancakes. It was great. At night, five of us played Nerds. It was probably the longest Nerds ever to 150 points. It took 17 games of which I had the most Nerds (6) but still ended up second place to Maribel. It was really fun. While playing I got to see Clijsters win the US Open which made me happy.

Today, after watching some Babylon 5, Yuliia and I went to get haircuts. She had a problem with how her bang was cut, but my hair looks cool. After that we went to eat some Noodles and then go greet my uncle. I love talking to my uncle and my aunt. It is always very fun and usually intellectually motivating too.

After that I went to play basketball with Flayz, Sepis and Ernie. I think I played well. Flayz and I won 11-4 and then 6-4 in the rematch. Then Flayz and I played 21, I won. I was happy to play some sports.

Life is good.

Math Olympiad Back Home

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:16:31 GMT

Slept an hour on Friday morning to make it to the 5am bus to Logan airport. Yuliia forgot her passport and we were nervous but the passport was mailed and everything is fine now (she needs it for our flight to Mexico City next week). We flew to El Paso and got home.

Once home, I had a meeting with the Olympiad Committee to write the exam. I was just trying out the problems invented, not being a good problem inventor myself. However at the end we had 6 problems one of which I didn't like and we needed 6 problems, so I tried to invent one (also, the last 5 Chihuahua Math Olympiad exams have had a problem by me, so I want to continue the tradition). I came up with one I loved and it made it into the exam. The problem is the following:
Given the numbers 1 to 12 written around a circle the following operation takes place: Each number looks at his adjacent neighbors and if both of them are smaller than him, he kills them. In how many ways can the numbers be arranged in such a way that after one operation only four remain alive.

We finished writing the exam earlier than usual, we even got to sleep a full four hours. The next day, we went to my dad's office to print the exam, then to a pharmacy to get copies. The exam wasn't perfectly written so in the hour where students can ask questions we got many similar questions. I had a lot of answering to do in the question hour.

In the middle of the exam, four of us went to eat gorditas. They were delicious. On our way back, David hit his car. A woman driving in front of us, turn right seemingly to park but it turned out it was a move to make a U-turn which she decided to do regardless of us driving right behind her. So we hit her door. It was a bit funny, things seemed to be okay, the woman will pay for the damages (defense and light).

After the exam, I ate home (chicken with apples), took a one hour nap and then greeted the Committee to grade. We started at around 6pm and ended at 4:45am. Obviously there were many distractions such as the Kim Clijsters-Serena Williams match, many procrastinating conversations, food, etc. My problem turned out to be the hardest, no one got more than 3 points (7 is the score for a correct solution). I think my problem should have been submitted to the Mexican Math Olympiad instead with a few tweaks. I love the problem.

After deciding the winners of the exam (this was a very successful exam, having a good spread on the scores and having enough people scoring highly), because of trash talk four of us decided to compete trying out a math problem and see who would solve it the fastest. We started at 5:15am and finished at 6:30am when I finished my solution and decided to check the others. Hector solved it correctly 10 minutes before me, David had it wrong and Perrito also had it wrong, so Hector won and I had second place. I was very happy because I loved my solution, I thought it was very creative and that the problem was quite hard. Hector's solution was also pretty cool, I liked seeing two different solutions. I was so happy to not give up because of being too late or being too tired. The problem was to find all pairs of integers a,b such that 3^a + 7^b is a perfect square.

I woke up early today to watch NFL games and tennis and hang around with my family. Life is good.

Comic and TV reviews

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:10:13 GMT

TV

Babylon 5 I have watched 12 episodes of season 2 lately. The show is fantastic. Episode 9 on the second season "Coming of the Shadows" ranks as one of my favorite episodes of television (easily top 10). Episode 10 was kind of a let down, but the season has been quite strong so far. I am very excited with this series.

COMICS

I have read a lot of single issues not having read that much lately in terms of books or trades because I've spent so much time on math or the internet. However I've read some cool stuff and here it goes:

Amazing Spider-man #50 by Stan Lee and John Romita, a classic from the 60s. This issue is very famous for the cover and also for a particular panel both of which have been homaged and referenced multiple times. The panel in particular was recreated in the second Spider-man movie and I also remember it from a panel in Alan Moore's Top Ten. The issue is about Peter Parker being fed up with how being Spider-man ruins his life, always late to things, not being able to go on dates, not being able to be there in the house with his aunt, not being able to work at the research lab he wants, etc. He decides to stop being Spider-man. The issue is great and it also has very funny moments with J. Jonah Jameson. Great read, great art. Must read for any Spider-man fan.

Marvel Adventures: Spider-man #54 by Paul Tobin. I have never tried out this title as it is supposed to be for kids. But I decided to give it a try at a bookstore while waiting and I loved it. It reminds me of the feel of the TV show Spectacular Spider-man (great show) and it is just a very enjoyable Spider-man comic. It is definitely more optimistic and fun. It is also fun to read stories out of the normal continuity, seeing Gwen Stacy, having Emma Frost in Peter's world, having a new character that likes Peter and has powers. It was just a fun read. It also reminded me a little of Ultimate Spider-man, another comic I enjoyed a lot and which I should probably keep reading (I read the first 50 or so issues and then stopped, but it was great). After reading this issue I was convinced I should subscribe to this series and did so, so now this series will be another monthly excursion into my favorite superhero's life.

Models Inc. by Paul Tobin. Given that the variant cover has Tim Gunn, the awesome man from Project Runway, I had to buy this comic book. The comic itself was not good, mainly showing five models talking to each other and walking around town, however it has an interesting cliffhanger ending which suggests it will get better. It will only be four issues long, so I'll keep at it till it ends. The back had an extra story by Marc Sumerak being a story where Tim Gunn makes an appearance as given a tour of superhero fashion in the museum of fashion in New York. Some terrorists attack trying to get some of the superhero costumes as they have impressive technology such as the Fantastic Four uniform and of course Iron Man's armor. Tim Gunn in all his catchphrase glory "Makes it Work" and by saving the people around permits us to "Carry On" with our lives. The comic was vapid, but it made me smile.

