Category: LiveJournal

Phew! Done with That!

Well, about 15 minutes ago, I turned in my first statistical research paper, which also happened to be my first APA-style paper. I had turned in a very rough draft on the 18th (with minutes to spare before midnight) but, alas, never received any feedback from it. Still, I worked on the paper since then, especially yesterday, and it was taking good shape. However, when I was walking home today, I was feeling rather low about research papers in general, wondering even if I’d be able to tackle my eventual thesis paper.

My work on the thing after work today managed to swing that feeling around. At 8:30pm I was done with the paper, so I printed it off (cuz it looked so nice!) and took it around to the folks’ who agreed that it looked nice. And surely looking nice is half the battle! Dad didn’t see anything truly glaring in my conclusions, so that’s something too. After they oggled the paper, I returned home, saved the file in Word format (I use StarOffice at home) and turned it in. Yay! I feel elated and have begun to work on the other class’s final project – a curriculum for a science and the public course. That’s due on Friday.

Wow – hard to believe that after this week, I’ll be 12 semester hours into my Masters program! I have a summer class starting May 19th (and ending July 12th) on scientific writing. That should be good practice for my science blog (tls_scienceblog) among other things. And this weekend, I start up my 30-day retail version of World of Warcraft. Yay!

“It’s curtains for you!”

Since I have a final project due on Monday and a final curriculum due on Thursday, I’m doing everything I can to avoid working on them. But at least I’m doing productive things to avoid them!

The first thing we (parents and me) did today was check out garage sales in town – well, visited Aunt Becky at her son’s garage sale. After we went to the post office and library, we picked up pork tenderloin sandwiches and French fries from a vendor on Main street (in place for the town garage sales).

Before we headed off for our grand adventure, I stopped back home for something, only to find that the kitties had pulled the living room curtain down again. They get their claws stuck in the lace and pull it down. And then trying to get the lace back on the curtain rods is a pain in the arse. So I measured the windows and resolved to buy new curtains while we oot & aboot.

We started out at JoAnn fabrics with the thought of mom making curtains (she’s making some gingham ones for her side-door), but then we decided to check if Walmart had something like I could use. And there, we found just what I needed – sheer but not lace (no place for kitties to get claws caught on) and not floor length like the big window had. I also got some grass seed and wrapping paper & cards for Amy & Rachel’s birthday presents.

Back home I got to work taking down the old curtains and putting up the new ones. And before I did that, I cleaned the front window – it had a long row of kitty nose prints from kitty cats walking along the sill and looking outside. Turns out in addition to nose prints there was a nice layer of dirt. Comes with never cleaning my windows. Ugh. Should do my other windows tomorrow.

I also put some of my grass seed in the dead spots in my lawn. And watered it. That took a bit of time. Then it was time to have supper and watch the new DW. And then judiang, elsaf, and hergrace got online so we watched the episode together. Let’s hear it for Instant Messaging! 🙂

Anniversary Celebration

Today was mom & dad’s 40th Anniversary! I wasn’t around 40 years ago when they got married, but I was around today, so I took them out for a nice dinner at the restaurant of their choosing. (Yesterday I gave ’em a dozen roses courtesy of the Lion’s Club selling ’em at school through their Leo Club.)

Mom wanted to try out The Caroline, a new restaurant that’s where Taggart’s used to be (a fairly well-known restaurant in Troy, OH). I like a grand adventure, so I agreed to take ’em there. Although they lost my reservation, it wasn’t really needed and we were seated right away. We got a friendly waitress who did a nice job serving us. For an appetizer we had shrimp cocktail. We all had side salads (I had the Caesar salad), then our main courses came out. Mom got the prime rib, which was the day’s special. It was very juicy and tasty. Dad ordered their house steak (and he got it medium, which was a shock). I ordered their chipotle pork chop with spiced apples – tasty but I should have gotten medium rather than medium well – was just a bit dry. I also had the lyonaisse potatoes as my side – basically fried taters cooked with onions. Then, though we were pretty stuffed, we split their three layer chocolate cake. Very very moist and tasty!

It was a very pleasant evening out and we enjoyed ourselves and our food. Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad! Here’s to 40 more! 🙂

Data mining

So I’m playing around with Ohio’s data on school performance and lots of variables to see if there are any correlations for my statistics class’s final project. And to my (pleasant?) surprise I found out that there is correlation between teacher salary and the school’s performance indicator (a number the state comes up with for each school based on several qualifying factors). And it’s a positive correlation. OK, so it’s not as strong of a correlation as economic advantage or on percentage of white students (since standardized tests are usually written with the middle/upper class white student) but it’s statistically significant. So yeah, pay me more and my school will do better! 🙂

Here’s the graph:


Graphs are cool! I like graphs!

OK, back to number crunching!

A favor to ask of you…

For our Statistics class, we’ll be doing a statistical research project. One of my classmates is doing research on home schooling and has a survey that she needs respondents for. I did the survey myself and it didn’t take very long at all (she specifies 3-5 minutes, but it seemed shorter to me). If you’re willing and able, would you please fill out her survey to help with her project? The survey is completely anonymous (and she probably doesn’t know any of you anyway, heh).

http://homeschoolsurvey.questionpro.com/

Thanks in advance to those of you who’ve taken the survey!

