Stats exam was easier than I thought it was going to be. Clearly, the professor had mercy on us. But that misses the point of the class. I am pretty sure that the high pressure class, though unpleasant, leaves us retaining a lot more of the material than a laid back environment.
Stats is over now.
I regret not doing better on my sim homework, but that is a very small part of my grade. We are awaiting the final exam for Sim today. This will be a tough week because have to go back again this Friday, which means we have to finish the exam this week and prepare for the courses on Friday.
I hope to prepare for the next class today and then do the exam once it is posted.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Post for Posterity
We have a stats exam tomorrow. Our final is something like 40% of our grade, so I am, as a classmate said, "Anxiety on defcon 5." I didn't realize how important the in class homework assignments(quiz) is to our grade until too late so I am regretting that move. Hopefully, that will be curved up some. I have done well on the actual homework assignments so I hope that translates well to the exam. I took the practice exam and have studied that several time so I feel pretty confident. Unfortunately, I have felt confident about tests before and bombed them so this is not a good predictor.
I have grown to quite like Prof Brown. He isn't exactly the easiest professor ever, but I liken him to the gruff football coach that you hate while you are doing the 20th wind sprint but appreciate after the fact.
I came to Charlottesville early to come to the Darden TA sessions. I have found them to be very helpful.
I am currently at the doubletree, having a refreshment and looking over the material one more time. Again.
I haven't even looked at the sim assignment. I have done well on the first couple of assignments, and the homework there constitutes 2.5% of my grade per week, so I did an optimization. Or something. I'll take a swing at it tomorrow. Saturday we play the bay game, will be nice to finally see that.
I have grown to quite like Prof Brown. He isn't exactly the easiest professor ever, but I liken him to the gruff football coach that you hate while you are doing the 20th wind sprint but appreciate after the fact.
I came to Charlottesville early to come to the Darden TA sessions. I have found them to be very helpful.
I am currently at the doubletree, having a refreshment and looking over the material one more time. Again.
I haven't even looked at the sim assignment. I have done well on the first couple of assignments, and the homework there constitutes 2.5% of my grade per week, so I did an optimization. Or something. I'll take a swing at it tomorrow. Saturday we play the bay game, will be nice to finally see that.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
stats tips learned the hard way
I've said previously I prefer R's implementation on windows over mac. I've learned a few workarounds and have an update.
As noted previously, I go to class with a Mac. It's new as of this year and has an I5, so it has great horsepower.
Prof Brown's in class assignments have a time element to them. If you are on Mac and you try to copy and paste in your graphic, your image will be rendered in PDF and you will hate your life. Your machine will be come non-responsive. This happened to me the first week and I wanted to - redacted, essentially become very aggressive with the hardware.
Learn to love the jpeg(file ="yourfilenname.jpeg") along with this trick
http://www.labnol.org/software/insert-images-in-word-documents/8144/
Essentially, as you are building your reports for homework, you can write your graphics out to a folder on your box. Then you add with insert and link to your word docs. This will keep your graphics in sink as your models change.
Before you submit, you "prepare" the doc as above in the link. Then you will want to save to PDF.
Hope that helps.
--jzf
As noted previously, I go to class with a Mac. It's new as of this year and has an I5, so it has great horsepower.
Prof Brown's in class assignments have a time element to them. If you are on Mac and you try to copy and paste in your graphic, your image will be rendered in PDF and you will hate your life. Your machine will be come non-responsive. This happened to me the first week and I wanted to - redacted, essentially become very aggressive with the hardware.
Learn to love the jpeg(file ="yourfilenname.jpeg") along with this trick
http://www.labnol.org/software/insert-images-in-word-documents/8144/
Essentially, as you are building your reports for homework, you can write your graphics out to a folder on your box. Then you add with insert and link to your word docs. This will keep your graphics in sink as your models change.
Before you submit, you "prepare" the doc as above in the link. Then you will want to save to PDF.
Hope that helps.
--jzf
Monday, January 3, 2011
Stats, Sim Update
Quick hits -
Did my sim exam weeks ago. The exam is 40% of my grade, but I am trying to be complacent with my effort to date. Being a software guy, I have some advantage to those that aren't in that the class is largely based on the R development environment.
As a .Net guy, I am automatically skeptical of open source languages. R has proven to be refreshingly well done.