All-Star Superman #11 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I read the first six issues and I've heard issue 12 is the best ever, so I am very interested in reading the complete series when it comes out at an affordable price. I had the opportunity to read this issue at a bookstore and gave it a go. The issue was very fun and very crazy. Morrison is definitely a writer I should read more, his ideas are very bizarre and interesting. Reading this issue made me want to read issue 12 for sure.

Light of Thy Countenance by Alan Moore. This is actually a short story that Avatar press decided to adapt into a short graphic novel. The story has no dialogue but it was cool to have the beautiful art of Felipe Massafera. The story is great, although it is hard to get into it. It made me think a lot about time spent on TV and my time on the internet. It is about how TV is the new God of mankind and how we worship it 4 hours a day. While I don't watch much TV, I do spend countless hours on the internet in an almost zombie fashion. I must use it less (although I am fine writing on LJ, it kind of doesn't count as internet time as it is more about writing). Interesting read.

Planerary Reader by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. A small compilation of three issues from the acclaimed series "Planetary". This has issues 13,14 and 15. I liked 13 a lot, but 14 and 15 were very confusing, I assume I need to know more about the story to follow them (13 was self-contained). I loved the art and I enjoyed reading it, although I wouldn't recommend it as I didn't feel like I wanted to know more and I didn't feel like I was understanding what's going on. However issue 13 was fun and interesting.

Buffy Season 8 #28 by Jane Espenson and Georges Jeanty. The story was funny and cool. I don't like the Buffy comics as much as I used to, but it's been fun. The art is not very good however. Another good but not great issue.

Chew #4 by John Layman and Rob Guillory. The art in this comic is amazing, Guillory is just the perfect artist for this weirdly funny comic. I love how things are developing and the grotesque laughs that come out of this comic. I don't like this issue as much as the last one, but it is still very good. The next issue should be very good, wrapping up the current story arc.

Irredeemable #6 by Mark Waid and Peter Krause. This issue was very good. It made me interesting in knowing what will happen next. I like getting to know little by little more about Plutonian and I liked how the story is developing. The last four pages are great, I am really excited for next month's issue.

Math

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:24:34 GMT

I've been working very hard writing up my results on Burgess. It is interesting how complications keep popping up. It is a little annoying knowing there are so many places to improve the work, yet needing to plowing through writing the details. This proof is super technical and very little about big ideas, however I feel like I've learned a lot and it is entertaining to do something technical. It is cool to know more about a problem than a lot of people and be able to feel confident in being a sort of expert on a topic. I can answer a lot of questions related to this problem as I am very familiar with all the papers published around it (mainly because there are so few papers). It feels good. The write up is almost complete and I am very excited. There are many improvements to do, but it is good to have a theorem almost there.

Mansion Gazing

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:21:03 GMT

On Sunday Yuliia and I drove to Newport, Rhode Island to relive one of our favorite trips together. We arrived at Newport at 5pm and then drove to Ocean Drive to soak in the beautiful view of the ocean, walk around the rocks next to the ocean and enjoy a sunset. The weather was great and the view was spectacular.

The next day we woke up late and went to Bellevue Avenue to check out the mansions. We went in The Breakers a huge mansion owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt (train company) (not owned by him anymore, but originally). The house was amazing, a lot of open spaces and very nice art everywhere. The house felt like a mini-museum. It is very ostentatious. It also has a magnificent view of the ocean. The reason the house is called "The Breakers" is because the waves from the ocean break at the cliffs in the yard of the house.

After The Breakers we walked around the Cliff walk to the Marble House, bought by another Vanderbilt (brother) as a gift to his wife. The wife, Alva, divorced him the next year, a big scandal as divorces weren't common, and even less common among the mega rich. Alva was a very interesting character, she fought for the women's right to vote and other women's issues. It was interesting to me how she fought for the freedom of women yet she forced her daughter, Consuelo, into an arranged marriage (with the Duke of Marlborough) and was very strict with her. The house felt much smaller than the Breakers, but also was very richly decorated and it had interesting things such as having different rooms in different styles, Italian, Gothic even Chinese (although the Chinese styled one is outside the house, being a Tea House). Very interesting house, very beautiful.

After mansion gazing we went to eat dinner at Yesterday's. We ordered crab cake and then Scallops. Both were incredible, the crab cake is the most delicious thing I've eaten in months and the scallops were also very good. The meal wasn't expensive, so it was perfect. The only thing that couldn't have been better was the dessert. The dessert, a creme brulle cheesecake wasn't that great.

After dinner we drove back to New Hampshire. The trip was very fun. Yuliia and I had a great time. We will go back to check out more mansions as our tickets were for five mansions.

Runway and Grading

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:58:54 GMT

Tuesday was grading day, I worked for many hours grading. After that I worked on Burgess and I got very little sleep before my meeting with Carl on Wednesday. He found a book that talks about Burgess a little different and it was worthwhile to look at it to see if I can use their ideas in my proof. I worked on it for a long time figuring out when they can be used and when they can't and I was satisfied with the results as I don't have to give up much in the size of p to be able to give a big improvement on the bound using these ideas (tweaked to work in my case). It was fun work. After working on math non stop for the last 24 hours (non stop is a lie, as I stopped to sleep three hours and I also had stops to drive from home to school and back) I got my break by going to Asa and Natasha's gorgeous house and watching Project Runway. We ate some burgers and hot dogs and then enjoyed 7 episodes (one of them a double episode) to complete season 1. It was a little too much, but it was fun. The last two episodes I didn't enjoy as much because of how late it was, so I think I found that a good bound is five episodes (with Buffy I could watch up to 7 with no problem and once watched 9 without problems, although I wouldn't try again).

