So it was a two-day conference on top of the week’s operations research/analysis homework, and one got done and the other didn’t and it is left to the reader to wonder which was which while your correspondent tries to fit natural logarithms to y=mx+b curves in order to discover the slope and y-intercept, not to mention the MAD, MSE and MAPE that’s in it for any given data range.
Not that this isn’t fascinating work and as stirring to the soul as the sound of a distant trumpet is to a war horse, or even dropping precision-guided ordnance upon the noggin of some poor sod what deserves it, but I can’t help noting parenthetically that it’s six months and counting until I’m done gentle reader, the Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. Well that is of course as long as that thesis gets written, which it’s not like it’s writing itself, now is it?
It is not.
To tell you the truth if it were any longer now it’d be spontaneous human combustion, ritual self-murder or else dropping the course entirely, none of which constitutes a palatable alternative set, being that we have come so far that returning were as tedious as go o’er, etc.
The conference went well as these things go, even though when it comes to naval aviators and other alcoholic malcontents, herding cats ain’t in it. We are of course over budget, behind schedule and under performing, so everything is situation normal. I am reassured, in a sense: It is good to at least know where we are.
While entirely consumed with the conference, for which no other leadership was available or indeed, competent (note to self: Re-read De Gaulle) my several in boxes filled to over-brimming with tedious paperwork, cryptically demanding emails and increasing querelously voice mails. It was a new year, there were Bold New Things to accomplish! Was I not aware?
I was.
And I may not have mentioned that the same sullen, uncommunicative, closed-door alien misanthrope that occupied the skin of my elder daughter some three years or so ago appears to have summoned a kindred spirit to invade the person of my younger daughter, herself nobbut aged twelve but going gangbusters on 13 now that I ponder on it. It must be a different spirit than the first, since that one has shown no sign of decamping the better to thereby yield the elder daughter back into the warm and embracing folds of humanity. Of such pitiful stuff is a father’s woe embroidered.
Which reminds me, for no very good reason about a summer’s day quite a few years back. A hard, flat sun was beating down on a back yard in Lemoore, California – a yard in desperate need of a lawn-mowing and most of all for someone to clean up after the goram dog. A young lieutenant of my acquiantance stood at the personel support detachment on base, holding in his exuberantly sweating palm a check made out for a Very Great Sum of Money which had been given to him in exchange for the next five years of his life, so long as those years were spent in the continued service of his country.
Upon exiting the parking lot, the young man noted almost without consciously thinking about it that a right turn on to the highway would lead him up to Washington state or even Canada in a day or two’s time, places where a strong young man who didn’t mind working hard with a saw or an axe would always find a paycheck waiting at the end of the week, places where the weather was cooler and the sun didn’t hammer down on a back yard that needed mowing and more than mowing, places with shabby little backwoods bars where the beer was cold but cheap, and the company warm and undemanding. He noted also that the money represented in the check within his pocket could have gone a long way towards living that life anonymously.
The young man thought for just a moment when the traffic light turned green, shrugged and turned left instead. That lawn wasn’t going to mow itself, now, was it?
It was not.
So it goes.
Lex – having been one of those sullen, closed door misanthropes, I can only say that this too shall pass. In the meantime, I bet the next 6 months of thesis work actually seems like it might be easier, doesn’t it.
And on behalf of all former adolescent females – I’m sorry about that.
Lex
I hesitantly confess to having two daughters –
one age 13 who repeats ad nauseum in a shrilling voice that “She is a teenager and NOBODY can tell her what to do!”
and one age 10, apparently going on 16 about whom I told anyone who would listen earlier this evening that “She would not live to see 11 if she didn’t smarten up soon!” Sympathies. And empathies.
BTW the beer is cold (and some of it is quite good) but not so cheap and the air definitely cooler (can you say deep freeze?!) so something tells me that the young luitenant most likely made the right choice. Not that we wouldn’t be happy to share our hospitality with him should he ever be bold enough to venture to the Great Whtie North.
Oh yeah, one more thing, why would anybody want to do cipher y=mx+b curves??!! Sounds like a sucker for punishement to me!
At the rick of teaching a big brother to suck eggs, why not just take the derivitave? You’ll still have to get the y-intercept manually, but that’s trivial, and I admit to not knowing those three other terms.
Imagine my consternation, having hand-jammed the solutions, to find that both SLOPE and INT were embedded Excel functions.
Stupid Microsoft marketing department
BTW, just for the record and for future reference, any time I spell ANYTHING wrong around here (and I do seem to do a fair bit of that), I am just going to categorically state that its the Canadian spelling, okay? No matter what it is. Not like anyone is going to argue with me about it, right?
Thanks.
Not that the lawns in SoCal are all that large that need mowing… Come on over to my place and mow a “man sized” lawn…
“The conference went well as these things go, even though when it comes to naval aviators and other alcoholic malcontents,”
Laughing my ass off as I just talked to my son who is currently in flight training at NAS Pensicola. He has posted his “menu plan” on the frig because he is becoming “sorta soft in the middle” and wants to eat healthy meals…
Never in this young man’s life has he ever seen a “menu plan” for the week posted on the frig. Unless he lived in an alternate universe with another family? Hmmm. Could he secretly be reading Family Circle???
