"On consequences of studying too much"
If you study in Butler on the 3rd floor you might have seen me around. The following picture was taken by a friend when I was just physically there. As a piece of advice don't do it! There is more to life than sleeping in Butler. Though some argue that if this sleeping results in getting late to a class it might have some merits.
Anyway if you ever thought sleeping in Butler is a good thing to do or you "have to" do it give me a call. I might be able to suggest better alternatives.
Also feel free to send suggestions I sometimes need them. (who am I kidding: I always need them)
By the way this link is here for Margaret she needed a link to her webpage!
A day in the life of a grad-student...
(courtesy of http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/grad.day with a little change. Will be revised more)
6:30 Wakeup and lie awake in Bed
6:31 Realize you spent $18 on last night's dinner,
means no eating out for the next 6 weeks
6:32 Hit snooze button. Go back to sleep.
7:00 Wake up suddenly with heart in mouth when you
realize you didn't hit the snooze button--you turned it off.
7:01 fall asleep again.
7:44 Wake up with heart in mouth again.
7:45 Ready to go to school, will shave tomorrow,
will eat early brunch at
(Denny's/Penny's/Lenny's/Dinko's whatever
cafeteria).
8:03 Arrive at school
Realize your officemate arrived earlier
today must have got more work done
8:04 Pass by Advisor's office, chat with Secretary to
find out if he is coming in today. He is, darn.
Need to start work on the draft due this afternoon.
8:15 Read electronic mail
8:20 Delete mail from students taking XYZ123
regarding questions about the class.
(Hate/Love) your TA job.
Depression: too much work to do today
9:00 For jumpstart: go to Pepsi machine.
9:05 Kick Pepsi machine; promise yourself to call up
the company and ask for your money back.
Wonder why they would believe you.
9:33 Start printing out loads of stuff that may be
vaguely related to your work.
9:41 Early morning stupefaction.
Mutter racist comments to yourself about your
officemate.
9:43 Curse your officemate in a low tone he would not
comprehend.
Feel good about him not grasping English well.
9:58 Finger everyone in the department and most
people half way around the world (using the "finger"
command, of course)
10:19 Feel sleepy, should not have stayed late playing
Tetris last night.
10:31 momentary panic attack!!!!!!!!!!!!
10:43 edit .plan file. write a shell program to edit .plan
more easily
10:59 Drop in at advisor's office and borrow something
you don't need & and kinda make him aware you are working
hard on your project.
11:05 perverted daydreams
11:11 read electronic news
mid-morning yawn time
11:34 Start typing junk at a very high key-in rate to
pretend you are working hard as your advisor passes by
from outside.
11:35 Press the Backspace key for one and a half
minute until all the garbage you typed in is erased.
Realize that you can type more than 256
characters per half minute
11:41 Flirt with the new girl in the department
11:45 Print out some slides for afternoon's draft +
presentation
11:47 Print them again, you forgot to change the date
from last presentation
11:49 Print another copy in case this one gets lost
11:51 Completely forget about suing the coffee-
machine company
12:15 Hunger pangs:
12:20 Big Mac/Fries time
Drink a not-so-cold generic can of cola from your
desk. Ch-Ching, you just saved 35 cents by buying bulk
cola.
1:00 Group Meeting with advisor
1:14 sudden awareness of one's shallowness
resentment towards officemate for
sucking up to your advisor
Get reminded by your advisor that you need to do
some more work for your literature survey.
1:51 Advisor hands you the reddened copy of your
draft for corrections
1:51:02 The 49 second urge to murder advisor begins!!
1:51:52 Realize that he controls your
assistantship/grade/graduation
possibility/graduation date/all job
opportunities/and the rest of your life.
1:52:53 Thank him
1:52:54 Thank yourself for not saying something
stupid to your advisor.
1:53:00 splitting headache #1
1:59 Check electronic mail, don't reply though, you are
too busy to do that
2:06 More generic cola
2:17 Oh No, it is my turn to cook tonite :-(
2:30 Sit through the class you were told to sit through
2:39 Look outside the window make unrealistic plans
to quit this degree program and take up a job.
Wonder why blonde girls are so pretty.
2:48 More perverted day-dreams.
Close the office door and open a few .gif files.
sharpen pencil
3:06 worry about never graduating
time to write a letter--NOT! no time for that.
rearrange desk
call up bank; see if you have any money
fear of losing aid next Fall
Read latex manuals to figure out how to put
&$%&% in %$^% format
3:43 watch the clock
make plans to do a all-nighter tonite
Vow to watch only 2 TV programs
4:58 Notice Advisor leave
4:58:01 Sudden sense of freedom
Go home for quick, short dinner break.
9:00pm Come into the office
9:01pm The hard working grad student you are, you have
to come to the office late at night to "get the work done"
9:03 Check electronic mail
Decide it would be a good time to attack those ftp
sites since network wont be loaded
Run into "since network wont be loaded" traffic
and get the pictures into your machine.
Compress all unwanted research/class directories
to make space.
Back up all your pictures
10:11 Admire pictures
Begin work; Realize you need references
Realize its too late today to go to the library
Sudden feeling of having wasted the day
10:49 Sudden feeling of possibly having to waste the
night Decide to turn in early and come back very early
tomorrow morning
Decide to play a Tetris on the system to put
yourself in a good mood.
11:15 Play game after game after game to improve your
score and get on the scoreboard.
Realize that your officemate is still at number 6,
two notches above you on the scoreboard.
12:20 Play until you beat your officemate into the 7th
place. A sense of achievement!! Yes, today was not
wasted!! Return home to find your roommate watching
David Letterman reruns on NBC. Tell him about the "hard
working grad student day you had"
Discuss philosophy with roommate
1:09 Think about becoming a philosopher and dining
with 4 others
(The Dining Philosophers problem, hee hee :-)
(Comp Sci joke)
Argue with him about politics, why people prefer
Japanese cars and whether it is better to set the heat to "hot"
or "cold" to defrost the windshields faster.
1:49 Realize neither of you have bought milk today
Get reminded of the "too much milk problem"
2:04 Forget about getting up early. Turn the phone
ringer off and go to sleep.
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Chemistry Exam
(Origins of the Legend http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/hell.asp)
"Is Hell exothermic (radiates heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?" Support your answer with a proof.
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
(1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
(2) Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Theresa Banyan during my Freshman year, that "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then (2) cannot be true and so Hell is exothermic.
The student got the only A
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The Unsolvable Math Problem
George B. Dantzig, (IEOR students you should now this guy) then a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a statistics class one day and found two problems written on the board. Not knowing they were examples of "unsolvable" statistics problems, he solved them as a homework assignment. Dantzig, who later became a staff mathematician at Stanford University, recounted his solving two "unsolvable" problems in a 1986 interview for College Mathematics Journal, and his solutions to the two problems can be found in the journal articles.
Or in Dantzig's own words:
(http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Dantzig_George.html)
During my first year at Berkeley I arrived late one day to one of Neyman's classes. On the blackboard were two problems which I assumed had been assigned for homework. I copied them down. A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework - the problems seemed to be a little harder to do than usual. I asked him if he still wanted the work. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever.
About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o'clock, Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door. It was Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: "I've just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication." For a minute I had no idea what he was talking about. To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard which I had solved thinking they were homework were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics. That was the first inkling I had that there was anything special about them.
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