I've had to go back and read/re-read my stats book. Looking back, I missed more than I am comfortable with as far as stats terminology. Also, the final exam constitutes 40% of my final grade and with my "emerging to standard" in class homework grade, I need to do well on my final.
The biggest piece of advice I can offer for stats is to read the book and be very comfortable with the day's concepts ahead of time, because you will be "tested" on them with "in class homework" which is essentially a quiz. But as far as I can tell, I have some company with so-so in homework grades, not that this is much consolation. I'm trying to look beyond grades and worry more about learning the material, but it'd be good to have good grades as well.
Did my sim exam weeks ago. The exam is 40% of my grade, but I am trying to be complacent with my effort to date. Being a software guy, I have some advantage to those that aren't in that the class is largely based on the R development environment.
As a .Net guy, I am automatically skeptical of open source languages. R has proven to be refreshingly well done.
I've had to go back and read/re-read my stats book. Looking back, I missed more than I am comfortable with as far as stats terminology. Also, the final exam constitutes 40% of my final grade and with my "emerging to standard" in class homework grade, I need to do well on my final.
The biggest piece of advice I can offer for stats is to read the book and be very comfortable with the day's concepts ahead of time, because you will be "tested" on them with "in class homework" which is essentially a quiz. But as far as I can tell, I have some company with so-so in homework grades, not that this is much consolation. I'm trying to look beyond grades and worry more about learning the material, but it'd be good to have good grades as well.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Intro, Network and Probability
While we have a little break in school I want to circle back and jot down some quick hits about what happened in AMP before I started blogging about the experience.
For the target audience( prospective AMP students) its a good idea to come to an open house and see Saunders Hall, Darden proper and meet Prof Smith, Mrs. Harrison and Prof Scherer. Prof Scherer will be your professor for the first week of Intro.
Granted, Intro has been a long 8 months ago at this point, so my memories are probably viewed through rose colored glasses at this point. Professor Scherer is a high energy professor and one of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of being around. In hindsight, Intro plays an important role in the educational process and I won't play the spoiler. The class and the week are great. I learned a lot and I walked away from that class with a lot. My hope is that your experience there will be as good as mine or better.
The next two classes are Network Optimization and Probability. For me, probability consumed as much as 10x the amount of time as Network Optimization. I have found out, though, that others did not feel this time crunch, which is not all that hard to believe. I did not do particularly well in probability.
Network optimization is a discipline that transcends computer networks. It has very little to do with routers, subnets etc. In fact, this was a bit of a frustration for me, working in software, in that many of those that I spoke with at work heard the phrase "Network Optimization" and could not think of anything more than cat-6e and server farms.
In hindsight, I would have been well served to have taken the probability class offered by Professor Lark ahead of the AMP program. Unless you are a solid pro with probability with lots of time on your hands, its hard for me to imagine a situation where the probability refresher would be a waste of your time.
Your next classes are Risk and Econ, and I think I have those fairly well covered.
For the target audience( prospective AMP students) its a good idea to come to an open house and see Saunders Hall, Darden proper and meet Prof Smith, Mrs. Harrison and Prof Scherer. Prof Scherer will be your professor for the first week of Intro.
Granted, Intro has been a long 8 months ago at this point, so my memories are probably viewed through rose colored glasses at this point. Professor Scherer is a high energy professor and one of the most talented people I've had the pleasure of being around. In hindsight, Intro plays an important role in the educational process and I won't play the spoiler. The class and the week are great. I learned a lot and I walked away from that class with a lot. My hope is that your experience there will be as good as mine or better.
The next two classes are Network Optimization and Probability. For me, probability consumed as much as 10x the amount of time as Network Optimization. I have found out, though, that others did not feel this time crunch, which is not all that hard to believe. I did not do particularly well in probability.
Network optimization is a discipline that transcends computer networks. It has very little to do with routers, subnets etc. In fact, this was a bit of a frustration for me, working in software, in that many of those that I spoke with at work heard the phrase "Network Optimization" and could not think of anything more than cat-6e and server farms.
In hindsight, I would have been well served to have taken the probability class offered by Professor Lark ahead of the AMP program. Unless you are a solid pro with probability with lots of time on your hands, its hard for me to imagine a situation where the probability refresher would be a waste of your time.
Your next classes are Risk and Econ, and I think I have those fairly well covered.
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