Just for fun

There’s been a lot of things stressing me out lately, and I don’t have energy to tell you all about it. Instead lets talk about a few things that are fun.

Several months ago, one of my oldest and best friends pointed me to the very fun and simple Guess My Word. You can play Joon’s word and Mike’s word daily. Thanks, Debgpi!

A friend recently published a game (for iOS, Android and Blackberry) called Swapagon. It’s free, try it out. I was a beta-tester for it! Swapagon is reviewed here.

For at least one day of spring break, we went and enjoyed one of Texas’ lovely state parks: Pedernales Falls. We went mountain biking and geocaching in the park. We didn’t swim this time, and I also didn’t slip and fall in one of the pools by the falls. (Guess what happened last time?)

On the way to Pedernales Falls, we stopped and had dinner with a friend who actually reads this blog. I am always surprised and honored to find that friends actually stop by and read what I write.

Today I had lunch with one of my former students. I am glad I have a few who like to keep up with me! I enjoy her joie de vivre, and I am very proud of what she’s accomplished.

Posted in fun

Feminism

There’s a meme that goes around on my Facebook feed in which someone has her (or his) picture taken holding a sign that says, “I need feminism because …”

I used to sympathise with the camp that believes feminism is a dirty word. I believed it is anti-male. I thought that battle is over and won, so what are you women still complaining for?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the battle is by no means over and won. Progress has been made. But women still have an absurdly hard time making it into leadership positions. Viagra is health care, but birth-control is a religious issue. Strange how the math department has only 10% women on tenure track, but 80% in the the lecturer faculty ranks. You don’t want to get me started on trans-vaginal ultrasounds. Being pro-feminism has nothing to do with being anti-male and everything to do with believing women are humans, not inferior humans, but equal humans.

I’ve been reading Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price, part Western, part palace-intrigue, and 100% reverse sexism. Funny how the changed perspective makes things I normally take for granted all the more obvious.

This reminded me of another essay, Douglas Hofstadter’s
A Person Paper on Purity in Language, that turns gendered language into racist language. (The link is to a transcription of the entire article; go read it.)

There’s a note at the bottom of the Hofstadter piece above about a work by Bobbye Sorrels Persing and her story, A Tale of Two Sexes. I’d like to read that. A Google search led me to Why are there so few female computer scientists?
and Barriers to women in science and engineering. All these pieces are a bit dated. All of them speak loudly to the things I see today.

This brings up my disappointments with my own career. Did I ever really have a chance in math? I’m no Emmy Noether. And I’m not terrible at it. I know I’ve made many mistakes. I still feel like I’ve been shortchanged of many opportunities I should have had. Crying about it won’t do any good, but I sure hope we can change things for the next generation. Our female students, whom I’ve noted are consistently at the top of the class, deserve an opportunity to perform to their full potential, and to be appreciated as productive and complete human beings even they aren’t super stars. There’s a hell of a lot of excellent work done in academia by people who aren’t stars.

Sometimes we even get to see some small steps of progress, like this one. A Dad made it for his little girl: Donkey Kong, Princess-as-Hero Edition

Rats, foiled again!

Last spring break we wanted to go to the Texas Geocaching Challenge. The weather turned cold and rainy, and we bailed. This spring break the weather is again predicting cold and rainy, and we are bailing out on a trip to Tyler State Park. We might go later in the week when the weather clears up. And stay in a motel where we won’t care if it is rainy and cold. Pfui.

Maybe it is for the best. Last night we both started thinking about our work and our taxes. When the hell am I going to find time to file my taxes? Tomorrow when the weather is bad, that’s when.

Today I ran across this article: The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble. It made me laugh because I’ve run across this ego-bound behavior before, as, I think, do all single women in their 30s. The pass from the 60-something (and frequently married) man, often successful in his career, who thinks that you are going to just fall all over yourself for his attention. To whom I want to comment, “a 30 year age gap is a big gap, guys.” Let’s not even get into the married-to-someone-else issue. The men just don’t understand this; they are aghast to hear no for an answer.

Relationships with a big age difference can work, I’m a fair amount older than my partner. (But not 30 years older!) It’s the arrogance here that chafes/amuses me. At least the guy in the NY Times story was divorced already.

Almost Spring Break

…and man am I tired.

It looks like my REU responsibilities will be less for a while, which is good, because I’m still the idiot-in-charge of the MiniFair (Department’s Open House) on April 20, and there is a lot of neglected work on that front to be addressed.

May I complain for a minute? I am tired of working 60 hours a week. Of giving up evenings and weekend days. I probably shouldn’t get into the low pay and lack of respect. Lecturing at a research university … stuck in the “female ghetto” (80% of lecturers are female). The lecturers constitute most of the women employed as permanent faculty in the department, the lowest paid, the least respected, with ever-increasing responsibilities. Am I missing what I should do to change the situation? My cynical side wonders how many of the men are just ignoring the situation entirely. We don’t have a discrimination problem, we just can’t find any qualified women. Right.

Maybe I just need to do less, but figuring out what not to do is tough. I will not do the MiniFair again next year. This is too much this semester on top of the REU.