Thursday night after a day at home we went walking around the apartment. There's a kid's playground nearby and I had fun in the swings. I tried to jump as far as possible from the swings by swinging very hard. It was very exciting, I almost fell in my last jump, but I got very far. Yuliia was laughing a lot at my faces and jumps. It was awesome.

On Friday I turned in the grades and then celebrated by watching two episodes of Babylon 5. I was surprised to see Commander Sinclair no longer on the show, but I have been enjoying the new commander and the show overall has been very exciting with a build up towards a big conflict with the Shadows.

Today I went to the movie theater to watch All about Steve the new Sandra Bullock movie. It was funny at times. The plot wasn't great and the characters definitely seem to do contradictory things (illogical to what the characters would seem to do), however it had a good ending and the movie somehow worked for me. Not a movie I would recommend, but not bad.

Cooking up Stats in Basketball

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:44:23 GMT

Last night I read this very interesting article about how the stats on games are not very reliable. The people in charge of putting in the stats get incentives to put in more stuff for their home team and to make the stats more attractive so that the games get air time on ESPN so that more people come to the games. Assists and blocks is where most of the tampering happens, as both of this are very subjective. Apparently, John Stockton would get 1 or 2 extra assists on his scoreboard a game. Interesting read.

Movies and Runway

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:38:18 GMT

On Saturday night, Yuliia and I watched The Iron Giant a very good animated movie, directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles). I liked the movie a lot, but I was expecting even more (I heard a few people say it was the best animated movie ever). Worthwhile movie to watch.

On Sunday after spending the morning in the final, Yuliia and I went to have brunch at the Bunten Farm with Asa and Natasha, the food was very good. It was cool eating fresh butter, milk, eggs.
After brunch we went to see Asa and Natasha's new place which is unbelievable. They have a house in the woods with a wonderful view of the mountains, a nice pond and an expansive lawn. Amazing, the house is also pretty, not only did it have a nice view but it had a really nice kitchen and great bedrooms. Impressive. While there, we watched four episodes of Project Runway Season 1. I love the show, specially the fourth episode, so much drama.

At night Yuliia and I watched Mrs. Doubtfire. I hadn't seen it in 10 years. It is less funny than I remembered, but the movie is not bad. I specially like that in the ending the parents don't get together. It is a happy ending without being a totally impossible happy ending. It is funny that the screenwriter was originally fired for writing such an ending and then after trying with other writers the producers realized it wouldn't work to bring the parents together so they re-hired the original writer.

On Monday I worked on grading. It is going well, it is more work than I anticipated, hopefully I'll do most of the work left today, but I think I'll leave a few things to finish tomorrow.

Yuliia and I watched the first two episodes of the "Models of the Runway" show, which complements Project Runway in what so far have been good episodes. Interesting extra information on the designers and it is good to see more models. I missed in the late seasons of Runway how the models would get less and less screen time.

At night I played three tournaments. In one tournament I finished 16th after leading for a long time. I played AKo wrong in my last hand and it cost me the tournament. In another tournament, I lost a huge pot KK versus QJ and was on life support for a long time, surviving on patience and picking my spots. Eventually I won a nice hand that put me back on average and lack of hands made me be back in problems when we were close to the money bubble. I raised with J2 trying to take advantage of the bubble and someone went all in. I had to call, but I waited until I was sure I would made the money anyway ($60 is $60), I ended up winning the pot to get a good sized stack and was ecstatic. Unfortunately, I would lose three all ins in a row a few minutes later and get eliminated, I guess karma got that J2 back. It was a productive evening, but I think I should play more cash games.

Life is good.

Movie, Book, Comic and TV Reviews

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:08:02 GMT

COMICS

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Book 1 by Eastman and Laird, the first 16 issues of the TNMT. It is incredible to realize that the big TV kid phenomenon had its roots in comics and were almost a fluke. The creators worked on it, got a loan to self publish and then somehow their little project became a hit comic and suddenly they had all sorts of deals. The issues are in black and white (only the covers were in color and only after the fourth issue). The series is a fun read and it is surprising to me to realize how the beginning of the Turtles was kind of a parody of the beginning of Daredevil (in fact the Turtles were hit with the same ooze that gave Daredevil his powers). It was cool to see the Turtles in crazy time traveling or dimension traveling adventures and it was interesting to see how the Shredder is defeated in the first issue. It was a fun read, I am glad I read the original Turtles.

Amazing Spider-man #601 by Mark Waid. The issue was okay. It promised a lot with the return of MJ, but didn't really deliver all that much. The backstory by Bendis and Quesada was good.

Amazing Spider-man #602-603 by Fred Van Lente. #602 was good and #603 was fantastic. #603 might be my favorite issue of Spider-man in over a year. The issue has suspense, humor and a different point of view (as it is told from Chameleon's perspective). Fred van Lente seems to be a perfect writer to bring back lame villains and make them better. He did it with Spot (a great issue for Spider-man, it was #589 or maybe #588) and now with Chameleon. A great read.

Marvels: Eye of the Camera #1-5 by Kurt Busiek and Jay Anacleto. The miniseries is supposed to be 6 issues long, but the sixth one won't come out till November. However, I had the five issues and hadn't read them so I started them. They are great. I love the artwork and I love the stories. Phil Seldon is a nice guy to read about. I like seeing the Marvel universe from an everyman's point of view. It is cool to see how the crazy things that happen in the universe affect the population. Marvel has always tried to make their stories be about how the world would be if superheroes really existed, but Marvels is where it actually analyzes this commitment and gives great stories around the premise. I love the issues, maybe even more than the original Marvels (although this might be because I don't remember how I felt when reading Marvels). Great stuff, looking forward to the final issue.

