Category: General Page 13 of 116

About that manhunt in the Boston area, the public and private sectors are pulling out all the stops to assure our men in blue get what they need to finish the job.  This passage from an article in Boston.com says it all (H.T. Kelly):

Law enforcement asked [Dunkin’ Donuts] to keep some restaurants open in locked-down communities to provide hot coffee and food to police and other emergency workers, including in Watertown, the focus of the search for the bombing suspect. Dunkin’ is providing its products to them for free.

“At the direction of authorities, select Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in the Boston area are open to take care of needs of law enforcement and first responders,” spokeswoman Lindsay Harrington explained via email. 

Day 606 of 1000

All the big events surrounding the bombing at the Boston Marathon has three out of four of the Chapman household (Christian has somehow figured out how to stay focused) glued to news feeds on the computer.  Kelly has big tests, papers, and other assignments next week.  Every minute is precious at this point in the semester, but it is really hard not to listen to the police scanner as the police in Boston chase two bad actors with big weapons and a willingness to kill people–maybe even themselves.  While this was going on there was a big explosion that killed a bunch of people in Texas and a good sized earthquake in Japan.  It gets on to thinking about what is happening in this world.  I am off to lunch with my Russian buddy Igor.

The entire family has been going to bed between one and three AM every morning for the last week or so, then getting up in time to get to NCSU by eight.  It is the week before dead week in what will probably be the toughest semester either of the kids have for their undergraduate career.  They both have two semesters left after this one.  Those semesters feature hard classes, but not so many hours as this semester.  It is all theoretical math and statistics class all the time.  We all try to take a nap when we have during the day, but it does not seem like we catch up much on our sleep.  Tonight is no different.  The sad part is there is no hope for a good rest on the weekend–there are tests scheduled during dead week for both of kids.

Day 604 of 1000

Kelly and I have stayed up well past midnight several times this semester to work through assignments for her Java class.  In spite of the great joy it gives us to have our children at North Carolina State Universiy, I think they way they teach “Programming 101” is almost criminal.  They were told they should not Google anything or receive any outside help.  I understand the need for a student to “own” the material, but this is definitely not the way to do it.  Nevertheless, my support has been mostly limited to looking on and trying to give verbal descriptions of high level concepts.

Last night was very good as Kelly prepared for a five minute talk she has to give in class about concepts such as implicit vs explicit parameters, get/set methods, encapsulation, and other object oriented programming topics.  I remember when I learned all this and it was a fight.  Christian seems to be a very linear learner.  That is, he builds one concept on another until he achieves master.  Kelly and I are what I like to call messy learners.  We learn just enough about a subject to go on to the next step, but not enough to master it.  That means we are pretty much in a state of confusion until we go through enough of the “learn just enough” steps to get a coherent understanding of the subject as a whole.

Messy learning is really pretty painful, but when the light starts to come on, it is so wildly gratifying that one forget all the pain leading up to it.  After going through that kind of process for subjects like math, chemistry, and programming, it is not so bad starting a new learning project because the payoff is so great.  I think some of the problem associated with so many people hating math and programming in this day and age is that so many people give up before they get to the payoff a couple of times.

I find a book titled Good Manners for a Little Princess. I just wanted people to know it was NOT OUR Kelly Chapman who wrote it, although I kind of wish she would have. Maybe if she READ the thing…

Day 603 of 1000

We have two kids about to finish their Junior years at North Carolina State University.  Both of them want to go to graduate school, but they have very different goals.  Christian, the Applied Math major, wants to go to a tier one University to get a PhD in Control Systems with the idea that he will work as a researcher in industry when he gets out.  Kelly, the Statistics major, wants to get a one or two year Masters degree at a school known for its close association with industry so she can get a good job and start her “real” life.  This summer, both kids will travel to a number of universities on the west coast to talk to professors before for they start applying.

It has always seemed that things work better in both business and school when people have a personal connection with each other.  I have two good friends from Russian.  One, Stepan, has a PhD in Chemistry from Moscow State University and has done post-docs at University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston.  The other, Igor, has a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and has worked as a scientist at universities in the US and Europe.  They have a very interesting outsiders view of post-graduate education in the United States.  They both highly recommended that the number one criteria in selecting a graduate program is to find the right professor to serve as your thesis adviser.  The best way to chose a good thesis adviser is to research and go meet as many of them as possible.

That makes a whole lot of sense to me.  People are a lot more important than than institutions.  So, based on that advise, the kids have started doing research and writing introduction letters to professors at a number of universities they think they might like to attend.  The plan is to talk face-to-face with as many professors as possible to increase the chance they will be accepted into a good school and to be able to make an informed decision about which program is best for them.  I will write more about the process as we move through it.