In other words, spring break cannot come too soon. We planned 3 nights away camping in a screened shelter at Tyler State Park. Rain is likely one of the days we’ll be there, followed by uninviting colder temperatures. Not always nice to be outside all day in the rain or cold. We are wondering whether to go or stay.

Learn Something New

Frazz cartoon on making mistakes.

One thing I like about the Mathematical Modeling class is that I always learn something new.

I was familiar with the 3/5ths compromise, but I didn’t realize until this semester that it was enacted in 1787, before the first US Census in 1790. I thought that got hammered out in the 1800s when slavery became more of an issue. I didn’t realize the abolitionist movement had as much force in the USA that early.

Today I worked with a student who was having strange problems with one of our models on his dataset (I think it was Austin, TX). It is not finding a true minimum; if he changes the initial conditions at all, he finds a different set of parameters that does a good job of minimizing the data. Mathematically I recognize the problem. If you think of finding the minimum as finding the lowest point in a bowl, and the bowl is very flat at the bottom, you have a hard time finding the exact lowest point; the entire flat area looks like it is good enough. Algorithms searching for a minimum often do something along the lines of heading downhill looking for the lowest point. If they get into a relatively flat section, they can just walk around; everything is close to the minimum. There are a lot of choices of parameter values that do a good job.

I know that can happen, but never really considered that it could happen in this project. I wonder how many times it has happened without the student noticing? I don’t think this is the first time we’ve used the Austin, TX dataset.

Wrap-up

I came out to some women faculty colleagues and told them about this blog. Sometimes sharing part of yourself is scary. I keep remembering the TED talk by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability, and I am resolved to embrace it. If you are new here, welcome!

If you haven’t seen Brene Brown’s talk, click on the link above and spend the 20 minutes. Well worth it. If you’ve seen that one, then maybe you haven’t seen Kathryn Schulz On Being Wrong. Totally worth 18 minutes. I should watch those videos weekly.
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Wrapping up from earlier:

The student who complained about me met with me and my supervisor. The good news is that my supervisor got a first-hand look at the problems this person brings to the table. I think she was at least as frustrated as I was by the end of the meeting. The bad news is that there seems like very little way for me or anyone to help this student succeed. It became obvious that the student had no grasp on what was required for the assignments for my class or to succeed in my class. I took the student down to the dean’s office to see if the dean can let the student drop my class. (The student is, unsurprisingly, out of drops.)

We made our selections for the REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program today. I will send acceptance letters out to the students on Wednesday. The amount of REU email I’m receiving has reduced to a trickle of tardy letters of recommendation. For now. We’ll see what happens when the student letters go out. I am still feeling wiped out on this project, but at least there’s some light in the tunnel.

Project 2 (on population) is due in Mathematical Modeling this week. The students all noticed that in the USA, the data point for 1940 is skewed low, under the fitted curves. Some didn’t realize that WW2 didn’t start in the USA until Pearl Harbor in 1941. WW2 is not the cause of that lower value; the Great Depression and Dust Bowl are more likely causes.

Not a one noticed that in the early years of the USA, slaves were not counted fully in our census totals. There was the 3/5ths compromise. I told them they needed to look that up! And who knows what else I don’t know about US history that is important in analyzing census data?

Student-Driven Education

Sugata Mitra is the 2013 TED Prize winner; that’s what led me to wonder what the heck he did to merit the TED prize. That led me to this video: the child-driven education.

Now I am wondering whether I could have a mathematical modeling class structured around these ideas. Where I had a few very general assignments, and the students were encouraged to go out and learn whatever they wanted so long as it is related to mathematical modeling. Break them into groups of 4, find out what they are interested in learning. Let them surf from group to group.

Where I promised them nothing more than to help them learn whatever they wanted to learn, and I provided a few checks to try to make sure they learned something. And I will be the Grandma, always standing behind them, always encouraging, always saying, show me more.

Would that be amazing? Would it be a total failure? If I teach this class again, I want to try it.

Grades are Earned

Another post on negotiation and grades. I liked this one better.
There is no absolution or negotiation as grades are not given, they are earned. One major difference between this instructor and me: my office hours have been busy since the first week of school. That’s what you get when you teach a project based class. (Also what you get when you teach hundreds of students, as my colleagues can attest!)

I’m feeling far less than my best. One of my programmatic responsibilities is eating my lunch time-wise. It has been doing so all semester. This next 2-3 weeks should be some of the worst of it, and I have another program that I need to work on. Looks like that’s not getting done. I am sure that my stress, anxiety and impatience is obvious to my students. Which is not what I want, since I really do like working with them.

I wonder whether it is better to acknowledge it or to try to cover it up. I am thinking my covering abilities are not so great right now.

Complaints

I know a lot of my colleagues have been subject to student complaints to our boss. Right now it looks like I might be getting my first experience with this. A student has contacted my supervisor about my class. My supervisor contacted me about this on Friday, and I gave her what information I could on what is going on with the student, and what steps I have taken to address it.

I’m not really worried about it, although I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t bother me.

