I've got a turkey thawing in the fridge, a prime rib waiting to be salted and slightly dry aged, and a 10 pound sack of potatoes. Why 10 pounds? Because the 5 pound sack cost $2, and the 10 pound sack costed something like $2.50. I can't pass up 5 pounds of potatoes for 50 cents. Just like I couldn't pass up 8 pounds of pork for $8. (That's another story.) Family starts arriving on Tuesday, and we're going to be doing Thanksgiving at the resort they're staying at. My big question is whether a spatchcocked turkey will fit in the ovens in the room. I like a good challenge...
Most of my classes are in project mode at this point. The MATH 127 course is doing something that I haven't done with that level class before. They're going to be doing video projects looking into things like GPS, toy rockets, handicap accessibility ramps, navigation, and some other things like that. I'm very curious to see how it will go. The MATH 455 class is also doing projects, which in their case is picking a number theory topic and then spending 15 minutes teaching it to the rest of the class. These will be topics like continued fractions and sums of four squares. They have some resources that I've given them, so I think I know what to expect from them. The CS 202 student has been working on her project for a couple weeks now. She's trying to do a slot machine, so she's been doing some PyGame stuff. I'm hoping we'll get her to the point where there's also a physical button and lights that we can make flash when the reels are spinning, but we'll have to wait and see if she can make it that far. But what she has actually looks pretty nice, and it seems like things are coming together for her. The only class that's not doing a project is the MATH 427 course, which is kind of a shame because I really ought to have been able to figure out how to make them do some sort of modeling project. But I just don't have the right type of experience to put that together in a way that feels right to me. So we just did a few days looking at power series solutions to differential equations instead.
The ART 240 notes and course webpage have been put together for next semester, and I'm starting into the MATH 352 notes. I've found that my transition into learning how to use R has gone fairly smoothly, and the simulations and things that I'm writing are all coming together in a sensible way. The statistics part should also be fine, as I expect most of the stuff that we'll be doing should be low level enough that there should be a general tutorial for it somewhere online. The MATH 127 course will be mostly the way I did it this semester, though there are a couple tweaks I need to make in my notes and on the various assessments based on my experience this semester. Then there's the MATH 454 course (second semester abstract algebra), which has already been built for me by the faculty member who taught the first semester. I've decided to just take it in exactly the form that it is and try to teach it his way. That should be very interesting. Fortunately, the class will only have 3-4 students in it, and all of them are strong students, so I'm not worried about it. We'll all learn something together.
We're about to close up the initial review for both of the search committees. I think both pools look decent, though I'm far happier with the overall quality of the Math candidates than with the Data Science candidates. I think there are some real strong applicants in the math pool that I'm excited to see potentially making their way through. There are definitely viable people in the data science search, but nobody has yet to really rise up in the process. But we've still got a few more steps to go and plenty more time to get there, so we'll see what happens. I have both committees meeting on Monday to talk through everything and set us up for the next phase.
Last weekend, NSC hosted a bioinformatics workshop. I'm a little disappointed by it because I got so little out of it. It's not that the content was bad, but it was mostly things like scripting and navigating the bash shell, which were things that I already knew how to do. I was really hoping to get a little bit more into the actual biology stuff and learn something about DNA sequencing. But it was still good for me to be there and to have that shared experience with some other faculty, as it does open up possibilities for me to do collaborations with them. I've also got another potential data science project in the air (literally?) doing something with someone who does drone surveying stuff. But I'm a bit more skeptical about my ability to do that one just because it feels as though it may be more technical than my current abilities. But we'll see. The meeting for that one isn't until mid-December.
I learned today that my sabbatical application was accepted, so in theory I'm going to have next Fall semester off to do some data science stuff. I say "in theory" because I applied for the sabbatical under the premise that the certificate program I was going to do would be a summer bootcamp-style program. But I know that there are some conversations about changing that format, and if the format changes, I may need to go back and revisit the structure of the sabbatical. It's probably going to work out fine, but that potential change does put some question marks over the whole thing. So we'll just have to wait and see how that one plays out.
Church transition weekend is this weekend. This is when we're going to officially pass over control of the church to the new pastor. I think this is a really exciting time, and I'm looking forward to how things are going to move forward. I have fond feelings and a lot of respect for the outgoing pastor, but I doubt they are nearly as deep as they are for many of the other people in the congregation. Some of them were there when he planted the church, and so there's probably more trepidation for them about the transition. It will be interesting to see how things go with the church service and see how they're going to practically and symbolically present the transition. (Oh, and my chili didn't win the contest. But I really didn't expect to. For me, it was just about participating.)
In YouTube news, my new channel ("The Math Repository") is finally almost caught up in subscribers to the other channel ("NSC Math 457"), which is kind of exciting and disappointing at the same time. The channel that I made as a one-off for a class "took off" in a way that the channel that I'm doing to actually try being a channel didn't. But that's fine. I'll keep plugging away at it. I really haven't had the time to put into content creation, but I'm really gunning for a series on explaining arithmetic visually. I've been keeping some ideas bouncing around in the back of my mind, but I'm probably not going to act on them until well into the Winter break. I just have too much going on to really invest real time into it.
Thor is doing well. Now that play time has become firmly established, I've start to be able to pet him with the stick that has the feathers attached to it after he's worn himself down a bit. But I have to be careful because if I lean in too far, he'll get up and run away. It's kind of silly, and it makes me wonder why he has such a fear of that type of movement. But I think I'm starting into a process that will lead to better results over time.
Other stuff: I did practice some piano this week. I was surprised how much was retained from what I was trying to learn earlier despite the large time gap. Oaxaca meeting was today, and it went well. I think we've got a good group of students. My arcade-style controller is finally working as intended, and I've been having fun playing Out Run a bunch. I'm going to try to figure out how to record playing it in a useful way without spending a bunch of money. But that's another project for another day. I still don't know what my Christmas travel will look like. But I should probably figure that out pretty soon.