Thor Vol.1 and Vol.2 by JMS. I had forgotten almost everything about Thor and since I have been loving JMS stuff (Babylon 5, Midnight Nation), I decided to re-read Volume 1. I liked it a lot more this time than last time I read it. It was very funny and it made me care about Thor (a hero I've never cared too much about). The volume also analyzes (a bit) how the world would accept (or reject) a God. Making references to kids much more interested in reading Norse mythology and playing role-playing games with Asgardians in mind.
Volume 2 was also pretty cool, bringing in the main villain of the story and making him (in a woman body) a great villain. It was cool to see how Loki got to be part of Thor's family and how he manipulates people around him. In a way it is very funny that he is able to do this given that he is the God of Mischief and hence nobody should trust him at all. He always finds a way to deceive. Great writing by Straczynski.

Fables Vol. 12 by Bill Willingham. Issue #75 was the climax of a long storyline, so it was strange in a way to have the story continue, I was curious about what would happen (although it's been 8 months since I read issue #75). The book was good but not great. It clearly wasn't as good as the last 5 or six volumes, but it was still good. I will keep reading, the new villain is interesting. There were some important things happening, such as the death of Boy Blue. Fables is a great series and it is a series I would recommend to anyone, however I would recommend up to #75, I would have to wait before I recommend the new storylines.

BOOKS

Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin. Yuliia has been reading a lot of books by this Russian author and this was a book that the Dartmouth library had both in English and in Russian. The book follows Erast Fandorin on a murder case, Fandorin is kind of the Russian Sherlock Holmes, although a detective that is able to fight very well after training in the samurai ways in Japan (he is also fluent in Japanese). I think the book is very good, I specially liked the second half of the book which is written in the point of view of Achimas, a very interesting character. I really liked the second half and because of it, ended up thinking the book was very good. I will probably read another Akunin book this year (he has written about 12 Fandorin novels and four of them have been translated to English).

MOVIES

District 9 I was very excited about this movie and drove to Manchester to watch it (so that I would see it in a worthy cinema). I wasn't disappointed, this movie was terrific. I loved it. The storytelling was original, the story itself was exciting and the movie was overall very well made. It might be a little over the top with the action at some points, but I loved it. Yuliia couldn't stand some scenes and left the theater in the middle (good thing, we plan for this sort of thing by bringing books to the movie so she could read outside). The scenes that made Yuliia left the theater made me realize that she won't like Cronenberg movies, which is a bit of a shame, but I guess Cronenberg movies are not for everyone. Great movie, I recommend it.

Failure to Launch Saw this movie on the bus back from my trip to Morelia (bus from Boston to Lebanon). The movie is okay, not a movie I would recommend or watch unless I was at a bus. I probably wouldn't watch it in an airplane as it would require paying a dollar which is not worth paying for this. The movie had its funny moments and it was fun, but the plot is terrible.

Bridget Jones Diary I watched the second half of this movie with Yuliia, she was watching this through Netflix and she was enjoying it, so I joined in for the second half. I laughed quite a bit. Not bad.

Bruno They showed this at Dartmouth and I had free passes so Yuliia and I went again. Yuliia didn't like it as much upon seconnd viewing, but I liked it a lot. I laughed so much and I even had more value from some scenes that I didn't enjoy that much before. I love this comedy.

Post Grad Watched this last night after a long time looking for airplane tickets for Yullia and me (we have weird restrictions that needed a lot of looking around to find the best price). The movie wasn't good, it had its funny moments, the story wasn't terrible and I like Michael Keaton in this movie, plus I think Alexis Bledel is gorgeous, but the movie is just mediocre. However I would recommend it over "Failure to Launch".

TV

Babylon 5 Season 1 This show is really good. A lot of the episodes have very interesting themes. I love the episode "Deathwalker" about an evil scientist who destroyed many planets in her research and was kind of a Hitler character being a dictator of a species that wanted to destroy the other species. She has been thought dead for decades, yet she is in perfect shape now. It turns out she created a medicine that makes you live forever. Should you put her to death penalty or led her make her medicine available to everyone (she is needed for the development of a medicine that can be distributed to the masses). A very interesting episode.
There are other great episodes in this season and the characters grow each episode while more and more questions keep popping up. I am looking forward to continue watching this series. Great stuff.

Last Week of Classes

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:15:23 GMT

Since I came back from Morelia, I've been working a lot. I gave the last two classes for Probability, one of which was a really cool topic (Central Limit Theorem for Markov Chains) and another which was review. I also did many hours of office time (helping students study for the final), graded a million homeworks, wrote the final exam (I loved the problems I wrote for this exam) and worked on my research problem. I am very excited about the Burgess problem. I think I am the first to write explicit bounds for any type of character as it seems that the proofs written down now are incorrect (they give a correct proof for quadratic characters, but not in general), however they are easy to fix, I use their methods to get this numbers. I also found something that might make me improve my bounds more, it should be fun to look at. I will write it all down in the next following days as I have to have the paper ready by the end of this month.

Lots of work, but I love it. I think the Morelia trip really improve my motivation to do mathematics. I have to also give credit to Probability, I love teaching this course. The problems are so fun. I think at some point I'll do some research in probability, I just love the subject.

This Sunday my students have their final exam, ending the course. The good news is that I already wrote the exam and have finished office hours and lectures, so my only job left is to grade the exam when they hand it in. (I also have some homeworks to grade, but they aren't as hard to grade).