Day 599 of 1000

I will work in the morning, the travel late into the evening to get back home to Raleigh.  Since finals approach for the kids, they will study all weekend long.  On Saturday, we will go to NCSU.  Normally, I would go to either the Hunt or Hill library to write code, but I have been asked to work on the GaugeCam project to improve the ability to detect water levels.  We have been going slowly on this project for at least four years, probably getting close to five and, little-by-little, the product is getting refined and attracting interest.  I have the fixes in place and just need to get the code running on Dr. Birgand (the professor in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at NCSU who runs the project).  He should be able to generate data and finish a couple of articles for publication.

On a side note, next trip, I get to have Lorena with me!

I talked to the desk clerk a little bit when I got back to my hotel tonight.  She seems like a very nice girl.  I asked her if she was in school.

She said “Yes, in college.”

I said, “At Prescott College?”  Prescott College is a very liberal, liberal arts college here in the middle of conservative Prescott.

She said, “No, only rich kids can go there.  I go to the community college because I am paying my own way.”

“That’s great!  What are you studying?”

“Anthropology.  I plan to go to NAU when I finish at the community college.”

I asked, “Where do you want to work when finish?”

“I am not sure.  My professors tell me that I doesn’t matter so much which degree I get.  It is just important that I get a degree because the people who do the hiring will know you have been able to stick to something for four years.”

What she is doing is really admirable.  She is working her way through the community college, then plans to go to a pretty good regional university.   She will save lots of money that way.  She will be in much better shape than others who take out big loans to go to an expensive liberal arts school to get a soft degree like Anthropology.  Jobs are hard to come by these days for Anthropology majors.  Still, she will have four years experience in the hotel business, definitely not a bad thing.  I think in her case the education and experience she gets in her job will be more valuable than anything she gets from the college course she has chosen.  It is a shame though, that her teachers are representing that a soft degree is something that is somehow viewed as valuable to the vast bulk of employers.

Day 596 of 1000

The comments are back up and running!  There were several that fell through the cracks and were lost, so if you have the time and inclination, please try to post them again.  I hope to start the series on how we taught programming to kids and why it is a good skill (like typing) to have even if you will never do it for a living.

Day 595 of 1000

We are still struggling to figure out what is going on with our hosting service and today is a big day at work.  It looks like I have a new director level title, so that is kind of cool.  I really want to move on to the series of posts on how we taught Christian to program.  With the exception of some time spent in the R language, we did not work on programming with Kelly until she got to NCSU.  Last night, Kelly stayed up until 3:30am working on a Java program.  She really “gets” all the concepts, but the minutiae kills you.  I will add a section or two of what might be good preparation for programming at a later stage than Christian, but before going to college.

All the comments have disappeared on the website.  I am working to get it going again.  I do not think it is possible to post right now.  I will post again when this is fixed.  You can write me an email at the address on the right column as needed.

Day 592 of 1000

This is the tenth in a series of posts on the benefits of skipping high school and going straight to college.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here. You can see their undergraduate results and post-graduate (PhD) chase here. I try to keep the results updated as they occur.

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The move to full time schedules from Community College to Big State U. (NCSU) was fairly straightforward.  The work loads were similar although the upper division classes the kids had to take were more difficult.  The single summer course each of the kids took was very helpful.  They knew how to get around campus, use the library, ride the buses, and all those other things you do not think about but that take time.  The kids felt for the confusion of many of the incoming Freshmen who had to get answers to all those questions at the same time the were carrying a full load of classes.

Socially, the kids at Big State U. seemed to be more immature than the students taking the hard classes at the Community College.  It surprised us at first, but, retrospectively, it makes some sense.  The students in the hard classes at the Community College were military veterans, people working a job, housewives, generally people who were older, had responsibility, and were paying their own way.  At Big State U. it was mostly kids only two years removed from the negative socialization of government high schools.

Kelly and Christian are different in the way they embrace the college experience.  Kelly, because she is so social, makes lots of friends, loves to study in groups, and participates in campus activities.  Sometimes this costs her.  She got into a little hole during the first semester and had to bury herself in the books with little time to sleep, exercise, or even eat for the last four weeks of her semester.  She did a truly amazing turn-around and got excellent grades her first full semester.  That lesson served her well in terms of managing her work load.

Christian, on the other hand, is totally focused on academics.  We worry that he does not get enough sleep because he is so focused on learning the material and getting great grades.  He has done well enough over his whole education that his expectations for great grades are something he has to manage carefully.