That this student is complaining makes me wonder if I’ve failed him in some way.

I did fail him in one respect. I have allowed myself to complain about the situation; probably less privately than I should have. I just deleted a lot of words above to make sure I better protect my student’s privacy, and I’m satisfied with that, although not with some of my past words and actions, especially on Friday when I first found out.

Scuttlebutt is that students complain more to departmental administrators than in the past, and judging from some of the things I’ve heard about, I think there is truth in that. Here’s an article on things you didn’t know were negotiable. The #1 item? Grades. If a student doesn’t successfully negotiate with an instructor, is it onward to the Assistant or Associate Head of Undergraduate Operations? I sincerely hope our administrators back us up.

I’ll stick with old-fashioned here. If I make a mistake, I am happy to correct it. But let me make this clear, grades are not a negotiation. You earn what you get from me or you do not. I’m not going to give you something because you’ll lose a scholarship or be suspended from the university if I don’t. Not because I’m afraid you’ll go complain.

Mathemagical Moments

XKCD
XKCD is the best!

One of the best things about my job: watching 3 of my students in an intense discussion of a problem on the homework. One of my often less-motivated students holding her own arguing with the two other guys about how to solve the problem.

I realized today that the LaTeX my students are producing in their reports is so much cleaner and nicer than what I’ve seen in previous semesters. I gave them LaTeXercises at the beginning. I took a list of my pet peeves from student reports and marched this crop of students through correcting them one by one for the first homework assignment. I instructed the TAs to be draconian about grading; you either reproduced the document perfectly or points came off. That did not endear me to the students; I got complaints on the early course feedback, “I missed one space and a whole point was taken off!” Sigh. Indeed, I am so mean.

Complaining aside, I think it was worth it. For me. Maybe not for them. I’ve been preaching the gospel about composing in LaTeX or a text editor rather than composing in a word processor; this should also help. None of that would matter if no one was listening to me. Clearly quite a few someones are. I have to remember to share this with them.

At the beginning of the semester, I felt bad for not doing much math, and now we are in lots-and-lots of math mode. We just has the most mathematically brutal assignment of the semester; some cleverness, some common sense, and a whole lot of algebra.

Project 2 is about population models; we do curve fitting to three reasonably well-known population models. Exponential growth, the logistic function, and the Gompertz function. All are non-linear. We will use linear least squares to get an initial estimate for the function parameters; then we use a nonlinear least squares optimizer to improve our parameter estimates.

We go through a basic calculus lesson about linear least squares, in which we calculate the squared error, see that it has a minimum, and then take derivatives and set them equal to zero to solve. We get two gnarly equations in two unknowns. Then I walk them through the same problem formulated via linear algebra, where you have an overdetermined system with full rank. Then we discuss how to use this tactic for doing exponential functions. Later on, with one initial guesstimate, we use this for logistic and Gompertz.

We also cover the differential equation formulation of these three models, and how you get the Per unit Population Growth Rate (also called Per Capita Growth Rate) abbreviated PPGR. This is how the population grows per individual in the population per unit time. Exponential growth has a constant PPGR. If you look at the US Census numbers from 1790-1840, you will find the PPGR for the USA was about 0.3 in that time, meaning for every one person in the initial population adds 0.3 persons over the course of a decade. In more recent decades this number is much lower!

If the population in a logistic model is close to zero, the PPGR is constant and it looks like exponential growth. But in a logistic model, we take into account finite resources and space, and it has the PPGR go to zero as the population approaches the limiting population.

The Gompertz model, like the logistic model, takes into account finite resources and space, and its PPGR goes to zero as the population approaches the limiting population. What’s weird about Gompertz is that as the population goes to zero, the PPGR goes to infinity. This model hypothesizes that if there are abundant and unlimited resources, a woman can decrease her genstation period in order to increase her number of births without bound. Clearly unreasonable. Yet the Gompertz model does a good job of fitting population data!

Each student picks his or her own dataset. Any US state or city is open (everyone does the US Population), and any foreign country, state, city, province is open.

When I first put the project together, I was dutifully paying homage to the necessity of teaching curve fitting as a mathematical modeling topic. I thought this was one of the most boring projects in the universe, but we all have to suffer sometimes. I’m surprised at how much rich learning there is in this project. In order for a student to succeed with writing the results and discussing the models and the data, s/he has to know something about the history of the population s/he is working with and be able to connect that history up with what s/he sees in the data and curve fits.

The first semester I taught the course and assigned this project, one of my students had been on a mission trip to Micronesia. He wanted to work with the population of Micronesia. Fine with me. Of course, Micronesia wasn’t really in contact with Western civilization until about the turn of the 20th century. Then things got disrupted by WWII. So there wasn’t a lot of data, and what there was wasn’t very good. My student was off to the library to see if he could dig out more and better. He didn’t get much. We did get some decent curve fits in the end. He learned a lot and I encouraged him to talk about this for his final project presentation. He punctuated the mathematics with photographs he took while he was there, discussing the models, the data, and the history, all at once.

Dumb project indeed. That was a definite win.