Life is good.

Morelia Trip

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:08:35 GMT

Thursday was traveling day. I woke up at 6:50am to go to the bus station. I didn't make it, the bus leaves at 7:20 and I got there at 7:22. I bought the ticket to try to catch it at New London where it would stop in 30 minutes. I was nervous while driving that I wouldn't make it, but I did make it. I was very happy. The flight from Boston went smoothly. I was at the Houston airport for many hours and then I boarded the plane on route to Mexico. Everything went well. In Mexico City I took the metro (after asking for directions from some helpful women in a booth) to get to the bus stop and then took the bus to Morelia. I got there at about 4am (22 hours later after factoring in the time zone difference). The taxi didn't even know where the hotel was and when I got there it said "Open" but no one would open the door after I rang and knocked for a long time. I called Yuliia and asked her to call the hotel (I didn't have the number), that didn't work either. I then went and knocked on a side glass. This worked, the person told me where to go (which he had left open for me already). I got in the big house (which would house all 12 of us) and picked a bed. It took me a long time to find the lights for the bedroom (they were at the other end of the room in a hidden niche). As soon as I put my head in the pillow, a mosquito started flying around. I turn the light on and kill it. I put my head in the pillow and a mosquito started flying around. After repeating the previous operation several times, I got to the point that when I put my head down at 6:30am, there was no more mosquitoes flying around my head. Time to sleep.

At 8am I got woken up by one of the professors (Toño). He informed me that the plan was to meet in the university at 9am. I showered quickly, which wasn't easy given that there was no warm water (good thing the Vermont swimming tour prepared me). I was in very good shape because I slept for over 5 hours in the bus from Mexico City to Morelia, and the cold water also helped waking me up.

We walked towards the university trying to find a place to have breakfast and the few eating places seemed to be closed, so some people bought snacks from a gas station while David, Efrén and I went to a small town trying to find something to eat. We found a place that sold fruit and we ate fruit.

After breakfast it was time to look at the problems. I worked with David and Florian in the Number Theory problems. Efrén worked on algebra. David and I also tried the algebra ones and I also did one of the combinatorics problems that looked fun. Pablo, Joshua and Carlos worked on the Combinatorics problems (all three of them won Gold medals in IberoAmerican Math Olympiad, Joshua and Carlos have Silver medals in the IMO and Pablo is the sole Gold medalist for Mexico in the IMO). Guevara, Chino and Leonardo worked on Geometry (Chino is a gold medal in the Ibero, Guevara was not only a gold medal but had a perfect exam in the Ibero 2006). Toño and Patricio worked on several problems (Patricio was the first Silver medalist for Mexico in the IMO and he also got a Gold in the Ibero). I was surrounded by Mexican Olympiad stars, however I was able to solve most of the problems I tried solving. It was very fun trying out problems all day.

On Saturday we presented the different solutions and decided on the short list (and the order of difficulty). It was a cool experience. I love seeing solutions to Olympiad problems, most of them are very pretty. At night we went to Sirloin Stockade to have dinner, it is a nice Buffet place. It was interesting seeing the waiters with their mouths covered (people are being very careful in Mexico due to the swine flu). I ate lots of good stuff there, it was a nice meal.
After the meal, we hung out in the hotel talking all night. It was very fun speaking with other Mexican mathematicians (or engineers). Lots of interesting topics came out and it is just refreshing to speak Spanish and be around nice people.

Since we finished everything on Saturday, Sunday became lazy day and most people went back to their homes. David, Chino and me were the only ones that stayed an extra night because our flights were bought for Monday. At night we went out into downtown. I had forgotten how beautiful Morelia is. It felt like I was in a very old town, felt European. Really beautiful. I ate some ice cream, some Mexican candy and then had sopes for supper.

I left the hotel at 2am, took a taxi to the bus station. The conversation with the taxi driver was very interesting. It turns out that he worked 19 years in the Morelia airport and was fired when the airports were privatized. The sindicate told the employees that no one would be fired and need only sign some papers to acknowledge that they were under new bosses now. It turns out that what the employees signed was their resignation. The national sindicate deceived the employees all around the country (this was back in 2000). A terrible story.

I got into the bus at 2:20am, the bus arrived in Mexico City at 5:50 (30 minutes early). I took the metro to the airport and got there at 7am, but then changing terminals and stuff made me get to my gate at 7:40am and there was a long line. If I had taken the 2:30 bus or if the 2:20 bus had arrived at 6:20 as I thought it would, I wouldn't make it to my 9am flight. I got lucky.

After a couple of flights and a bus ride I was back home to see Yuliia at 10pm. I was very happy. We celebrated by watching the latest episode of Project Runway.

A great trip to Morelia. I love to travel and I love the Math Olympiad

Leading up to trip to Mexico, going to court

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:24:19 GMT

On Monday I had to wake up early to go to court. I arrived at court and I quickly read and filled up some paperwork to be able to write in my guilty plea. While being in court, I noticed everyone would say they were not guilty (even though it is clear not everyone could be not guilty), hence I started second guessing my plea. When I stood in front of the judge I was nervous and after I plead guilty, he asked "did you read bla bla?" "Yes" "Did you understand it?", these questions plus the fact that everyone was saying Not Guilty made me reply that I did not understand and wished to read it again. After a couple of more people going before me (while I was re-reading the form), I went back, plead guilty (again) and got a $100 fine. No reason to be that nervous.

I traveled to Mexico on Thursday, something I will write later about. Between Monday and Thursday not much happened. I gave a class on Markov chains, I watched many episodes of Babylon 5, read some comics and did some math. Yuliia and I had some nice dinners and we watched Julie and Julia which was very good. I also went to a cool swing class.

