Friday, October 31, 2008

My Cue Pts on Life Long Learning Speech


This is how I prepared for my speech Life long Learning. I did skip some pts and the speech lasted for about 5 minutes 50 seconds. My next goal is to polish that speech and lengthen it to around 6minutes 50 seconds.

Happy Halloween, Mompreneurs

Happy Halloween !! My weekend actually began wednesday evening. The only reason I am in school today because I work between 11:30 and 12:30 in the Neckers Lab and after that I am looking forward to work on some problems from Chapter 3 and 4. Review Snake Oil Method and extracting coefficient from Multiple power series.

The new word I saw today is Mompreneurs at Readers Digest Canada. The word's meaning is though obvious has been coined to accomodate the growing number of moms who are launching their own business.

Gnarled : 1. Having gnarls; knotty or misshapen: gnarled branches.
2. Morose or peevish
3. Rugged and Roughened as from old age: the gnarled hands of the carpentar

Blarney: Smooth, wheedling talk; flattery
The origin of the word could be traced back to a stone in Blarney castle, Ireland, said to make those who kiss it proficient in the use of blarney. Queen Elizabeth used it against lord McCarthy "This is all blarney, he never means what he says, he never does what he promises"
"Blarneyed the landloard".
"Had Blarneyed his way from long Island"
"He palavered her into going along"

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Jumble solution for today

Its 12:15 at library and I am here to finish several things today. I love the jumble "That scrambled word game) and the jumbled words were Going, Douse, Absurd, Bishop and Big Spread. My next task will be to take a look at the things I have to teach on Monday and also do some problem from my Math 559 class. I like it that its a long weekend with no class on Friday so I can catch up.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Some 'B' Words Burlesque, Bayou, Baloney

Burlesque: A type of writing or acting that makes a serious piece of work look foolish and amusing, Any cheap imitation of a high quality work
As an author, he is most known for his burlesque of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a rather crude but nevertheless amusing imitation of the original masterpiece.
Some of the synonyms of burlesque are Travesty, Caricature, Parody, Satire

Bayou: A small sluggish offshoot of river (smaller than a tributary)
A quick search on google images gave several pictures ranging from a club with name bayou to Kawasaki's 4 wheel and ofcourse a real picture of bayou.

Synonym: Inlet, Firth (I know Dr. Kathy Firth and now I know the meaning of her last name - Bayou)

Baloney: Nonsense
All that he said about the advantages of that drug sounded like utter baloney to me; I know for a fact that the drug is absolutely useless.


Now its time for me to concoct my own little sentence which makes use of all 4 of these words

"Floating in his paddleboat in midst of a warm summer day at the Kansas bayou, he dished out the first installment, a burlesque of Daniel Diffo's celebrated Robinson Crusoe eerily named "Jackson Brusoe" only to be dismissed later my his editor Miss Lara Firth as mere baloney.

Back from Toastmasters Meeting

Its 20:55 and I am sitting here on 3rd floor of Morris Library. Today I gave a talk on "Life Long Learning" at my local toastmasters club. The next week I am planning a talk on "Why Math Education is Important". At table topics today I had to speak about Pumpkin and the various vitamins and minerals in it. It was interesting that I could talk for about 1 minute and 34 seconds. We have some good speakers and it was timely that Kyle brought up this thought

"Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny."

Its one of those thoughts which can bring you to your center no matter how your are feeling. Just meditate on it and it will inspire you.

On teaching front I am excited that I get to lecture on Math 345 and Math 447 for a day. Last week I taught Math 150 for a whole week and I loved it for several reasons. The top will be that it gave me the freedom to cover something very important and I could help these people with the tricks I learned over the time and at the same time make them comfortable with it. Also many thanks to Kyriakos who was there to evaluate it and give me feedback on that.

