Last Wednesday I was invited by a friend (who is a graduate student in electrical engineering, which involves lots of exciting math) to go to a computer science pizza party. Sadly, the pizza was not complimentary and it wasn't much of a party (lots of people standing around in a small room) but I had a pleasant time nonetheless. CS pizza parties used to feature something known as "Sexist Pizza" in which people with a feminine gender presentation ("women") didn't have to pay for their pizza. The point of this was to attract more of them to the parties in question, presumably in order to facilitate interaction between the two genders (I gather that the idea behind this would be to create intra-CS straight couplings).
Anyway, at the party in question I nommed some pizza and listened to some intriguing conversation between some computer scientists of my acquaintance about various functions of Gmail. One of them was so bold as to ask me what I was doing there and persist with a "But I thought you were in religious studies..." in response to my claim that I was in CS. I think that he saw through me though, because the rest of our exchange went something like:
"No, I used to be but I switched out"
"... Isn't lying a sin?"
"How would I know, I'm not in religious studies..."
I also, in order to make the whole experience more CS-like, asked one of my acquaintances (who knows I'm not in math or CS) which was his favourite programming language. He asked if he needed to have a preference and returned the question. I said that Python was but couldn't give a good reason why. Julia then asked how I felt about Perl, which I was better at answering. Apparently Perl involves lots of dollar signs, which people find objectionable. Exciting!
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
SUMS-ber Party!
9:45 PM: Rebecca and I are in SUMS. The supplies that we have make the evening seem promising. I brought two kinds of cereal (Nesquik and Cinnamon Toast Crunch) and milk, Rebecca brought tea, bowls and spoons and the correct ingredients for s'mores. A couple of other people have said that they will stop by later and watch a movie with us. We had to steal the teakettle back from CTF (the Computer Task Force, which people always mistake SUMS for) next door. They were reluctant.
10:09 PM: So we have a frisbee for entertainment purposes and we decided to assemble the s'mores on it. One thing led to another and now it's in the microwave. I'm not entirely sure whether frisbees are microwave-safe but I guess if I have to get cancer this is probably a worthwhile method.
10:21 PM: Rebecca just had to fact-check (with me, the resident rabbit expert) the fact that bunnies don't have pouches.
12:02 AM: The past hour or so has been spent watching Mama Mia, which is reasonably humourous. I'm particularly amused by the background singers/dancers and Colin Firth in the flashback Cure-esque getup. We're now taking a s'mores/cereal break. I'm nomming some Nesquik.
12:20 AM: We've extended the break from Mama Mia and are now going to play dominoes. We also drew some dinosaurs on the chalkboards. They're pretty epic and by epic I mean terrible.
1:05 AM: So we played a game of dominoes (Rebecca won) and then made some domino structures/arrangements to knock down and attempted to watch the rest of the movie but are now tired and going to go to bed. Time for the "SUMS-ber" (slumber, get it?) part of the evening, I guess.
9:00 AM: We've awoken. It took me forever to get to sleep, though. I remember being awake at 2:30. I was too hot, so I took off my sweater and my socks, which turned out to be insufficient so I took off my pants as well. I was wrapped up in a blanket, though, so my modesty and the couch's cleanliness were preserved (not to worry). I also forgot that I have to go visit some seniors today, the first visit being at 10:30. I'm really glad I remembered.
I'll be leaving soon so I think I will close this post by declaring the SUMS-ber party a success. Not sure if I would do it again, but it was fun.
10:09 PM: So we have a frisbee for entertainment purposes and we decided to assemble the s'mores on it. One thing led to another and now it's in the microwave. I'm not entirely sure whether frisbees are microwave-safe but I guess if I have to get cancer this is probably a worthwhile method.
10:21 PM: Rebecca just had to fact-check (with me, the resident rabbit expert) the fact that bunnies don't have pouches.
12:02 AM: The past hour or so has been spent watching Mama Mia, which is reasonably humourous. I'm particularly amused by the background singers/dancers and Colin Firth in the flashback Cure-esque getup. We're now taking a s'mores/cereal break. I'm nomming some Nesquik.
12:20 AM: We've extended the break from Mama Mia and are now going to play dominoes. We also drew some dinosaurs on the chalkboards. They're pretty epic and by epic I mean terrible.
1:05 AM: So we played a game of dominoes (Rebecca won) and then made some domino structures/arrangements to knock down and attempted to watch the rest of the movie but are now tired and going to go to bed. Time for the "SUMS-ber" (slumber, get it?) part of the evening, I guess.