Fun Week with a Weekend in New York

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:48:22 GMT

The first days of the week were taken over by the class. I had to write the exam, give the exam and then grade the exam. When writing I thought it would be super easy, while grading I thought it was terrible, but then when I finished grading I realized it wasn't so bad. The median was 81, which is pretty good and the mean is 78 which is not bad. However, I got 8 students dropping the class which definitely hurt my ego of being able to teach to everyone.

On Thursday after a day of relaxing at the apartment, Yuliia and I left to go to New York City to visit my mom and sister (they were there for vacations). We left New Hampshire at 11pm and arrived at my mom's hotel in midtown NYC at 4am. I slept for three hours before I had to get up to move the car. I thought I would have to pay $30 a day, but then I realized that I could take it out in the night and save the night fees. Turned out that I parked it in a place where Saturdays were free, so I ended up spending only $19 for the 3 days I was in NY. I was very pleased with this.

The first day we went to the New York Botanical Gardens. We were a little worried because the subway stopped quite far from it (express doesn't stop everywhere) and the region wasn't very nice. After thirty minutes of walking we gave up and took a cab, which only charged $6, not bad for four people. My mom and sister didn't like the botanical gardens, but I liked them, I specially liked walking in the middle of the natural forest. Yuliia had a good time too, although she was also underwhelmed.

At night, my mom and sister went to the Broadway play "Wicked". Yuliia and I didn't go because we didn't get tickets. We went instead to eat at Red Lobster, which is right next to Parson's the school of design (Project Runway season 2 has many jokes about Red Lobster and Yuliia wanted to check it out). In fact Runway was also the reason we went to the Botanical Gardens.

The next day started with us going to the Met. We had a great time. I love the Egyptian displays and the modern art section. We ended up not seeing the European art collection as we ran out of time (five hours wasn't enough). In the Met we ate at their new lunch place, which was overpriced but had really tasty food. Yuliia and I shared a chicken dish. I really liked the painter Chuck Close. I also enjoyed seeing armors from medieval times to imagine the Song of Ice and Fire characters in these armor. Time ran really fast in this wonderful museum.

After the museum we biked in Central Park for a couple of hours. Yuliia and I would have mini races to see who would get to the next street light first. I won most of them, but she won several. It was very fun.

At night we walked around, saw the Plaza, the Rockefeller Center and then got to the hotel. From there we walked to a salsa club called Copacabana that a sales clerk recommended to my mom. After walking for a bit we got to the address and there was nothing there. After asking a taxi driver we found out the place closed at least a year ago. It was pretty funny. At least we tried.

Sunday was a very relaxed day. Yuliia and I went to Jersey City to have lunch with Elliott (formerly known as Forrest), his girlfriend and our friend Johnny. The lunch was pretty tasty, I had chilies quiles while Yuliia had a salmon eggs benedict.
After Jersey we went back to NYC and hung out with my mom and sister. We went to Soho to eat pizza at the first pizzeria of the country "Lombardi's Pizza". The pizza was very tasty. After the pizza we discovered a place that sells different kinds of rice pudding (I had never seen anything like it before). We bought Hazelnut and Mango, I loved the mango flavored one. We then drove back to the hotel to drop my mom and sister off before it was time to drive back to New Hampshire. This drive became memorable when we all started dancing and singing to Michael Jackson.

I had a really good time in New York with my family. Life is good.

Swimming Hole Tour Vermont Style

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:21:24 GMT

Last year, Greg, Giulio and me did a tour around New Hampshire and Vermont finding cool places to jump into water. Hence it was time to do one this year, but this time all Vermont. Sid came up from Boston to join the party. It was Natasha, Asa, Kristen, Greg, Chrisil, Sid, Yuliia and me. We started at Quechee. When Greg arrived he immediately went to the bridge to jump (over 45 feet). That set the tone. Last year, I skipped this jump, but now I had to do it. The water was flowing strong and I've never jumped from so high, but I had to do it. I stood on the edge for about five minutes, my heart racing, having trouble calming down. Every time I would calm down and be ready to jump, I would see the bottom of the jump and step back. Finally, I jumped. I had trouble getting out of the water as the water was rushing and the jump itself wasn't that fun because I was so scared and nervous, but I feel great that I did it (and that next time I'll get to enjoy the freefall). I got some bruises too because of having trouble getting out with the fast moving water.
After Natasha, Sid, Asa and Greg jumped, it was time to move on. We went to a nearby town to swing on a rope towards the river. This was really fun. There were several hilarious moments including seeing Sid swing as it looked as if he smashed into the ground (but being water instead of ground). Chrisil was funny too, because he also seemed to just swing directly to the water. Apparently I was funny too as everyone was laughing. It wasn't till I saw the video that I understood why, as my legs were doing all sorts of crazy things while I was in the air.
After the rope it was time to go to Gaysville (yes, this is the actual name of the town). There we jumped a couple of times from a cool rock. The water was quite cold.

The main highlight of the trip came when we stopped in the middle of the road to consider jumping from a bridge that we have never seen anyone jump before ("we" really means Greg as my only experience is last year and the rest had zero experience). Last year, we considered it but didn't do it. This year after so many rains, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. We considered it for at least 15 minutes and I even said out loud I wouldn't do it several times including "even if you jump Greg, I won't jump". But Greg jumped and as soon as Greg's feet left the bridge, I knew I would jump. My main fear was positioning my body for the jump, as I had to be careful putting my body on the other side of the rail. Greg is very tall, so it is not as hard for him given that if he sits on the rail, his feet touch the ground. But for me, it wasn't like that. Once I was in position, I was good to go and the jump was awesome. The freefall was exhilarating, the water had the perfect temperature and everything went smoothly. Awesome experience. Kristen jumped and then Sid. Sid got a little hurt from the jump as he leaned his body forwards.

