On to New York

Went to Friday classes. Friday is my shortest class day; I only have two classes on Friday as opposed to three on Monday and Wednesday.

In Dr. N's class, he was busy introducing the probability mass function and cumulative distribution function. This is old hat for me; my other classes reinforce these concepts. However, I could see the rest of the class scratching their heads.

Indeed, I feel sorry for any young junior or sophomore introduced to the concepts of probability for the first time -- Dr. N's English skills just aren't good enough to get him through the class. Oh, he can speak English. And he can understand it. He just can't figure out the best, most clear English explanations for hard to understand topics. Most of his lecture was very theoretical (including a proof of E(aX + b) = aE(X) + b).

As it turns out, the median score of his quiz on Wednesday was a 7 out of 15 points. I got a 12 out of it, two points loss for carelessness and one point lost for not understanding a crucial concept. (It should have been the other way around). The "crucial" concept was that in a case where you have three different colored balls, having "all balls of different colors" is NOT the compliment of "all balls of the same color". I just feel sorry for all of those sophomores and juniors -- Multivariable Calculus ain't gonna help them now.

As for Dr. S's class -- well, he hasn't graded the tests. What the point of that class was, I don't know. We talked about test taking strategies, and I only learned one thing I didn't know already -- it would be a good idea in Exam P to RANK questions you skip for difficulty, so that when you return after answering all the easy ones, you don't assume that all (temporarily) unanswered questions are created equal.

And...get this...Dr. S. admitted that he hadn't taken Exam FM. I think there were a few people who might have gasped. You would think that someone teaching an actuarial science course -- even someone whose college major was not actuarial science -- would have at least taken the first three exams. As far as the students were concerned, if you hadn't taken the actuarial exams as an instructor, you literally did not know what you were talking about in class.

I'm not going to worry about this class much anymore, and instead focus on solving example questions from the Exam P manual by ACTEX.

There was a study group meeting today at 1pm, but I will no longer attend. Not only were the bastards not there when I showed up last Friday, but I don't think there's much to be gained about discussing problems when I can do most of them on my own. So that should free up some time for me; now all I need is the sticktoitiveness to use that time wisely.

BTW, there will probably not be any entries until Tuesday or Wednesday. Off to New York to attend plays, museums, and "Letterman" on Monday in the audience. My wife and I were rather disappointed, however, to find that Monday's Letterman guests would be Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives, which neither of us have watched, and "NASCAR winner" (the Daytona 500 is being held this weekend -- I think). Our only hope for entertainment from Dave's guests is if the winner of the Daytona is Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt Jr. or some suitably colorful personality. With our luck, "NASCAR winner" will be some first-time winner with the charisma of a flat tire.