The first two weeks of the semester went mostly without a hitch for my classes. My CS 202 Independent Study student is off to a reasonable start. I set up something somewhat ambitious for her, and she stepped up and tried her best. There's a bit more to do with the things I'm supposed to cover, and then we can get off on some tangents and side projects. But until then, we've got some basic data structure and algorithm stuff to work through.
My MATH 127 course is off to an okay start. I feel as though I'm going to need to reorganize a couple things in my notes because I'm not 100% confident that we have a good foundation right now. So I'm going to try to make a couple adjustments to a couple things and see if I can't bring some of those ideas in a bit more. But I'm reasonably content with where things are at with that class. The transition to the MyOpenMath seems to be mostly okay. I have a little bit of adjusting to do with that, but it seems like the students aren't having too many problems with it.
The MATH 427 course (Ordinary Differential Equations) and the MATH 455 course (Number Theory) are both going pretty smoothly. In both classes, I knew about 75% of the students from a previous course (or two) and so there isn't as much of a barrier in terms of getting things going and creating a pattern. They already know the system, and so it's just those other few students that I need to worry about for that (and they seem to be doing fine). I'm getting a good level of interaction with the students, which is all I really need to feel good about those courses.
I think I've got a pretty good general proposal for the Data Science degree program. I'm going to be sending it out to some community members to get a feeling for how it looks to them. The basic question: Would you hire one of our graduates for an entry-level analyst position at your company? This is the basic signal we need from the community to know that they recognize, understand, and respect the coursework, so that it feels like a good degree to them. If we get a positive response for that, we're in very good shape to put the rest of it together.
The last couple weeks gave us a little bit of scare with our AXIOM 2019 math conference. This will be the second run of this conference, which is the only math conference for high school students and teachers in the Las Vegas Valley. Although I had put in a request for funding (about $1500 total), it turned out that we didn't actually receive any funding, and that information was opaque enough that nobody knew until we dug deeply into it. Fortunately, thanks to the work of a few people around campus, we figured out how to recategorize funds in a way that would allow things to go forward. I also got to work with our institutional fundraiser person to possibly get this funded using outside sponsors, which could possibly be leveraged into a more sustainable partnership. In the next couple weeks, I'm going to need to put together the registration and get all of our marketing materials finalized so that we can start pushing it out to the community.
At this point, I'm planning on being the main speaker again. I was originally thinking about doing something like a mathematics of juggling talk, but I don't know if I will have the time to properly rehearse with a juggler to make that work right. So instead I'm thinking about talking about non-intuitive results in probability/statistics. For example, if a couple has two children and one of them is a boy, then it's more likely that the other child is a girl than a boy. And there are probabilistic games where it seems like both players should be have an equal chance of winning, but it's possible for one player to create an advantage (Penney's Game). I've got to look around to see what else is out there, but I think I can easily turn that into a 45 minute presentation that gets the students curious and involved.
Neither of the two searches has started up just yet. We're still getting the ads out. So that's some stuff that's more or less just in a simple holding pattern for now.
This Tuesday, we'll be having the informational meeting for the Oaxaca Medical Mission in January. There seems to be a lot more interest this year than in previous years, which is both good and bad. The good news is that more interest means more student applications, and (in theory) a higher caliber of student that participates. We can be more selective with the language expectations and background. The bad news is that this means that we may have to turn away qualified students because of space limitations. But we haven't even started receiving applications yet, and it may turn out that we end up with exactly the right number of people.
I've been meaning to update the Science Center Webpage timeline, but I keep forgetting to do it. The concrete tables have been poured, and they look pretty good. The true test will be when we're up there and physically start moving around the room. Hopefully, the dimensions that we measured out were followed and that our estimates for physical space required for the activities were on point. This is kind of where we're just going to have to trust that the work that went in on the front end gave us the insight and ideas to be able to communicate things so that they happen the way we wanted on the back end.
I finished Irresistible. In the end, I think what he says makes both practical and theological sense. I think what he says may be hard for some people to accept, in terms of how one attempts to communicate the gospel to an audience of contemporary non-Christians. I know that some people will look at it and think that he's preaching an incomplete gospel in some ways, but from my perspective it looks much more like reframing Christianity for an audience that's different from what those people are thinking about. I think a lot of the ways it resonates with me is related to my desire to distinguish between primary and secondary theology. The things that are absolutely non-negotiable are primary theology. These are things where I would have a very hard time considering someone else a Christian if they believed differently from me on that topic. Everything else is secondary. Secondary doesn't mean worse, or bad, but it does mean that it's not as important. One thing I remembered being a big deal in a previous church was whether baptism required full physical immersion in water. I can believe that Jesus established a particular model to follow, but I struggle to see that as being a salvific importance. And the longer I think about it, the simpler and more focused the primary theology has become, and more stuff is seen as secondary.
I've finally gone through all of the old video game systems that I got from my parent's house. Everything works at some level. My main project right now is to build an arcade-style controller because I don't have controllers for most of the systems. Based on what I've read, I think I can make one that will work for the Atari, ColecoVision, and Sega Master System. It might also work with the Genesis, but I have to take a deeper dive into how those controllers are wired and what it would take to make one controller work for all the systems.
Thor continues to do well with the feeding schedule. I've been able to sit closer and closer to where he eats while he's eating, which is a good sign of confidence. And there are times when he's wandering around at the same time I'm wandering around, but he doesn't immediately run away when he sees me. He still takes a position of being ready to run, but he just kind of watches me. If I can keep enough distance when I'm passing by, he'll stay there, but sometimes he freezes up in the middle of the hallway, and there's no way for me to go around and give him space, and that's when he runs away. But I think he's slowly lowering his guard. I still haven't pet him, and have not been able to use a brush on him, and I don't expect either of those to happen for at least a couple more months of this. I just need to keep slowly trying to get closer and enter into his physical space. At some point, I may need to be more aggressive and forceful with this, but I don't think it's time just yet to do so.
Other stuff: Piano? Nope. But I am increasing the frequency that I'm playing bass at church. We're relaunching small groups and I'm going to try to get into one that works with my schedule, which probably means the Sunday afternoon group. It's been a while since I've been in a small group, and I miss those sorts of times of building community. I've got a couple new podcasts that have been recommended by friends. I haven't listened to any episodes yet. My next reading project is a book on Bayesian Statistics, and I'm also going to try to learn R at the same time. I have no idea how successful I'll be.