Word of the Day "Asperse"

Today’s words has two different meanings some what opposite meanings
Asperse:
1. To spread false or damaging charges or insinuation against, synonym: slander, calumniate, defame, denigrate
2. To sprinkle, especially with holy water
Example
"Though my opponent's supporters have aspersed my character, I think my record speaks for itself," said the candidate.

Devils Dictionary definition
To ascribe malicious action to other which one doesn’t have opportunity and temptation to commit.

Example
“As a kind of benediction the priest aspersed them with the milk and charcoal mixture, assured them that the ritual had been duly fulfilled.”
From the book “The Soul of Bantu”



Thought for the day
If you can imagine it you can create it. If you can dream it, you can become it. Ward, William Arthur



My take on today's words is
It was hilarious to see the priest aspersing holy water on people joining his commune and at the same time casting aspersion on his contemporaries and associates for giving a lip service to morality in the institute.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Combinatorial Problem

Its diwali today and right now I am in the library. So far it was good today, I went out to have lunch at the local baptist church which does the Tuesday afternoon lunch. On my homework front I did few more problems. There is this interesting problem of (1+sqrt(2)+sqrt(3))^(8) and you have to simplify it. The multinomial theorem seems to be the best option but still there is enough calculation which makes me wonder if there is a shorter way. But still if you look at the original problem and do it by brute force you will end up with 3^8= 6561 operations and with multinomial theorem its easy to see that the number of terms will be comb(8+2,2) = 45 which is a huge advantage. To find the individual terms as one can look at it that there will be 4 different terms in the form a+b*sqrt(2)+c*sqrt(3)+d*sqrt(6). To find constant "a" takes 15 terms and the rest takes 10 terms each and the overhead of simplifying. I found this website which lets you do symbolic manipulations on the web and the answer I got was 21952+15360*sqrt(2)+12544*sqrt(3)+8960*sqrt(6).

There is another interesting problem and that involves proving that Sum(comb(n,k)*D(k),k = 0..n) = n!. I tried using simple cases and it works out ok.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Cleave

I came across this word only 3 months ago when I purchased Fisk's book. The word is one of those which develop the split personality. This is today's word of the day at wordsmith.org.

Here is my take on this word in two different sentences

Meaning to stick together
Only hard times tells which are your real friends. The fake ones will leave and the real ones will cleave.

Meaning to split
You must cleave the table into stools if you want to fit that furniture in to your new house.

Volunteer for Expanding Your Horizon


This last Saturday i volunteered for the Expanding Your Horizon in Science and Mathematics for 5th,6th,7th,8th and 9th grade girls. This was the 2nd time I volunteered for this. I like it because it gives you the opportunity to see some of the wonderful exhibits and hands on exercises that faculty comes up to interest these young girls into science and mathematics. I saw two labs one was on Robotics and the other was on crime detection. The robotics lab showed how to maneuver the Robots and do little bit of programming. The crime detection was about lifting finger prints from different surfaces, handwriting detection to chromatography techniques. What a fun filled day to learn new things.

Golden Dragon Acrobat in Carbondale

Last Saturday I went to see the golden dragon acrobats at Shryock Auditorium in Carbondale. The first time I heard about them was last year when i saw them in the flyer of events at shryock auditorium. It got cancelled because of the visa problem. The golden dragon acrobats have been around for more than quarter of century and they are one of the best known acrobats from China. The performance was sublime and the ticket of $22 was worth every cent. There was no photography allowed and you can appreciate the reason for doing this as it may interfere with the performance of the artists. All the acts were choreographed to different themed music and there was hardly a moment of pause before one act ended and the other began. The only time you get to realize that the performance are real and not just some trick when they did mess up. The golden dragons perform at broadway so in case if they are visiting your town don't miss it.