9:00 AM: We've awoken. It took me forever to get to sleep, though. I remember being awake at 2:30. I was too hot, so I took off my sweater and my socks, which turned out to be insufficient so I took off my pants as well. I was wrapped up in a blanket, though, so my modesty and the couch's cleanliness were preserved (not to worry). I also forgot that I have to go visit some seniors today, the first visit being at 10:30. I'm really glad I remembered.
I'll be leaving soon so I think I will close this post by declaring the SUMS-ber party a success. Not sure if I would do it again, but it was fun.
SUMS Sleepover Live-Blog!
Math-like adventures have begun sooner than I expected. This can only be a good thing. Tonight, in a daring feat, Rebecca and I as well as whoever is brave enough to join us will be sleeping in the math lounge. There will be s'mores, cereal, a possible lack of hygiene (although not on my part, I plan on showering before I go) and general ridiculousness and hilarious times. In order to ensure that this is properly documented I plan to live-blog the entire event. It's going to be epic. Check back over the course of the evening/night, invisible and possibly non-existent readers of mine, for updates on the hilarity as it goes down.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Math Life
It occurs to me that I would have huge respect for someone with a Tupac-esque "MATH LIFE" tattoo on their abdominal area. Just a heads-up.
Since I last posted, I had the honour of playing board games with some of my math humans. We played Agricola, which was fun and pleasantly agricultural. Tomorrow I am going to attend a party where I will likely see more people of the math-y persuasion so I may gather more blog fodder there. This would be good for my ability to post things here.
At the gathering where we played Agricola, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a math grad student who is currently working on his thesis-y bit. It is about automata, which isn't something that I had any familiarity with. It's been a while since I got the explanation so I've unfortunately forgotten most of it. The analogy he used had something to do with the little light in a microwave, I think. I might be making that up though.
Also, Max and his coworkers may have made an unprecedented discovery in math! I live with a symmetry group pioneer!
Since I last posted, I had the honour of playing board games with some of my math humans. We played Agricola, which was fun and pleasantly agricultural. Tomorrow I am going to attend a party where I will likely see more people of the math-y persuasion so I may gather more blog fodder there. This would be good for my ability to post things here.
At the gathering where we played Agricola, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a math grad student who is currently working on his thesis-y bit. It is about automata, which isn't something that I had any familiarity with. It's been a while since I got the explanation so I've unfortunately forgotten most of it. The analogy he used had something to do with the little light in a microwave, I think. I might be making that up though.
Also, Max and his coworkers may have made an unprecedented discovery in math! I live with a symmetry group pioneer!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Consequence of Bilingual Education
I haven't posted here in a while, mostly because of the lack of newsworthy math in my life. Since I am not exactly in a position to present myself with new and crazy math and CS tidbits I have instead been reading books and attempting to improve my driving. Some of those activities have been more pleasant than others. I thought about borrowing my brother's math textbook and seeing if I can wrap my mind around math that is near where I left off but I haven't yet because I'm somewhat anxious about the results and I feel that asking for the use of the textbook in question might lead to some sort of interrogation and possibly mockery. I might still do it, though.
Thinking about my brother's math education made me think about mine, specifically the fact that (like all the rest of my pre-university schooling) it was conducted in French. Since numbers are the same in English this didn't pose too many practical problems in my everyday life. It still doesn't. I would argue that I'm able to figure out whether a smaller but cheaper container of yogurt is a better purchase than the larger, more expensive one just as well as an Ontario-educated anglophone. However, learning math in French has led to some interesting troubles with math-related vocabulary. Probably the best example of this that I have is when a girl with whom I took an extracurricular sewing class (yes, I am that cool) was telling the rest of us about some sort of To Sir With Love-type scenario in which a teacher went into a new but underprivileged school where the students were considerably behind and "didn't know what integers were". I'm sure that to the rest of the kids in my class this conveyed an accurate impression of just how deficient these children's education had been but it made me spend an awkward half-hour (or maybe week, I think I dwelt on this for a long time) wondering what one was and why I had to ask myself that question. I guess my killer googling skills hadn't developed very much at that point.
Having talked to other people who went to French school (Max, for example) about the math vocabulary situation, I've gathered that if you switch math languages partway through your education there will be a learning curve but it's not insurmountable. This is comforting as I'd still like to audit a math class this fall and it would be nice to understand at least some of it.
