I have completed more than half of the first assignment now.

I solved some interval problems for uniform random variables. I was going crazy trying to draw on the computer a semi circle in the cartesian plane. Instead I described the problem with words. I now have 5 Q's done and 3 Q's to still complete. I may try to do two more this morning. Right now I am going to shave for work today.

Learning more French

I am starting a French course this week coming up. It is a government sponsored course. It will be 7.5 hours one week and 5 hours the next week for about nine weeks.

Homework progress.

The first two Q' are done now. I will now try to complete the other 6 Q's this morning.

Other government work applied for.

I have been working now for more than a month in the government. I have applied since then to work with federal parolees in a downtown Ottawa office.

Graduate school orientation four days later.

I did attend the graduate school orientation. It was in an ultra modern computer science building. I met the director Tet Yeap and the other students. Many students are from China. There are two other mathematics students in our program. Which reminds me I paid my dues to the Canadian Mathematics Society again this year 2006. Wow, only 9 months late.

The new school library.

I had a tour of the new library and used the Sun Computer, Sun Ray machines to search the libray catalogue for books by Churchman whom my mother reminded me was a systems theorist. I borrowed two of his books. The only other time I have used this library was to borrow a book on our reading list for my drug law course in fall 2004. That was two years ago. I read one of his books about the enemies of systems theory while walking around my neighbourhood like a true scholar, walk and read at the same time.

I completed another problem in my first assignment just now in LaTeX.

I just typeset another problem from my first assignment in MAT2371 in LaTeX. This involved complements and intersections and unions of two sets and the associated formula for probability of union and intersection. I have taught this formula before to engineers. The assignment is due on September 21st. But I want to submit it next week. I have six problems left to complete. I know I can solve each one.

I have completed one problem of 8 for my first assignment.

Earlier this morning I completed a problem using LaTeX to typeset my answer. The problem is the first in my basic probability course. It was very simple. I have to have this problem set done by September 21st at 8:30 AM.

The next three days.

I will be attending graduate school orientation this morning. I was just reviewing the schedule of events. I was comparing it with the schedule for a conference I am going to attend parts of these next three days. The conference is the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) Conference – Ottawa 2006. The Chief statistican of Canada will speak there. With my present schedule I may be able to hear him close the conference on Friday but will not hear him speak this morning.

I will try to attend two afternoon sessions later today at the conference. But more important today is attending the full orientation session at the U of O. I will attend an address by the director of the school, a library tour, and some introduction session to the computing facilities at the University of Ottawa SITE location. I may stay for lunch too and then simply attend the conference later in the day after the orientation. Tomorrow I have my first class and then I can attend a session at the conference after class and then go to work. I can then try to wake up for 6 or 7 am Friday and attend the whole last day of the conference and then work in the evening Friday.

I have my first class this Thursday.

I have my first class this Thursday. I need to buy a binder which I plan to buy later today. I have paper for the binder. I wonder if I will bring a computer to the class and keep notes on a computer? I could prepare some LaTeX files from a lecture notes template. I could do this for every class in graduate school. Or could I? May be this morning I will design a basic lecture note template. I will look odd but the embarassment of being the only student with a laptop will not affect me much. So far laptops in class have not improved my marks but instead made my marks in those classes where I used a computer or brought a laptop every day to be lower marks.

I am still waiting for my textbook to be delivered. I don't have any other school books on order right now. I have though been buying entertainment items which I contend are different from school books. I don't consider school books to be entertainment items in a budget.

I have ordered a used copy of the textbook for MAT2371.

I used Amazon.ca to order a used copy of the textbook for MAT2371. It has been shipped now from my own province so should be here in days. I plan to start reading it soon. I did not work through the first two chapters of problems in the two probability books I have. I did read the first chapter of each book though. I still need to read the second chapters and also do all the exercises in these first two chapters in these two books. I had hoped to be done the exercises in the first three chapters in both books by next weekend.

Gail Ivanoff professor of mathematics university of Ottawa

The professor for my fall course is Gail Ivanoff who teaches mathematics at the university of Ottawa. She emailed all the students in the class and I replied this morning. After doing this I set up my email signature for my university of Ottawa email address.

