SlowFood and Stacks of Stats!
SlowFood
n.Inexpensive food, such as hamburgers and fried chicken, prepared and served slowly.
Autonym : FastFood.
Hello Blog and various Blog Watchers, of which I’ve had a lot more of over the past week or so! Let’s get on with the traditional early week fare…..
Monday
Met with my supervisor, as per the norm, unlike the norm I actually got loads of work done today though, disappointingly, it dead-ended. Of course most mathematics does dead-end so I’m done, done on to the next one!
Went home and had a nice relaxing, albeit dull, night in.
In general; I no longer feel any pressure to go out, I’m quite happy either at home, or being more social. Anyway there are plenty of drinking opportunities going on pretty soon.
Tuesday
Footie was cancelled this week, so I followed my typical pattern of working during the day time and chilling in the evening.
Tuesday is my traditional “Teaching” Day, and has been since I started my PhD.
I teach a course called MT1000 - or “Study Skills”, which attempts to have the first years working in groups of 7 or 8 (typically 4 or 5 this semester!) to solve problems from a wide range of mathematics.
It’s a fun subject to teach as there’s a new subject every week and you get to take the class by yourself - which is unusual for PhD students in Mathematics. There’s a lot of scope for you to approach it however you want - a freedom I enjoy.
Anyway; currently the subject is working slightly differently as we enter the statistics part of the course. (hence the alliteration in the blog title)
Statistics is not really Mathematics in my eyes, more an application of numbers to problems, as opposed to the other way around, I guess! in my eyes there has always been a reason the subject is known as Mathematics and statistics rather than just plain old Mathematics.
You might, therefore, get the impression that I dislike statistics. You would not be wrong. Couple this in with my general dislike of computers and the matlab statistics lessons are not my favourite ever.
On the plus side my first year group (and I do have an almost paternal instinct over them) are pretty decent people and always good for some banter, and the computer lessons have a bunch of us PhD’ers in, which is nice too (contrary to my earlier statement about teaching on my own, of course!).
Maths Craig - who’s blog is linked too over there –> is one of my co-conspirators.
Anyway, I’ve dulled you enough.
Oh, I haven’t, I’ve two days left to write!
Wednesday
Wednesday was another day of work, this time I *did* get somewhere, but only at the very butt end of the day - something for me to work on on Thursday!
In the evening I played in my favourite weekly poker tourney, the SPO. Whenever my wednesday’s are free I try to compete in it because it’s got a really nice structure and a good level of opponents. I finished 12th \ 337, which is pretty darn good!
Thursday
Thursday went into work and then onto the poker societies weekly live event.
As I’ve previously mooted somewhere in here, I MUCH prefer playing against real people than on the computer. You just lose a lot of the nuance and skill of the game online and it’s just much more fun being social with the other fella’s instead of staring at some inanimate inane insubstantial insincere inocuous flat monitor.
Aaaaanyway, I played pretty good poker after initial rebuy madness (though I didn’t have to rebuy at all). Went out in 18th to a bad beat, but I was very happy with how I played.
Finishing up around 2200 I moseyed on downstairs to a waiting Rosy & Lw, the latter of whom had stumbled upon Chris (from the Leeds Festival) and his mate. We drank plenty and talked about stuff such as the greatness of “Spaced”.
Heading on when Mike the Bouncer chucked us out at closing the three of us trapsed across to the Jabez to meet up with the likely Mugss bunch, who’d just finished their third performance of Utopia, which I shall be going to see on Saturday.
Much fun was had including a boat race, which the crew won and I briefly chatted with lots of people including (off the top of my head) Leila, Si, Robin, John, Paul, Wei, Paul 2, Stuart, and so on and so on (and rosy, mahinda, lw, alsion of course)
Much drinkage occurred and the inevitable idea of a curry rose to the surface.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and although I didn’t feel hungry the combination of a decent bite to eat and the company convinced me it was a good idea to go.
Unfortunately, whilst the company held up, the curryhouse (lal haweli) did not. I won’t say too much as I don’t like to whinge, but we were there for 45 minutes before an order was taken! and when it did arrive, it wasn’t that great a fare.
I was sat around Amy, Naomi, Alsion, Leila, Rob Allen, Robin and usually interacted with these people. I don’t remember much!
Occasionally I was reminded of this being a mugss party, since one end of the table (arranged in some sort of interesting dumbell weight fashion) would spontaneously burst into song, apparently at the behest of Jo. It’s like living in a musical, I didn’t think that ever really happened 
Went to wait for a bus and saw, to my dismay, that there were no more buses that morning. I had, of course, forgotten to read from the start of the list, instead of the end, as 4am is when the bus day begins.
got home just before 5am, and had to knock on rosy’s window as I’d left my keys at work. flopped into bed and slept soundly.
A good night out all in all. I’ll next be joining the mugss brigade on Saturday for the show itself, and then the after-show!
ought to be fun.
