Routines

If you'll permit me, I'd like to mention something of my routine here. Routines are often boring, but new routines can be kind of exciting, even to read about. However, this might make you feel like this fellow:


Each day, there are two classes and three talks. The classes are each an hour and a half long, though sometimes they seem longer, shorter, or actually are one of the two. They start after breakfast at 8am, switch their ordering daily, and end about a half hour before lunch at 1230pm. We then have two lectures in the afternoon right after lunch at about 2pm, and they cover whatever the student giving the talk decides they should cover. Usually their own research. There's then a break in the afternoon to do as you like. Dinner is a 7pm. Another lecture follows (it's since moved to 8:30 from 8:50) and ends at 9:10. Then, by all rights, we ought all to go to bed.

Of course, I don't. The reason is that no one else does and I realize it's because I'm copying. I think we all are, though. It's perfectly natural for people to copy each other in a new situation -- it's how we figure out what's what. In copying others I've discovered the need and benefit of studying for the lectures between lectures. Yevgeniy was wrong when he said there would be no homework or exams. (Or maybe just lying for my benefit.) Each lecture is an exam on the previous lecture. Did you understand Steiner's Formula yesterday? No? Well let's introduce you to the orthogonal expansions for Gaussian processes anyway...

I haven't talked about the actual math at all yet, and that' been on purpose. Who wants to read about math on a blog? I don't even know how to enter math formulae properly here. But, I will mention the effect this enclosure has had on me.

I've seen talks on Stochastic Simulation, the Symbiotic Branching Model, read a paper on the Particle Filtering method for Monte-Carlo simulations, and had the value of probability models in Population Genetics impressed upon me by one of the main lectures. This is something I want to do, I realize, and I feel just a little far behind. However, everyone here is years ahead of me, literally, and I'm not afraid of a little catching up.

Copying also lead me to take walks around Saint-Flour. It's a more active village than I guessed, with lots of shops and cafes in the upper town. I realized that the only places in America that we see this kind of architecture is in the medieval sections of theme parks, like Enchanted Forest. There aren't any rides here, but there is the feeling that around any corner you might stumble into Western Town, or a Future Space-City. See?