catching up on my week

you're gonna love this kitty...

another funny license plate: OHIGETIT

two mornings in a row, dad and i saw another chrysler aspen on the road. they're not very popular cars and we hadn't seen one since he bought his. yesterday's was a tannish colored one on I-278 and this morning's was another black one, but fancier with tinted windows and guards, on W.16 st.

i missed so many photo opps this morning. i saw 2 rainbows and the verrazano bridge was dark on the staten island half and light on the brooklyn half -- exactly in the middle of the bridge.

got my morning exercise by trekking my way to campus from chinatown -- took me a little less than half an hour. if i walked faster, it would take me 20min. it was fun making zigzags across the city as i made my way up. i keep forgetting that NYU actually provides bus service down to chinatown so i could just hop on one of those. oh well... they don't come frequently tho.

i registered for another LIS class: abstracting and indexing. it's 5 saturdays for 5.5 hours each. alice says it might not run. i'm the second person registered for the class. i dont know what the minimum amount of students is required to run a class... if it runs, i'll be doing 5 classes next semester. and people thought i was crazy for doing 4...

i'm currently filling out an SLA volunteer form. i'm just not sure what to write under additional comments. i'd love to become an active member, but at the moment, i like being passive. however, passive doesnt get you anywhere...

going to observe alexa's library instruction class this afternoon and then meet with meg over coffee. mmmm caffeine...

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not much to report from the last few days... i'm running on adrenaline and caffeine mostly. i barely got 6 hours of sleep over two days cuz i was writing a paper and TeXing my math hw (came out to 10 pages). TeXing takes a little more time than it takes me to write it, but it comes out looking so much nicer, no smudges. john said it looks so official (like answer keys do). i've been using miktex portable, which is great because it comes with its own TeX editor and i can easily remove the program from my computer cuz it's self contained in one folder. the downside is that it's a very simple interface and it takes me forever to find the mistake that prevents the code from compiling. but that's the same in TeXnicCenter. the mac and linux versions do a much better job of helping you catch errors. i guess, i just really miss TeXing up analysis hw because prof gole only accepted TeXed reports. so i have him to thank for really learning how to TeX. i even TeXed up review sheets for analysis and linear algebra for my midterms a few weeks ago. it took me a good few days time, but it was worth having all the material in one place.

on a side note, i saw prof percus yesterday in the lounge. i didn't notice him when i walked in, but after i had settled down, i saw he was in a position to notice me so it would be awkward to not say hi and do a little catchup. i'd be lying if i said it wasn't a little bit awkward. sometimes i have a hard time understanding his speech. it's not really that he has an accent, but he doesnt quite enunciate everything so i had to ask him to repeat a lot of things (which is really embarrassing). but we talked about how i'm liking the books he recommended. the martin gardner one is so much fun -- i plan on reading the whole thing through. i'm really considering mashing my two areas of studies together, but i haven't figured out how. prof percus pointed out a really good idea -- talk to carol. well, duh. why didn't i think of that before?? she's already living the life i'm aspiring to, so why not ask her what i should pursue? heh...

btw, this post took me 45 minutes to compose.

rest of my day

after work, i made a quick trip down to nypl mulberry branch to pick up a couple of books. one of them is a guide to medical reference. i'm still reading it, but it's a relatively quick read. i'm discovering that a lot of reference work is kind of like playing this psychology game. you have to control every aspect of your appearance, behavior, tone of voice, etc. if i were to stop and think about it, i'd be way too self-conscious to project confidence to the patron. from what i've read so far, the author has given some very helpful suggestions on how to deal with certain situations. i think it's hilarious that she addresses what to do if you need to compose yourself after a patron asks a query and you find the need to laugh. she constantly stresses professionalism, and how the librarian's job is not to interpret the information for the user or give an opinion/diagnosis. right now i'm up to the chapter about legal issues and how to get around that.

classes were interesting today. the prof mentioned the bomb building reference question in 510 and the terrorism one in 512. i love how i started and ended the day on the same note.

i bumped into prof gunturk as i was leaving the courant building. i feel like i nearly jumped him in the elevator cuz i couldn't stop asking him questions bout how to write the thesis. he was very very nice about answering all my questions. definitely went above and beyond to make me feel like i matter to the department.

i forgot to mention that yesterday, i actually dug through bobst's stacks and checked out a bunch of books. there's now an ILL waiting for me too at the front desk. i feel so accomplished! i'm slowly making my way through the saari book, which is a fascinating read. i never thought that you could design your voting system based on who you wanted to win and make it look like it was fair. crazy!!

books to read

prof percus emailed me some books to start with. there's some limited previews in google books.

