Our paper is done.

With some last minute footnote changes we were done today. I found working with others stressful and feel we did not do our best. This is the beginning of working with others on papers.

The model is done and I am just writing it up this morning.

I am doing my final write up of the labour contract model now. I wrote it in pen and ink and now must add it to the computer file.

I am working on our term paper this morning.

I am working on a term paper for our economic design course. I have not been doing much work and need to do more now. We will have a final modeling session this afternoon.

I wrote my final exam in applied probability today.

I wrote my final exam in applied probability today. I did not do a perfect exam. I did pass I am sure.

Organizing my applied probability course notes.

I made an excel sheet to account the notes from my probability course. I reviewed lectures # 1 and #2 for the last time. I also double checked the solution technique. I should also study random sums and random expectations. I have about 24 lectures in total to review. My exam is on Friday this week. I have about 1 more hour today to study and may be an hour after work before I sleep. Then an hour or two Wednesday morning and then may be 4 or 5 hours Wednesday night. I should be able to review lectures #3 and #4 this morning. Lectures #5 through #8 tomorrow morning. Lectures #9 through #16 or #18 Wednesday evening. Then the final 6 lectures on Thursday evening. That will be my study plan then.

I wrote the SYS5140 economic systems design 2007 final exam last night.

I am home basically relaxing by installing Linux software and creating Linux disks. I wrote the exam and we looked at a model of an economy. I wrote about three pages for an answer. I stayed for the full exam as did all the other students.

Everything is packed for the exam in 2 hours.

I have everything packed in my knapsack and ready to go. I just need to pack my laptop now and I am ready to go.

My sympathies go out today to the students and staff and families at Virginia Tech.

I am deeply sad about the shootings that happened today on a US University campus. This is awful news.

I am calling it a night again.

I am done with studying for Sunday and it is early Monday morning now. I will sleep and hopefully be writing my exam about 9 hours into my day Monday. This should be the best time of day to write the exam.

I reviewed example cases and example answers to these cases.

The professor posted example cases and now answers to these cases. The answers are point form analysis perhaps with diagrams of the cases. I may need a diagram software or instead a piece of paper to help with my own exam answer. I will be writing the exam on this laptop.

I reviewed lecture #5 notes just now and the workshop lecture #6 notes. I am half way through the course material now in my exam study review.

I reviewed the lecture #5 notes just now. This was mostly about social systems. I also reviewed the notes from our workshop in week 6. In this workshop we learned to use Stella.

I reviewed chapter 16 of Beinhocker's now for lecture #5

Beinhocker in his chapter 16 looks at organizations and in particular companies to see how they adapt to changes in the marketplace. He suggests strong organizational culture with positive values will work well. He also compares and contrasts older and younger workers on their basis of adaptability. He looks at R&D a little as skunk works or little research projects researching new products. This chapter was the second reading for lecture #5.

I reviewed chapter 8 of Beinhocker now.

I reviewed chapter 8 of Beinhocker which covers stock markets and patterns in economic data. He presents some findings about order books which I can understand having spent a few days in a day trading firm locally. This is the first of two chapters of Beinhocker used in lecture #5.

I reviewed lecture #4's notes just now.

I reviewed lecture #4's notes just now. The lecture covers networks briefly and then has a lot about data mining but only really neural networks, genetic algorithms and simulated annealing. I am not happy with knowing data mining or, in fact, I may have difficulty with implementing data mining.

I am calling it a night.

I am loosing focus and becoming tired. I will continue studies for economic systems design tomorrow. For now I am going to sleep. I am almost done with lecture #4 now.

I read the Bar-Yam chapter 2 on neural networks just now.

This reading too I have not read completely this past term. I reviewed it just now as it was a required reading for lecture #4.

I reviewed Beinhocker's chapter 7 now for lecture #4.

I have now reviewed Beinhocker's chapter on networks. I realised I had not read this chapter completely during the school term before lecture #4 and was missing some key issues that came up about networks in the lectures. I reviewed this just now.

I would like to complete reading and reviewing lectures #5 and #6 by midnight and then sleep when that is done.

I just quickly reviewed the power point lecture notes now for lecture #3.

I have completed my review of lecture #3 now. This also covered dynamic systems but included some other material on chaos theory and its material.

I reviewed the other required reading for lecture #3.

I read the other reading for lecture #3. This covered dynamic equations based on mostly the quadratic differential equation. This lead to chaos in some cases.

I just reviewed the Beinhocker chapter for lecture #3.

I read chapter 5 in Beinhocker just now. I don't actually read the whole chapter but read the beginning sentence of each paragraph and then maybe a few more sentences. This chapter was about dynamics and non-linear systems. I now will read some other author's reading dynamics and chaos.

I reviewed the professor's lecture notes now for lecture #2.