A man-sized lawn? I shouldn’t pontificate, but it’s not the size of the lawn, it’s the ratio of lawmmower/lawn that is an issue. In So.Cal with 1000 sq/ft and a scissors it would be a daunting task. My own 6 acres is felled easily with a 48″ 18hp rider in about 4 hours and a good half-gallon of lemonade for the operator. My neighbor, who actually farms and makes money at it unlike I, has a 62″ rider at 105hp and does 10 acres in about 2 hours. Had either of us to do this task with a push-style mower we’d likely buy fencing and a cow rather than mow again.
It is at times like these that I reflect upon the wisdom that is the 10th Commandment. “Do not covet thy neighbors house, nor his John Deere 4020 with 5′ three-point-mount finish mower, nor his two-stage snowblower attachment. Get your own if you want it so much!” Then I look at the money it would take, back to my 6 acres, and discover that lemonade and a used rider are awfully cheap in comparison.
But Lex is correct, staring out across that bluegrass hay field on a hot summer day, the hardest part of the job is finding the will to start. Once that obstacle is overcome, and a steady pace applied to the measure (1), completion becomes inevitable.
– Max
(1) breaks to visit the head do not count as interruptions since, you know, we’re not getting any younger and a 1/2 gallon of lemonade or iced tea must be given its due. Or so I tell myself.
– Max
All this wonderfully evocative story and the embedded gem (for me) is the “goram dog”.
Sometimes people disappear, and it’s because they turned right, and drove right out over the horizon. I like the idea that it might not take anything more than the land mines the dog planted in the tall grass.
Still turnin’ left,
ASM826
Imagine if you will — a naval aviator throwing a non-jargon word into a sentence that I’ve not used before. [OK, he muffed a vowel, they only cost a hundred bucks — but I had to go and look it up: querelously >> querulously: meaning peavish.
Thanks, Lex! I’ll use it! I apparently get these same messages all the time!
-SJBill
I have become convinced, over the past 30 or so years, that girls go insane during the latter part of their 12th year and only sometimes regain their sanity during or after their 22nd year.
This is interesting because
it does not include the Least Squares method which is what I think is most
commonly used. LS fit takes the difference between the actual data and the
predicted data and squares these differences and adds them up. (So a data
point 3 greater and 3 less count the same). The model with the smallest
total difference is the “Best Model”. That might sound like the MAD method but the reason it is more commonly used is because
the absolute value function is not continuous and the squared function is
and has nicer mathematical qualities.
AAAh, Lex,
I kinda got carried away with the hot link data.Reliability statistics stuff was never my strong point, but raising our kids did expose us to the horrors of early teen age “attitudes”.Fortunately, teens grow up and make wonderful adults who will on occasion even spring for dinner!As for the shipping over bonus…where did it all go!??
Hey Lex,
My very own 12 year old daughter, who is only partially possessed so far, is doing Y=MX+B stuff in Algebra right now. Being a NAVCAD (top 1% of all college dropouts), I never was much for studying (or grades, or even going to class) so I’m wondering if we could set up a tutoring phone call or VTC so you could help her – or maybe she could help her, unlike her papa, she’s smaaaart!
Nose
Skipper,
You gazed right and rolled the thoughts over for a mite in your mind. We all did/do. You wouldn’t be human if you DIDN’T give it a passing thought.
However, you saw the light turn green. God asked you to make a choice, and you took the same road the rest of us did, and still do. You might have been a mere mortal to turn right and keep driving, but you wouldn’t have been a man. Or a shipmate worth keeping.
That’s the difference, you know? Some of us still believe in doing the right thing. We believe that, when called upon, we will act as we are taught, as we are expected. When our country asked, we answered, tempting as it might have been to roll over and go back to sleep.
Respects, and thanks,
AW1 Tim
I also faced that turn decision one day. A young husband and father, just out of the military, driving to my job. Should I turn or should I just continue on, looking for what is over the next hill. I turned. So now some many years later I am the father of two adult children, have five grandchildren with another due this year. The wife and I will celebrate forty five years of marriage. Did I make the right turn? I don’t believe anything I may have found over the next hill could have brought me the happiness and contentment I now experience. Yep! Sure glad I made the turn!
It’s all “service” you volunteered for! One way or t’other.
BTW, my 11 yr old still is in da box but tell me, for future planning and if required, are leg irons illegal?
b2
With 9 sister’s, I sympathize with you Capt.
Bob,
Don’t know if they are illegal but they are encouraged!
It’s the old saying, parents are supposed to give their children roots and wings. If you’ve done a decent job in the past 11 years, as I am sure you have, she has her roots. Giving the wings is hard as a parent but it is also rewarding.
But just in case, keep the leg irons handy…
Nose
(I’ll tell you if I’m a good parent or not in about 30 years.)
I’ve a working theory on teenaged children. The proof of proper parenting is to take them to a friends home. One who does not have a teenager or, better yet, has no children. Then ask for honest feedback.
At home with family they will behave one way. In public, representing their parents, they will behave another. It is that latter behavior that is the measure of how well the parent taught and how well the child learned the lesson.
– Max