1. Martin Gardner: Gotcha - paradoxes to puzzle and delight [Bobst QA95 .G229 2006]
2. Friedman, Feinberg, de Mets - Fundamentals of clinical trials [Bobst R853.C55 F75 1996]
3. Saari- Decisions and Elections [Courant HB846.8 .S25 2001]
4. Donald Berry- Statistical Methodology in the Pharmaceutical Sciences [ILL]

i located #3. and i found myself reading the title page and its verso (the LC CIP info). like technical reading of the book (which was an assignment i had for my lis512 class a few weeks ago). i feel like such a geek. i requested #4 from ILL since we don't own the book here and it seems NYPL has a copy not in circulation at SIBL. if it's good, i'll have to ask meg to get it for the library. the other two books, i'll have to get when i'm over there again sometime. perhaps tomorrow i'll dig through the stacks. some other books i'd like to browse on the same related topic:

1. Kirkwood - Essential Medical Statistics [Bobst R853.S7 K497 2003]
2. Petrie - Medical Statistics at a Glance [Bobst R853.S7 P476 2005]
3. Bahn - Basic Medical Statistics [Bobst RA409 B34]
4. Daly - Interpretations and Uses of Medical Statistics [Bobst RA409 B65 2000]
5. Rao - Epidemiology and medical statistics [Bobst RA652.2 M3 F65 2008]
6. Feinstein - Principles of Medical Statistics [Bobst R853.S7 F45 2002] out
   
7. Campbell - Medical Statistics: a textbook for the health science [Bobst R853.S7 C36 2007]
8. Peat - Medical Statistics: a guide to data analysis and critical appraisal [Bobst R853.S7 P43 2005] out
9. Bowers - Medical Statistics from scratch: an introduction for health professionals [Bobst RA409 B669 2008] out
10. Everitt - medical statistics from A to Z [Bobst RA407 E943 2006]
11. Rees - Essential Statistics for Medical Practice: a case-study approach [Bobst RA409 R44 1994] out
12. Matthews - Using and Understanding Medical Statistics 4th ed [Bobst 2nd ed RA409 M39 1988]
13. Everitt - the encyclopaedic companion to medical statistics [Bobst RA409 E527 2005]
14. Riffenburgh - Statistics in medicine [Bobst RA409 R54 2005]
15. Samuels - Statistics for the life sciences [Bobst QH323.5 S23 2003]
16. Daniel - Biostatistics [Courant RA409 .D35 2005]
17. Indrayan - medical biostatistics [Bobst RA407 I525 2001]
18. Feinstein - clinical biostatistics [Bobst RA409 F36]
19. Havil - Impossible?: surprising solutions to counterintuitive conundrums [Bobst QA99 H379 2008] out

the list keeps growing! i'll have to start up my refworks acct from smith and get it transferred to nyu. it looks like i'll be spending a lot more time over at bobst than here at courant. General Sections to look at:

• QA95
  
• QA99
• QH323.5
• R853
• RA407
• RA407
• RA652.2

mid-term frenzy

got my first midterm tonight (analysis, yuck ><). i've been studying steadily the entire week, but i feel like once i sit down and get handed the exam, everything will be wiped from my brain and i'll be giving the exam a blank stare. we only get an hour for 4-5 questions (with multiple parts). presumably, it's one question from each chapter. the only chapter i'm not so comfortable with is the last one we just covered. i feel like i haven't let it sink in enough... and epsilons and deltas are driving me crazy.

on monday, i met with prof percus for the first time. it was absolutely nerve-racking. it's my fault - i didn't do enough research in the field to make it a really productive meeting. he pretty much talked about the field in general and how i could go about exploring it, and explained what he's interested in. i felt like i knew nothing. i was on the fringes of understanding what he was explaining -- like i had enough knowledge (which is really limited) to understand (concepts like sigmas and errors, clinical trials, etc). we settled on something to do with paradoxes (check out simpson's paradox). i'm hoping that more i look into the area, i'll happen upon something i can turn into a thesis. i'm not afraid of breaking some new ground, but that's not my ultimate goal. i told pauline that i was trying to put myself on his wavelength rather than set my goals on something. so we'll see how that turns out... i need to check out an armload of books about medical statistics now...

no wait, i need to study. haha... laterz

friday~ness

heh, news to the world: obama wins nobel peace prize. everyone i've talked to today has mentioned it somewhere in the conversation.

came to courant early hoping to get a lot of work done. heh, didn't work out as i planned. i blame the printer. it did not print my stuff and spent time trying to figure it out. which led to something really interesting happening. i bumped into mr. winokur! i barely recognized him at first. he was my bc calculus teacher in hs. he was also looking for a missing print job. at one point i said to him: you look really familiar. and he asked me if i went to stuy. and from there figured it all out. he's retired from stuy and now teaching undergrad calculus at NYU. i always thought he was meant for bigger things than hs. we got to talking about what i'm doing now. i mentioned to him that perhaps i'll write a thesis, but i dont have an advisor and don't know how i would do it. he asked me what area i'd like to work in. even though i hated statistics in undergrad, i think i'd like to further explore it now. kinda ironic, dont u think? he recommended jerome percus because he does medical statistics. so i emailed the professor and now i'm just waiting to hear back. tho, i have heard professors here dont answer their emails ><

i promised to join a comprehensive group meeting today, so i gotta go do some work before then...