Becoming a CTM

Its 12:30 pm and I am in Neckers lab updating this blog. I been looking at my Math 549 Class on Combinatorics. We are now looking at each of the composition formulas and generating functions. Dr. Clark is wonderful and his book is definitely one of the better book. The problem set is great and forces you to think. We started with pigeon hole principle and had some wonderful applications. Then we moved to graphs and explored the n^(n-2) formula and the application of multinomial theorem in deriving many useful results.
In toastmasters club I am done with 9 different speeches the last two happenned because of my friend Kyriakos who was gracious enough to come to two of the three lectures I gave to one Math 150 class. He evaluated my presentation and gave me suggestions. This coming wednesday I plan to give a speech on life long learning. Its a topic which is close to my heart and I look forward to this speech.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Word and Thought for the day

FOIST To force upon or impose fraudulently or unjustifiably
Ex: To foist inferior merchandise on a customer
to bring, put or introduce surreptitiously or fraudulently
Ex: To foist political views into a news story.
Ex:They had extra work foisted on them because they couldn't say no to the boss.
Ex: They foisted unfair provisions into the contract

Dissemble To disguise or conceal, to mislead
Ex: Her coy attempt to dissemble her plagiarism were completely transparent, no one believed her.
Ex: Dissembling on your grad school application is an absolute no no
Ex: How to dissemble the new I-Pod touch


Thought for the day



The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. - William Arthur Ward

Math Quote about doctors

It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class. ~Author Unknown

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Suave and Venial

Suave “Having a sophisticated Charm” a debonair a gentleman, Smoothly agreeable with a degree of sophistication
1. He is suavely charming and all the ladies love him
2. He is suave cool and cultured man
3. Coaching men how to communicate suavely with women
4. Men with well stuffed wallets walk into the office of the best medical specialists have their ills suavely diagnosed & treated. Their wallets suavely deflated.

Venial capable of being forgiven, pardonable
Venial sin is a lesser sin that does not result in a complete separation from God and eternal damnation in Hell.
A venial sin meets at least the following 3 criteria
1. it does not include a “grave matter”
2. It is not committed with full knowledge
3. It is not committed with both deliberate and complete consent
When his supporters overlooked many of his venial transgressions senator goofball moved slowly but more inevitably to greater breaches of the trust they had placed in him

Monday, October 13, 2008

Epeolatory, Serien, Skeuomorph, Snood, Hey Rube, Hypergelast

I am updating this blog from the Neckers Computer lab and I am here working till 13:30 today. I didn't really sleep yesterday night so as to get back to my schedule of getting up early in the morning. Today I learned few new words from my wordsmith newsletter

Epeolatory (pronounced ep-i-OL-uh-tree) The following sentence at wordsmith was a pretty good one. "I read my dictionary for a few more minutes, until tiredness eventually brought my epeolatry to an end for the day."

Serien Fine rain falling from an apparently cloudless sky, typically observed after sunset. She must have caught a chill from the serein, that's all!"

Skeuomorph SKYOO-uh-morf A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip

Snood (noun): 1. A fleshy appendage over the beak of a turkey. 2. A net for holding a woman's hair at the back of her head.