I was able to review the lecture notes just now for lecture #2. Mostly he covers the Bowles chapter 2 in his notes. I am now moving on to lecture #3.

I reviewed chapter 2 of Bowles now.

This is the key chapter in the course which sets up evolutionary stable strategies as a concept and also set this concept and most of the book into the context of economics.

Also in this chapter are the segregation models, the hawk dove game, the bourgeois games both pure and contested ;and in this chapter he introduces non-best-responses.

I was slowing down with studies and watched hockey on TV and napped.

I slowed down after reading chapter 4 and went shopping for supper. I also looked at bike parts at the local pro shop and said hi to someone I know who works there. I came home and tried to read chapter 9 but got tired reading it. I watched a fair amount of hockey as Ottawa lost to Pittsburgh. I just now completed reading chapter 9 of Beinhocker and am moving on to chapter 2 of Bowles. My studies pace is quickening.

I reviewed chapter 4 now of Beinhocker for lecture #2.

I reviewed the first chapter of Beinhocker that is chapter 4 that goes with the second lecture. This was mostly about sugarscape in detail. There is another chapter still to review from Beinhocker for this lecture.

I reviewed all the notes now for lecture #1.

I have now gotten briefly through all the lecture power point slides for lecture #1.

I reviewed Bowles chapter 1 just now.

Chapter 1 of Bowles was also assigned reading for lecture #1. I have reviewed this chapter now. He introduces game theory in great detail and sets game theory into the field of economics.

I reviewed Lecture #1's Beinhocker reading which was chapter 10.

I briefly reviewed chapter 10 in Beinhocker. He covers the prisoners dilemma, the sugarspace simulation and then looks at the library of babel or the library of Smith.

I am just printing out final copies of lecture notes and organizing my lecture notes for SYS5140.

I am just printing lecture notes for my economics course. I have started to review lecture #1 today which involves the introduction of game theory.

I handed in my random walk programs.

I completed my random walk program printouts just on time to catch a bus to our last lecture. I did not include 1 dimensional random walks. I also did not include 4 dimensional square walking. I now have a couple of days to submit the regular assignment. I was just working on it now and sorted out two more problems.

So my progress report...I have two problems fully solved. I have another problem almost completely solved except for the final general form. I also have another problem involving extinction probabilities for a Poisson branching process solved except for the calculation of the ultimate extinction probability. The next problem after that is another ultimate extinction probability for a geometric branching process. Then I have a limiting distribution problem which we learned to solve in last afternoon's lecture.

I made the R programs output better graphs and am just doing final print outs now of the 12 walks.

I will hand in the 12 random walks today. I have 7 printed out now with labels on graphs and code for each program. I will do the 1 dimensional walks rather quickly but the last 3 dimensional is taking some time and the two 4 dimensional will take a long time to run on the computer too. These are running on my laptop but I will do a writeup now on my desktop computer.

I solved another half problem just now.

I solved a problem with finding an just now. The second half of this problem is to verify a formula. Then I have five more problems to solve before tomorrow. I will return to schoolwork after work today at 3:30.

Assignment #3 solutions.

I briefly read the professor's solutions to assignment # 3 and I seem to have done each problem correctly. I may have scored 100% on this assignment. This is motivating me to complete assignment #4 now.

I completed the other half of the exercise now. So two exercises are now done.

I have now completed the second half of a problem concerning communicating classes of a markov chain transition probability matrix. What we do is this: "For state we evaluate for all . and any and at the same time evaluate for any . If we can show that for any and also that for any we have shown that the states and communicate. This allows us to establish which states communicate and then grouping all states by ability to communicate allows us to establish the different classes of states.

I read some of this week's required readings.

I read one of two of this week's required readings for my economics course. I also borrowed some books on bargaining games but so far after reading some of these I find they are not close to our topic. I also borrowed a book about Joan of Arc.

I have another half problem solved now.

I now know how to solve four problems out of eight. I have one problem done except for a final edit. I also have half of a second problem now done and know how to solve the other half. Again this problem had answers in the back of the book which helped steer my learning. I now know about communicating classes, and communicating states. I have not done any further work on the two branching process questions that are easy but both also have answers in the back of the book. Of course, these answers could be wrong and this type of teaching namely assigning problems, where the answers are in the back of the textbook is common with these probability professors. I know I can do this work.

I am only staying up for another five hours. I do mean to go to the university of Ottawa library this morning to read this week's required reading for our economics systems design course tomorrow. Tomorrow will be our last lecture. I will just check the hours of the library and then go to school now. I also want to borrow a book on error measurement or at least look at it.

I have 1 problem from assignment #4 solved and typeset and another solved in my head.

It took some reading of the textbook but I solved one problem and type set it now. I used our lectures on transient states and recurrent states and then the theorem about this in the book and solved the first problem. I also used the text book to solve another problem but have not actually calculated the solution yet or typeset this problem yet. For both problems the answers are in the back of the book but I still need to show in my answers how to get to the answers in the back of the book.