After Gaysville, we had lunch in Woodstock. After the delicious wings, Asa and Natasha left the group to go back to New Hampshire. We then headed onto Warren. Warren is quite pretty. Greg and I jumped into a little basin and the water was extremely cold. My reaction to the cold is very funny on video. The cool thing about Yuliia taking video of me shivering is that by luck we caught on film a fish trying to jump a waterfall swimming upstream. In Warren, Greg and I considered riding down a mini waterfall. I did it last year, but this year the water was too high for me to do it again. After that we had a long jump competition which the judges ruled Greg as a winner. But after seeing the tape, I have my doubts.

After Warren we did a mini stop in Montpelier, followed by another swimming stop in Bolton. This place was also amazing. There wasn't any spectacular jump to do, but there was a little waterfall where you could sit down and feel the power of the water. I loved it, specially at its cold temperature. My reaction to this waterfall inspired everyone in the group to try it and to make Yuliia finally go in the water. She had a lot of fun with the waterfall.

It was time now to go to the last stop, a special place in Lake Champlain, the beautiful lake in Burlington. We headed out to a secluded place and swam a bit in the lake. Usually this place is very placid, but this time it was raging, there were lots of waves and given that we were next to big rocks, it was scary to go out into the water and swim, but we found a place where there was more than a meter between rocks and we figured it was enough to go out. Chrisil, Greg and I were the first to go out and then we managed to convince the rest. There was a nice rock about 20 yards from the shore. The rock was a nice place to climb up to jump out of. It was hard to climb the rock as the face that had the "steps" to go up was being hit by waves. Greg managed to climb up and then give us a hand. The second time I tried to do it on my own and I got a lot of scratches from my body trying to stay on a rock while waves tried to push me out of the rock. At first it was fun, but after minutes of struggle it became very annoying. Once I got up in the rock, I took several deep breaths and then enjoyed my last jump of the day.

To end the night, we went to an Irish pub in Montpelier that has half priced burgers on Sunday evenings. The burgers were delicious and cheap (with respect to the deliciousness). A great end to a great day.

Updates

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:54:32 GMT

The class has been going well, I have been having fun with the material. I always like a problem or two of the homework and take them into other directions, it almost always leads to part of my lectures (although I don't know how much my students like this).

This week I played racquetball twice and I played pretty well. The best game was a game I lost 15-6 against Chrisil. I played with everything but Chrisil had a response. His main weapon was his serve, he won at least ten points where I missed the return. It was the second time he has beat me, but he totally earned it.

A funny anecdote this week was failing to remember a proof for my x-hour class. It was a cool proof for the following problem: Assume there are two urns. Each has one coin. We bring a coin and put it with probability 1/2 in one of the urns. Then we bring the next coin and it has a probability of 2/3 of going to the urn that already has two coins and one third to the other urn. We keep going this procedure (if there are p coins in Urn 1 and q coins in Urn 2, the next coin goes to Urn 1 with probability p/(p+q) and Urn 2 with prob. q/(p+q)). How small would you expect the urn with less coins to be? I'll mention the proof in another post, it is beautiful so I don't want to ruin it with a spoiler.

I also several chapters of a book called Monty Hall Problem by Jason Rosenhouse (he got his PhD from Dartmouth). The book is really cool. I discovered that I didn't fully comprehend the problem (even though I've taught it countless times). I had failed to realize that the problem asks for what to do, once a door has been shown, not just with the knowledge of Monty knowing where the goat is, but with the knowledge of which particular door he chooses. In the normal Monty Hall problem, this distinction makes no matter, but if the doors had different probabilities, it would become important. Example, if door 1 has prob. 1/2, door 2 has prob. 1/4 and door 3 has prob. 1/4 and you start with 1/4. You know that if you don't look at what Monty does, your probability of winning with switching is 3/4. However, you gain extra information with the door Monty shows. If it is door 2, your odds go up to 4/5 (instead of 3/4) and if it is door 3, your odds go down. I thought that was awesome.
The book also has a couple of very interesting chapters on work done in other fields. A chapter on psychology, showcasing a bunch of cool experiments showing how bad we are at this problem (this is where I discovered that even I was wrong) and a chapter on some philosophy. The philosophy chapter was cool because it introduced a cool variation of the problem (one that has two players instead of one), but the philosophy itself didn't seem that interested or that moved by this problem. Cool book, highly recommended.

Comic and Movie Reviews

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:56:21 GMT

Amazing Spider-man #600 A huge anniversary issue, instead of the normal 22 pages (plus 10 of ads), it was 104 pages without ads. It was glorious. It started with a 62 page story by Dan Slott and John Romita Jr. about Aunt May's wedding. I really liked the whole plot by Dr. Octopus, it was a good story. Then there were several short stories, one by Stan Lee called "Identity Crisis" which was drawn by Marcos Martin (he's awesome), this story was funny. There was a cute short story by Waid about Uncle Ben raising Peter, there was a story by Buckingham about Aunt May going to Uncle Ben's grave to ask for permission to marry again. A funny story by Gale about why it is not as fun to be Spider-man, a story by Joe Kelly which I didn't like that much (seems to be setup for future issues, more than an actual story) and then my favorite story by Zeb Wells making fun of the Spider-mobile. I have to admit I always thought the Spider-mobile was just a toy, I didn't know that there were 60 issues in the 70s when Spider-man actually used a Spider-mobile. Great issue.

Amazing Spider-man Extra #2 This issue is about six months old, but since I liked the other two "Extras" I got this one too. Of the three extras, this is the worst. But it was still enjoyable. Paulo Siqueira's art in the second story was fantastic. It was a nice story too (about Wolverine's birthday). The first story was an okay story about Anti-Venom by Dan Slott. Not great. I guess this issue is worth its price mainly because of the second story.

