This is a pretty good article that reflects what the smart grid industry is all about. As you can readily see, the smart grid initiative is very applicable to systems engineering. My parent company owns both the hardware that reports the reads back in near real time as well as the software to make it go. A classic systems problem.
http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/11/02/austin-smart-energy-project?utm_source=2011_02_21&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=IU_DAILY&utm_term=Original-Member
Monday, February 21, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Recording your Lectures, other miscellany
I'm embarrassingly late to this, but I am really keen on recording your lectures. It's also very realistic that you might be able to record your entire program from your laptop. This is yet another example of how different school is just ten years later. In addition to your first step for every assignment being google or wolfram alpha, the ability to easily make a high quality recording, I think, is a welcomed technology advancement.
Check with your professors first! I think some of them may object, so is a good idea to check first.
One of the things that I have been thinking about as AMP winds down is how to I retain what I have learned and how do I end game. This being my second graduate degree, I can tell you that I had very unrealistic expectations of what the world would be like as soon as I received my degree. People aren't exactly standing around waiting to call you up as soon as you finish your education and send you a huge check. Well, maybe they are for some people and for better schools but it surely didn't happen for me the first. I'm actually more concerned about retaining the skillset. I don't (fortunately) use probability every day. Though I can speak to some of the topics I learned in network optimization, if I had to do a bellman ford I would have to go back through my notes.
That's a long winded way of saying listening to your lectures randomly after school is over might help you retain the information better.
"editor's note"
There may be a few more posts to come to talk about, openly, how it might be best to maximize the last stretch of classes. I can tell you that this semester has significantly less homework than the last semester.
That being said, I think I have approached the limit as to reasonable insight into the AMP program. If you are following along and are near this point in the program in years to come, you should have things figured out by now. I also don't want to completely remove any mystery that may be surrounding the program. I plan on giving insight into our capstone project, and I am very much looking forward to the last week in residence, if its anywhere as near as fun as the first week.
Aside from probability, I have been able to put in long enough hours to be reasonably happy with my grades. I'm clearly not one of the elite students in the program, but I have been able to get back up to speed and find the amount of (pain and suffering) study time that works for me. I still want another shot at probability, but at this point I know its best to let it go.
Check with your professors first! I think some of them may object, so is a good idea to check first.
One of the things that I have been thinking about as AMP winds down is how to I retain what I have learned and how do I end game. This being my second graduate degree, I can tell you that I had very unrealistic expectations of what the world would be like as soon as I received my degree. People aren't exactly standing around waiting to call you up as soon as you finish your education and send you a huge check. Well, maybe they are for some people and for better schools but it surely didn't happen for me the first. I'm actually more concerned about retaining the skillset. I don't (fortunately) use probability every day. Though I can speak to some of the topics I learned in network optimization, if I had to do a bellman ford I would have to go back through my notes.
That's a long winded way of saying listening to your lectures randomly after school is over might help you retain the information better.
"editor's note"
There may be a few more posts to come to talk about, openly, how it might be best to maximize the last stretch of classes. I can tell you that this semester has significantly less homework than the last semester.
That being said, I think I have approached the limit as to reasonable insight into the AMP program. If you are following along and are near this point in the program in years to come, you should have things figured out by now. I also don't want to completely remove any mystery that may be surrounding the program. I plan on giving insight into our capstone project, and I am very much looking forward to the last week in residence, if its anywhere as near as fun as the first week.
Aside from probability, I have been able to put in long enough hours to be reasonably happy with my grades. I'm clearly not one of the elite students in the program, but I have been able to get back up to speed and find the amount of (pain and suffering) study time that works for me. I still want another shot at probability, but at this point I know its best to let it go.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
R programming for those coming from other languages
Just found this! Could have been useful before stats/sim.
http://www.johndcook.com/R_language_for_programmers.html
http://www.johndcook.com/R_language_for_programmers.html
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Weekend miscelleanous
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.
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.
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
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