This post is about what brings me pain
Sometimes people say things because that's exactly what they mean and there is very little behind it all because honestly, I doubt anyone has enough energy to make every single comma or word a double or triple meaning. If someone says they're driving a mini-cooper, they are probably driving a mini-cooper and not the NCC-1701 Enterprise behind your back. Not everybody is Dexter Morgan, I mean seriously. Most people on this planet are exactly what they appear to be: normal, occasionally quirky, and comfortably boring. If you go into a relationship - heck, even a conversation - with someone and expect to be divinely enlightened or some other thing you've seen on TV or at the movies, boy are you going to be disappointed. Not everyone is out to get everybody else - no body cares enough so chill out. Enjoy the weather or something.
Now that hopefully your most paranoid, over-analytical and cynical side has been successfully soothed, now you get to voyeur your way through a free math lesson rant. You should feel grateful; some people out there are paying $3000 a class to be taught this shit (ie. me).
I like math - I just majorly, majorly suck at it which sometimes put a damper on my mood towards the subject. There is quite frankly a portion of my brain, probably the size of a pea that just popped out of my ear when I was born that has forever deprived me of my dreams to work in science, accounting and anything that requires numbers which is basically, uh, everything. But that is okay. Despite my obvious handicap and lack of number sense, I've still managed to survive mathematical classes and exams without much embarrassment and usually with impressive flying colors. I'm not smart - I'm just a donkey. By which I mean I work really, really hard and it generally evens out.
But enough gloating (Ha, enough? I NEVER GET ENOUGH OF GLOATING ABOUT MYSELF TO MYSELF. Er. We will address the matter of how my ego is the size of Vulcan on a later date). This is just so you know what kind of point-of-view I have going into this whole thing so maybe your opinion might be different, maybe it's the same, and maybe I'm just really screwed up in the head - whatever. Just putting it out there.
So. You know when you're faced with a deceptively simple math problem that is really 10 pages long? And then when you've finally finished it and feel like it took a little bit of your soul with it too, you realize that in the very beginning, you accidentally divided one thing wrong which has not really changed anything drastically except for shift every number off by ".36"? It's the shame of being foiled by an utterly elementary, impossibly simple mathematical function or formula that you could probably program your toaster to do for you in less time than an Emory math major probably could (And those little fuckers are fierce. The math majors at Emory, I mean, not the toasters. Well, actually, maybe the toasters too). It's the feeling of "almost, but no cigar, baby" and 15 minutes you'll never get back.
Let me give you some context. Take for instance, the F-Test: an asymmetric distribution that has a minimum value of 0 but no maximum value with two degrees of freedom (dfN and dfD). In general, it is very simply one sample's variance over the other sample's variance and its purpose is to decide whether or not you need to slit your throat over this beast:
which has very little purpose in real life except for - um, no, nevermind, it has no purpose. 90% of the time, the answer is yes, you'll have to flex your number muscles and prepare yourself to be neck-gutted more times than Nathan Petrelli on Heroes had been.
So imagine doing all of that and then only realizing you accidentally switched X-bar with sample variance and now you have the irritating choice of either doing the problem all over again or erase select parts (in which you must also employ the step of "finding the select parts to erase which are usually not very evident"). This? This is where I am.
That is all. Now that I've thoroughly burnt myself out, I'm going to redo said 10 pages and try and take a nap.
Now that hopefully your most paranoid, over-analytical and cynical side has been successfully soothed, now you get to voyeur your way through a free math lesson rant. You should feel grateful; some people out there are paying $3000 a class to be taught this shit (ie. me).
I like math - I just majorly, majorly suck at it which sometimes put a damper on my mood towards the subject. There is quite frankly a portion of my brain, probably the size of a pea that just popped out of my ear when I was born that has forever deprived me of my dreams to work in science, accounting and anything that requires numbers which is basically, uh, everything. But that is okay. Despite my obvious handicap and lack of number sense, I've still managed to survive mathematical classes and exams without much embarrassment and usually with impressive flying colors. I'm not smart - I'm just a donkey. By which I mean I work really, really hard and it generally evens out.
But enough gloating (Ha, enough? I NEVER GET ENOUGH OF GLOATING ABOUT MYSELF TO MYSELF. Er. We will address the matter of how my ego is the size of Vulcan on a later date). This is just so you know what kind of point-of-view I have going into this whole thing so maybe your opinion might be different, maybe it's the same, and maybe I'm just really screwed up in the head - whatever. Just putting it out there.
So. You know when you're faced with a deceptively simple math problem that is really 10 pages long? And then when you've finally finished it and feel like it took a little bit of your soul with it too, you realize that in the very beginning, you accidentally divided one thing wrong which has not really changed anything drastically except for shift every number off by ".36"? It's the shame of being foiled by an utterly elementary, impossibly simple mathematical function or formula that you could probably program your toaster to do for you in less time than an Emory math major probably could (And those little fuckers are fierce. The math majors at Emory, I mean, not the toasters. Well, actually, maybe the toasters too). It's the feeling of "almost, but no cigar, baby" and 15 minutes you'll never get back.
Let me give you some context. Take for instance, the F-Test: an asymmetric distribution that has a minimum value of 0 but no maximum value with two degrees of freedom (dfN and dfD). In general, it is very simply one sample's variance over the other sample's variance and its purpose is to decide whether or not you need to slit your throat over this beast:
which has very little purpose in real life except for - um, no, nevermind, it has no purpose. 90% of the time, the answer is yes, you'll have to flex your number muscles and prepare yourself to be neck-gutted more times than Nathan Petrelli on Heroes had been.
So imagine doing all of that and then only realizing you accidentally switched X-bar with sample variance and now you have the irritating choice of either doing the problem all over again or erase select parts (in which you must also employ the step of "finding the select parts to erase which are usually not very evident"). This? This is where I am.
That is all. Now that I've thoroughly burnt myself out, I'm going to redo said 10 pages and try and take a nap.