Studying with others is working better in graduate school.

We have formalized our group now with three students myself included. We will critique the 8th chapter of Bowles concerning the labour market. We will try to simulate the equations Bowles presents in his book in chapter 8 and then report our findings and also critique his chapter, assumptions and models.

With another student, who is a former professor of mathematics from China I have been studying Markov Chains and we completed solving all exercise and problems from chapter III section 1 of our Introduction to Stochastic Modeling textbook for our applied probability course. This is the Markov Chains chapter. We also study together about economic systems where over two study sessions in the past week we have reviewed lectures and readings systematically from the beginning of our course in economic systems design to prepare for our mid-term exam next week. Tonight to end our study session I searched out Markov Process books in the University of Ottawa library. We then scanned the table of contents of these books at the end of our two hour session. I also borrowed one book titled Markov Processes for Physical Scientists.

I also borrowed a cyber culture reader book edited by David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy.

The third book I borrowed this evening is a book on error correcting codes and other topics in mathematical coding and information theory, which the professor in applied probability had touched on during one lecture as a side topic. Another student engaged me in a brief discussion of error correcting codes as we left class that day and I have not seen her since. She was also a student in the introduction to probability course with me last term. The reason I mention her is that in both courses we both spoke/speak up frequently in class in answer to the professor's questions.