Scourge of the Gods #1-3 by Valerie Mangin. The story is quite unusual and it is not fantastic, but I enjoyed it. It was interesting, it had its suspenseful moments and it had interesting ideas. The whole series is 6 issues (each issue is double size) and I am looking forward to the next three issues as the third one ended in a big cliffhanger.

Chew #3 by Robert Layman. Fantastic. Really amazing. I liked the author from the Stephen Colbert comics (Tek Jansen). The Tek Jansen issues weren't great, but besides the main story they had a side story in the back which was written by Layman and he always would make me laugh. Now he has this series and I have been buying each issue. The first one was great, the second one was good and this issue is just fantastic. The story is wacky and for many it would be gross, but it is funny, creative and interesting. The art is very different from what I've seen before and I love it. I am glad I am reading this series. Highly recommended. I am now reconsidering buying "Maintenance" a comic that Layman wrote a couple of years ago.

Absolution #1 by Christos Gage. I was a bit disappointed by this issue. The end of the issue makes me want to keep reading, but throughout the issue I just felt like I wasn't reading anything terribly interesting. I'll give the book a couple of more issues before I drop it, but I have to say, the worst of the bunch I am reviewing here.

Buffy #27 by Jane Espenson. It was a good issue, Twilight is back into the foreground which I think is very important. We need a big villain this season and Twilight had been off the spotlight for too long. I like how bad a situation the slayers have, it should make for some interesting stories. This issue is slow and doesn't do much, but it shows the potential of the issues to come. The series has been in a sort of slump for a few issues, it seems like it will be out of it soon. Something that bugs me though is that I don't remember at all when Riley made his appearance in this series.

Irredeemable #5 by Mark Waid. I loved the first issue of this series, but since then no issue has been that good, although 4 was fantastic. Issue 5 is also very good (I was about to write how disappointed I was, but I think that is just because compared to Chew it isn't that good, but it is very good). The ending is great leaving a bunch of interesting questions for the future and I love the fact that it only cost $1 (to attract new readers). The art is sometimes great and sometimes mediocre.

I've also been reading a couple of books, one will inspire a post coming up soon.

Movie:
Lars and the Real Girl This movie is great. It is heart warming, funny and very interesting. I highly recommend it.

fMRI scan

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:56:07 GMT

I volunteered to get a fMRI scan for some research thing. I was interested in experiencing one of those and in getting the $20. The scan consisted of eight scans, two normal ones and six where they showed some images and asked me to focus on what I was seeing. I don't know how useful I was because I fell asleep in two of the "focusing" scans and I was distracted thinking about a math problem in the other one. I wonder with all these distractions that can happen in the hour scan how accurate the experiments can be. It was an interesting experience, I am glad I did it.

With respect to math, I have been having fun solving probability problems. One problem I loved was one that I saw in a TED talk. What is the expected number of coin tosses you would expect to get the sequence HTH? What about the sequence HTT? Should these numbers be the same? No. The first one is 10 and the second one is 8. However if we throw to see which one appears first, the game is fair, both are equally likely to appear first. I thought that was awesome. To illustrate how it can happen that you have the expected value pointing in one direction but the fairness of the game pointing in another, I thought of the following example: Assume you have two unusual dice. Die A has four sides with the number 4, while two sides are blank. Die B has all sides being a 3. Note that the expected value of A is 16/6 = 2.67 while the expected value of B is 3, however A wins 2/3 of the time.

Another math problem I had fun solving (this is the one I solved while inside the fMRI) was the following. Find the expected number of tosses of a dice to get all six numbers.

I am enjoying this probability class very much. Tomorrow I'll give a lecture going through some fun probability gems, it should be fun. I wonder how many students will show up.

Nice week

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:12:01 GMT

Sunday I played a lot of poker, making it very far in a tournament but coming out almost empty handed (won just 75 cents).

The weekly classes were fun getting to the main event of the class, the Central Limit Theorem. What a beautiful theorem. I really enjoy the class very much.

Research is becoming more exciting, some cool things need to be proven.

One of the main events this week was getting pulled over by a cop. On Tuesday, I went to renew things for the car and to renew my driver's license. However the DMV was closed for renovations and I didn't want to drive 40 minutes to Claremont for it. Of course, I had to be stopped by a cop on the next day and while she stopped me for something bogus (claiming I crossed a red light when it was yellow), she had the right for asking for my driver's license which was expired. Hence on Thursday I had to go to Claremont to get a driver's license and next week I'll have to go to Concord to show the state court that now I have a driver's license.

Thursday Night Salsa was fun. Lots of dancing. Tuesday night swing was also fun, I think Yuliia and I dance it well.

I have also been into programming lately, working hours on some projects. I mainly got back into programming things because of the probability class, but now I have my hand on trying to program some number theory things. I love it, it is very fun.

With respect to movies, I watched Funny People yesterday, which was pretty good. It is very long for a comedy, clocking in at 2 hours and 20 minutes, but I guess that is not so unusual with Judd Apatow (Knocked up also reached the 2 hour threshold). I liked the movie. While the main jokes are about farts or penises, the story itself is interesting. I wasn't expecting that. Yuliia didn't like it.

With respect to reading, I read a Spider-man issue and just a few pages of a Neal Stephenson book. I also read some math papers. But what consumed most of my reading time was a manga called Liar Game. It is a manga that is driven by fun puzzle like games. It is really good, the story is kind of addicting. I read 80 issues of the manga during the week. Good stuff, I had never read manga before (although I tried a bit with a manga that Geoff lent me a few months ago). Good stuff.

Life is good.