I write this series of posts with about a month left in the kids Junior year at NCSU.  Both of them are scheduled to graduate in May of 2014.  So far, they are both on the Dean’s List and have commitments from their academic advisers that if they finish their plans, they will graduate.  I will write a final post in the series when they graduate to let you know how that went.  Both the kids are planning on graduate school out west–I expect I will write a post or two on their efforts to get into good graduate schools, too.

The North Carolina State University (where Kelly and Christian go to school) is very cool.  Notice the “at Raleigh” ending of their current official name.  It is almost never used, but very cool that it is there.  Here is the progression of names:

• North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (1887)
• North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (1918)
• North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering of the University of North Carolina (1931)
• North Carolina State of the University of North Carolina at Raleigh (1963)
• North Carolina State University at Raleigh (1965)

A very cool quote from the article in Wikipedia having to do with the fact that NCSU is a Land Grant school is the following:

…Chapel Hill’s “elitist” education did not meet the mandate set forth by the Morrill Land-Grant Act

Day 589 of 1000

I am out in Prescott again with lots of stuff about which I want to write, but no time to do any writing.  Our friend, Margaret, left a comment that pointed me to a great article on inventing one’s own job and teaching people the skills they need to invent their own jobs.  I have put on my list of topics, because it is a worthy article both for a read and for commentary.  I guess I will just have to get to it when I get to it.  I am mostly through one series of posts on Why not skip high school? and have another set of posts about how to teach programming for kids, so it is not like I have writer’s block or anything.  I can hardly wait to get going.  I should have an hour or two later this afternoon.

Day 587 of 1000

Lorerna is back from the beautful Monterrey, Nuevo Leo, Mexico.  We barely survived without her.  It is profoundly safer now that it was this time last year.  We will be going down there on a regular basis if it remains like this.  She got to see all of kids except two who live in Toluca, for whom I am the Favorite Uncle^TM.  Here is a picture of some of them, that outside two of which are scheduled to visit us in the U.S. this summer.

Jorge, Brunito, Valeria, Matias, Brandito, Marlito, y Dayanita

Kelly just texted me with the news that she was offered a job at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as a Statistical Intern.  They made her a better offer than Caterpillar and she will be doing things like design of experiments, sample size calculations, data cleaning, and other stuff that is dead center in the subject area of her degree and the type of work she wants to do.  We are very excited.  Tonight we will talk about her options.  So far, she lost out on the NIEHS position, but she has two hard internship offers with a third from a financial services company still up in the air.

Day 582 of 1000

A guy at work made an interesting comment about the Microsoft Surface when I asked him whether he liked it.  He bought one on eBay for $250.  I told him I had heard it was really lousy for typing.

He said, “That is true, but that is not how I use it.”

I said, “How do you use it?”

He uses it as a tablet.  He said that if you think of it as a computer like any other laptop, you are not going to like it.  If you think of it as a tablet with a keyboard that is better for typing than on-screen keyboard, then you will be much happier with it.

I said, “OK, then.  How does it compare with other tablets.  Is it as good as a Nook or a Kindle?”

He said, “It is not fair to compare the Surface to that class of tablets.  The Surface is WAY better than tablets like the Nook and the Kindle.”

I said, “Wow,” because I love my Nook.

I thought about that a little and said, “Well, then, how does it compare to the iPad.”

He said, “As only a tablet, I like it a LOT better than my iPad.  It is just as easy or easier to use, the form factor is better, and, in a pinch, you can use it as a computer.”

Now I am really tempted to buy a Surface on eBay.  It would be great on airplanes.

Kelly and the NCSU’s LoveData statistical analysis team presented their findings at the Datafest this afternoon.  We are not sure how they did yet, but they looked good and, in the end, that is all that is really important.  I will report the results when I get them.  Kelly did not hear all the teams present, but of the ones she heard, their team was the only team that tied their analysis to the needs of the business rather than internal analysis of the data that did not attach to the bottom line.  She said they did not have the slickest presentation.  Some of the other teams had done this before.  She cannot wait until next year because she thinks they really did great given their lack of experience.

Day 580 of 1000

We received a note that Lorena had arrived safely in Mexico.  We had a long and eventful Saturday.  Lorena flew to Monterrey, Kelly did Datafest, studied for her finals, and sprained her ankle coming down the stairs in SAS Hall at NSSU when we picked her up to go home   Christian met friends to do a Math class project.  It is a little calmer this morning, but it will heat up again after meeting.  I think it is going to be like this until Wednesday afternoon.  Our plan is to sleep in A BUNCH on Thursday, then get up and shovel out the house before our friends arrive from Indiana.  We are SO looking forward to that–both sleeping in and our friends.

Kelly is eating good. Enuf said!