Course outline and solutions to last years course assignments.

I checked out the professors web pages for the course I am studying this fall. I was able to understand the solutions to the assignments from last year. I am set to buy the course textbook in the next few days.

I got into an interesting email discussion about social navigation with AOIR people on the email list.

I responded to a basic question about social networks by rephrasing as social navigation and spinning it with a questioning of capitalism and it worked a brief discussion ensued on the AOIR email list. It was very interesting and brilliant to read some replies.

I listened to podcast #1 from the Centre For Internet And Society

I have copied and pasted from iTunes for the first time a podcast decription. The description of this podcast is below and I have formated it for blogspot. I am listening to this Podcast as I type this post. I wonder if this is lazy scholarship or just me and my technological tools being used for study.

Sony's latest Digital Rights Management (DRM)-endeavour earned a charge of “fraud, false advertising, trespass and the violation of state and federal statutes prohibiting malware, and unauthorized computer tampering”. The technology installs, unnoticed by the user, a piece of software that prevents consumers from unauthorised copying, is able to monitor and report user behaviour back to the firm and, accidentally, holds the door wide open for Trojans. Under other circumstances one would be tempted to describe such a strategy a hostile “spy at-tack”. In case of Sony BMG, this seems to be part of a business model to sell digital music to consumers. The talk will have a closer look at the charges of the EFF and a Californian lawyer against Sony BMG‚s latest DRM strategy. The Sony BMG case adds a number of interesting new dimensions to the ‘DRM and Consumer' debate. The talk will explain why the case is so important, also against the background of similar recent case law in Europe, and why it points into an entirely new direction of talking about DRM.

About the Speaker: Natali Helberger is Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam. Dr. Helberger is managing legal partner to the INDICARE project. INDICARE (Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of Rights Management Solutions in Europe) is a project co-funded by the European Commission. The objective of INDICARE is to address issues regarding consumer acceptability of digital rights management solutions; identify obstacles and suggest solutions. At the moment, she is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

I have been officially a graduate student for about half a day now.

About twelve hours including one work day ago I registered for graduate school and received my student card. I will focus a fair amount of time now over night studying. I will read about getting a computer account and sign up for one. I will also be reading graduate school info documents on the U of O web site. I will also spend some time advancing my probability studies and will write some probability problems into LaTeX and their solutions. I still hope to work through the basics by Sunday. I still have a goal of completing the second chapters of two textbooks by Sunday. I may not be able to solve all the problems but that is also the goal.

I narrowed my reading fields in the past four weeks.

I need to focus more on reading statistics. In the past two mornings I have read basic probability in two school textbooks reviewing what I have studied since 1981. I will be studying an advanced basic probability course this fall term. I also focused on social naviagtion studies some more and was impressed when I read some studies but I was a bit manic and tired and wired when I was impressed. I have lost a lot of study time in my new work schedule and will continue to loose this time. I have also read some recovery and self care literature. I have also heard some original folk and world music in the past weekend. I have also taken up reading Bruce Lee the martial artist. I am also reading about communication, command, and control systems engineering and design. Most of my studies are graduate school preparation now. But I must also expand my career devlopment activities at Statistics Canada and may be studying French this fall at work. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays will be French studies and Tuesdays and Thursdays will be probability studies.

I used Bluefish a little on the Linux laptop.

I started up Bluefish on the Linux laptop. It is the programming editor that came with the Debian Gnome desktop. I started an R code file and just wrote some header info comments and really did not solve any problems. I will now read some probability books before sleeping.

Still studying the information age. I want to study some C++ programming on a Linux machine now.

I was just reading the beginning of a US military book on the information age. But was inspired to start up my Linux laptop and study some C++ programming from a book I have been reading on C++ programming. Whether I actually follow through on that is very improbable.

Studies on the job involve quality v quantity.

I am working with other graduates. Many have studied at Carleton too. We need to maintain quality but manage to produce quantity. This is really a new work philosophy for me coming from security work and teaching where quantity and quality are not so obvious. It is an old topic and quantity v. quality in academics is more like quantitative v qualitative research methods.