(From Wikipedia)
Hey Rube "Hey, Rube!" is circus slang most commonly used in the United States with origins in the middle 19th century. It is a rallying call, or a cry for help, used by circus people involved in a fight. It can also be used in the sense of describing a fight between circus people and the general public (ie. "the clown got a black eye in a hey, Rube!").
In the early days of circuses in America (c. 1800-1860), it was very common for the employees (and owners) of circuses to get into fights with the locals as they traveled from town to town. Circuses were places where country people could gather, blow off steam and voice political views. Circuses were rowdy, loud and often lewd affairs. Mark Twain's classic description of a circus and other shows in Huckleberry Finn provides illustration. It was a rare show that did not include at least some violence, and this often involved the members of the circus.
When a circus worker was attacked or in trouble, he would yell "Hey, Rube!" and his fellow circus workers would rush to join the melee. Circus pioneer and legendary clown Dan Rice called it "a terrible cry, [meaning] as no other expression in the language does, that a fierce deadly fight is on, that men who are far away from home [traveling circus workers] must band together in a struggle that means life or death to them."[1]
The origin of the expression can be traced to 1848 when a member of Dan Rice's troupe was attacked at a New Orleans dance house. That man yelled to his friend, named "Reuben", who rushed to his aid.[1]. Another explanation is that the name "Rubens" is a slang term for farmers (e.g., "Rustic Reubens"), usually shortened to "Rubes". The OED's first entry for "Hey, Rube!" is from 1882 Times (Chicago) 3 Dec. Suppl. 12/4 "A canvasman watching a tent is just like a man watching his home. He'll fight in a minute if the outsider cuts the canvas, and if a crowd comes to quarrel he will yell, ‘Hey Rube!’ That's the circus rallying cry, and look out for war when you hear it."
The term is still known and used today in circuses, but often more romanticizing the "glory days" when circuses were rowdy affairs, and less describing actual fights or calling for aid.[1] It was invoked in an issue of the DC Comics book The Outsiders in reference to the team's leader, Nightwing, who was a former circus acrobat. The term is also used in All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #9, when Robin refers to Green Lantern repeatedly as a "rube", and then proceeds to beat him up and almost kill him.

Hypergelast "One who laughs excessively" "America had become a laughing nation, a country of frivolists and hypergelasts, a culture dangerously out of control."
Agelast "One who hardly laughs"

Now its my turn to weave all these words into 1 sentence

The brothers attempt to crash the party was foiled by the hosts cry of Hey Rube. The two brothers are Antipodal while the elder is a Hypergelast, designs Skeumorph guitars, loves singing in Serien the younger is Agelast, wears his hair in a Snood and widely known for his Epeolatory

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Vegetarian Hot Dogs at Football Game

I am updating this blog from outside the study lounge in student center. Today my day started in the morning with the homecoming parade and then I went to the alumni tent with John to have lunch there. It was a pleasant surprise to see the vegetarian hot dogs and vegetarian beans there. Also the free food included beer and soda. It was good meeting Mike there. He is a classmate of John. Then later we went to the football game with Mike helping me understand the game. We left before the 2nd half was about to start after they announced the homecoming king and queen at that time the score was 50-0 in favour of SIUC. After that I went to my office, uploaded the pictures and took some printout of Bernoulli's number, Multinomial Theorem etc for my perusal and since that I been working on that. In the past month I have been able to keep up with my toastmasters club and I am close to getting my CTM (competent toastmaster certificate). Its been wonderful and I am currently working on a persuasion speech which I will deliver this coming Wednesday. So far the topics of my speech have been
  • Introduction
  • Large Numbers
  • Generation Digital
  • Theory of Everything
  • Making change happen
  • The Prohibited Debate
  • Legacy of Randy Pausch
  • Yoga

That's for now

Friday, October 03, 2008

Meeting with Mausiji

Last week I took a trip to chicago to meet Mausiji. It was awesome. I was seeing her after at least 6 years of gap. I have talked to her few times on phone and its always a pleasant experience. We both have some common grounds like yoga, meditation and reading which provide ample hrs of discussion. She taught me some new asanas for my knee joint. Here are few pictures from her trip.

Toastmasters club in Southern Illinois

Its 11:57 and I am right now sitting in Neckers Computer Lab. I finish at 12:30. After that I will be going to Student Center to work on some of the homework problems. This semester I decided that I will be very serious about my Toastmasters club. We have a pretty good club here with Paul Flower as the President, Karen Cupp as the Vice President of Education and Joseph Robbie as the recruitment officer. All three are a wonderful speaker. Paul has the ability to morph into any roal he is assigned, the words flow naturally to him plus his weekly articles in daily egyptian cements his reputation as a writer. Karen is trully a professional speaker and I love her feedback because its so detailed and specific. No doubt people pay her for speaking. Joe is another professional to this game and has taught speaking all over the world and he has always been encouraging me with finer points of this art. I am glad that my friend Kyriakos has joined the club and together we have been encouraging each other to improve ourselves.
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