Thinking about my brother's math education made me think about mine, specifically the fact that (like all the rest of my pre-university schooling) it was conducted in French. Since numbers are the same in English this didn't pose too many practical problems in my everyday life. It still doesn't. I would argue that I'm able to figure out whether a smaller but cheaper container of yogurt is a better purchase than the larger, more expensive one just as well as an Ontario-educated anglophone. However, learning math in French has led to some interesting troubles with math-related vocabulary. Probably the best example of this that I have is when a girl with whom I took an extracurricular sewing class (yes, I am that cool) was telling the rest of us about some sort of To Sir With Love-type scenario in which a teacher went into a new but underprivileged school where the students were considerably behind and "didn't know what integers were". I'm sure that to the rest of the kids in my class this conveyed an accurate impression of just how deficient these children's education had been but it made me spend an awkward half-hour (or maybe week, I think I dwelt on this for a long time) wondering what one was and why I had to ask myself that question. I guess my killer googling skills hadn't developed very much at that point.
Having talked to other people who went to French school (Max, for example) about the math vocabulary situation, I've gathered that if you switch math languages partway through your education there will be a learning curve but it's not insurmountable. This is comforting as I'd still like to audit a math class this fall and it would be nice to understand at least some of it.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Fighting to the Death
I'd never played Risk before last Sunday. My brothers asked for (and received) the "2210" version a couple of Christmases ago but I never participated when they played because I wasn't particularly interested in board games that take hours. Also, it's a four-player game and the other participants were usually my two younger cousins, which would have rendered me de trop. However, last Sunday I witnessed my first game of Risk and found it sufficiently interesting to warrant playing when the opportunity presented itself over the course of the following week. Including the game that I watched on Sunday, there were three games, all of which were the Lord of the Rings version of Risk. This simultaneously makes it more fun and more emotionally traumatic. When playing I pretty much just wanted to maintain a peaceful existence and protect the Shire, which is not the point of the game.
Having awakened my latent Risk-play abilities (if not abilities, then perhaps interest), upon my return home on Monday I proposed to my brothers that they dust off their Risk set so that we could play. We did but we had to stop partway through because things got somewhat heated, so we gave it a rest and finished tonight. Eric (my youngest brother) wound up with total global domination. It was pretty obvious partway through tonight's session that that would be the end result but I refused to concede defeat and fought to the death. My last turn saw me start with only one territory (Japan) that was occupied by one valiant troop. I managed to use my three reinforcements to take two more territories but it was all over by the end of Eric's next turn.
The Risk 2210 game board is kind of interesting in that it represents the game designer's idea of what the world will look like in 200 years. It's obviously been simplified in order for there to be territories big enough to keep gamepieces on as well. Interesting geopolitical quirks include the existence of the "Exiled States of America," which are in the vicinity of Greenland.
Risk can be tied into the mathematical nature of this blog by the importance of probability in gameplay, with the rolling of dice. I like to defend using only one die because I find it really unpleasant to lose two troop pieces on one roll but it was pointed out to me that probability is more in my favour if I defend using two. My problem in a lot of strategy-type games is that I tend to let my feelings and whatnot get in the way. I also need to practice thinking in the correct patterns more.
Having awakened my latent Risk-play abilities (if not abilities, then perhaps interest), upon my return home on Monday I proposed to my brothers that they dust off their Risk set so that we could play. We did but we had to stop partway through because things got somewhat heated, so we gave it a rest and finished tonight. Eric (my youngest brother) wound up with total global domination. It was pretty obvious partway through tonight's session that that would be the end result but I refused to concede defeat and fought to the death. My last turn saw me start with only one territory (Japan) that was occupied by one valiant troop. I managed to use my three reinforcements to take two more territories but it was all over by the end of Eric's next turn.
The Risk 2210 game board is kind of interesting in that it represents the game designer's idea of what the world will look like in 200 years. It's obviously been simplified in order for there to be territories big enough to keep gamepieces on as well. Interesting geopolitical quirks include the existence of the "Exiled States of America," which are in the vicinity of Greenland.
Risk can be tied into the mathematical nature of this blog by the importance of probability in gameplay, with the rolling of dice. I like to defend using only one die because I find it really unpleasant to lose two troop pieces on one roll but it was pointed out to me that probability is more in my favour if I defend using two. My problem in a lot of strategy-type games is that I tend to let my feelings and whatnot get in the way. I also need to practice thinking in the correct patterns more.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Math Party
Yesterday I attended a housewarming party in honour of two of my friends' new apartment. One of them is actually in math and the other one thinks/pretends that she is. While getting my drunkpants on at this party, which was attended by a bunch of other math-type humans, I realised what one of my favourite things is about people in math. I really like how they integrate math terms into everyday conversation. This is probably not unique to the mathematically inclined but doing it with math words seems to have a certain... tang. This realisation came about when one of the partygoers referred to the number of people that she has dated as her relationship experience set. I liked it a lot.
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