I did read a little more economics but need to get to work on assignment #4 now.

I need to start some code for my assignment #4 now

I have 12 working programs now and will rest this work for the day.

I have the two 1 dimensional random walk programs coded now and they were really coded last week but I generalized my code a little and started to write the standard comments for these programs. I then posed the problem below and sent an e-mail to our professor asking him to read my weighted 3 dimensional walk problem. I only now need to write two more programs of the 14. So I have 12 programs now. For the final two I only need to create a 4 dimensional square walk program and then split it into an interactive version and a non-interactive version. Then later today or tomorrow when this coding is done I will only need to proof read the comments in these programs and e-mail the files for the programs to the professor.

Code testing completed.

I needed to adjust the iterations down to 500 for the interactive plots for the 4 dimensional random walk but now all ten programs have tested as working at least once. I now realize I do not need four 1 dimensional random walks and in 1 dimension there is no diagonal v square walking. So for 1 dimension I just need an interactive and non interactive walk meaning I need only 14 programs.

I am tempted to make a 3 dimensional random walk that walks to all points in an origin centered cube. In other words the next step can be any combination of for any of the three axis. Thus giving 6 choices with walking towards a face, 8 choices of walking to a corner, and 12 choices of walking to an edge. This could be or in my alternative version we would weight the probability based on the vector length of the walk. The probability would be inversely related to the vector length of the step. Thus setting the probability of walking to a face as unity with probability and then set the others to the inversion of their vector lengths. Thus walking along a diagonal would be walking to an edge and would have a probability of and walking to a corner would have probability .

Then a basic law of probability would be used to create this equation which would solve for

.

The 3 dimensional walks have all worked now

I needed to leave the laptop alone and not multi-task while the R code ran for the non-interactive 100000 step random walk and then the code worked. I have some ideas for more work but I am ready to test the 4 dimensional code I have and must get working now on the regular assignment #4. I also have three household tasks to complete today.

3 dimensional walks not working.

The first of the 3 dimensional 100000 iteration non-interactive walks crashed R. This means so far 5 out of 6 programs have worked alright. I will continue testing now.

Testing yesterday's R code for the Bonus assignment.

I just tested all four 2 dimensional walks and they run fine. I will post these for download on my Crystal Computing web site and perhaps also my cyborgcitizen web site. But I won't do this until May 1st when the course is over. I am now testing the four three dimensional random walks.

I have almost completed reading Bowles' third chapter now.

I have read more of Bowles today. I read about his account of the ultimatum game. Beinhocker also described the results from experimenting with this game. The basic thesis that results is that people like fair games over their preference to self interest. This is apparently universal throughout the globe and in different levels of civilizations.

Random walk programming continues for the past two or three days.

I did more programming in R this past few days. I did get square axis walking done yesterday and also got three dimensions and four dimensions done. I slept on this work and am examining it today as I test my ten programs.

I now have successful random walks in 1, 2, 3, and 4 dimensions and have interactive plots for 1, 2, and 3 dimensions stable for runs of 1000 steps. I can not get a stable interactive plot in 4 dimensions. I also tried diagonal and axis walking random walks. This should be 4 walks with both diagonal and axis walking for 8 walks but for each walk I have an interactive and non-interactive walk for total of 16 R programs. I have 11 done now and must do three more 1 dimensional walks and 2 more 4 dimensional walks. The interactive walks plot the steps at each step and the non interactive draw a plot at the end of the walk showing the path of the walk after all steps are taken.

I attended all lectures this week.

I attended two probability lectures where we learned branching processes. We needed to use generating functions for this. We also are now covering the fundamental markov theorem. We are also looking at limiting distributions for markov chains.

In my other course we looked at a model in Bowles for three person games describing the rise of agriculture and sharing and punishing in an extension of the solution of the hawk dove game and looked at the so called bourgeois strategy solution to this new game. I think anything that dictates a strategy is not a bourgeois strategy but certainly owning property which dictates the bourgeois strategy can be interpreted as a position of wealth that dictates a strategy. Thus our modeling of labour negotiations which is dependent on worker efforts might be called the hard workers/shirking worker strategy and has polar opposite effects on workers and management but then in Bowles model effort would not be monitorable so would lead to disagreements at the bargaining table as too whether workers were working too hard for too little for the workers to bargain in good faith or too little for the costs the employer endures or too hard for the money the employer pays.

I completed a successful programming session again.

I now have the R code done for a 2 dimensional random walk. It took about 2 hours to get the coding from a 1 dimensional simulation to a 2 dimensional simulation. The problem now is that R crashes when running the for loop 100,000 times. If I take the plot statement outside the loop the code executes alright and we get a return to the origin in one run of n=7 times.