(In my own project, I decided I’d wade through all of the Ohio Graduation Test/Ohio Achievement Test data and see what I could find. Should be, um, fun?)

Glad I got *that* out of my system!

For my Masters program this semester, I had to make a presentation either on Science & Religion or on Science & Policy. I’d been meaning, for some time, to tackle the so-called controversy over evolution but didn’t think I was ready for it. However, last week during our class’s discussions on science & religion, I decided I would do it. So I made a presentation on Impress (StarOffice/OpenOffice.org‘s presentation software) and uploaded it to Slideshare (sort of a YouTube for PowerPoints). And then posted it on my science blog for my classmates and anyone else to read it. Check out the entry with slide show here.

I’ve actually been updating my science blog each Wednesday since early February, which I’m very pleased about. I hope it’s something I can keep up. (I have two more misconceptions I want to cover in the next two weeks, so that’s April covered for the most part.) If you’d like to see the posts as they show up, I have created an LJ feed for the syndication: tls_scienceblog.

Taste Testing

Today I went out with two ladies from the Alumni Association Executive Committee (of which I am also a member). We had to pick up a few items and order some things for the upcoming banquet. We have an all-school alumni banquet every May honoring the 10 year class, 25 year class, 50 year class, and 75 year class. Any alumni can come and sometimes we get large groups of the 20 year class or some other group in addition to our “honored classes.” It’s actually fun being on the committee, though I’m mostly there as the person who knows Access (the Micro$oft Database program).

One of the main reasons we were out today was to see the caterer’s and try the dishes that we were hoping to serve at the banquet. Our caterer this year (for the second year running) is Christopher’s Restaurant from Kettering (a ‘burb of Dayton). Heh, catering from Kettering – reminds me of a One Foot in the Grave joke. Anyhoo, when we got there, the chefs sat down and talked with us, and served us a nice meal of the items we’d picked. After a starter of salad (with their excellent dill house dressing), we had Chicken Francese and Harvest Pork Tenderloin, both of which were excellent. We also tried their mashed potatoes with leeks and shallots and their California medley. Two of us decided that maybe the medley wasn’t what we wanted for the banquet and so we switched to baby carrots for the actual event. While the head chef was talking with us, he was bragging about their homemade soups. I asked if they made cream of broccoli and he said they did and were serving it that day. He brought me a cup of soup (and my two co-tasters their homemade mushroom bisque) to show off. Very creamy, very tasty. They also decided to show off with their desserts and asked what we wanted. As soon as they said “bread pudding” I knew what I wanted. And this HUGE piece of bread pudding with sauce and ice cream was brought to me. And it was the best bread pudding I’ve had this side of New Orleans. Next time judiang and elsaf come to visit, I’ll see about making the detour south so they can check this place out. The actual restaurant is in a strip mall and doesn’t look all that special, but the food was exemplary. And the folks working there are wonderful. I’m still full from the late lunch (I was expecting a taste, not a meal, and was pleasantly surprised by the quantity of food they offered).

PS: Happy Birthday gregmce!

Spring Break ’08!

Although I had today off (being Good Friday and all that jazz) I didn’t feel like I’d started Spring Break until just a few minutes ago when I finally finished the third Data Analysis Exercise for my stats class. But it’s turned in, my proposal for my statistics final project is turned in (though originally I turned in a StarOffice file instead of Word document – whoops!) and I can now think a bit more about Spring Breaking!

I did sleep in today (well, til 8am – went to bed at the usual time last night since I was so tired) and talked dad in to buying Chinese Buffet for my lunch today. We also had a short stop at Walmart after lunch. But for the most part I’ve been in my library working on statistics. I’d been putting it off to get teaching stuff done last week and this week. The third quarter ended yesterday, so I’ve been trying to get caught up on grading. However, I have all of the quarter exams to grade and several retests for chemistry to grade (I had an Amnesty Day since some of the test scores this quarter were pretty low on average – I blame all the days off due to weather – or maybe lousy teaching, heh). Hopefully I’ll actually do them rather than let them sit there until Sunday night of next week. Heh. (One of my seniors predicted that and I suspect he’ll be right, procrastinator that I am.)

Anyway, back to statistics. I actually like doing the Data Analysis Exercises – number crunching has always been good to me. Indeed, I understand the exercises more than I understand the reading assignments. Well, at least I can use the tools to do the exercises and maybe understand what the numbers mean once they’re crunched. StarOffice Calc has been a godsend to me (as MS Exel would have been had I had it installed on any of my computers, which I don’t – ha!) but so have some nice websites which do statistical calculations which Calc can’t do. OpenEpi has been wonderful for ANOVA and t-test results. And today I found an Effect Size Calculator to calculate Cohen’s d. Joy joy. 🙂

I usually like to visit judiang during Spring Break since it always falls close to her birthday, but with my college work (much of which needs completed this next week) calling to me, I’m having to bow out of the visit. 🙁 Judi’s making me feel guilty, which she doesn’t need to since I already feel guilty. But all that guilt will probably result in a nice present for her, so she wins in the long run. Heh. Anyhoo, I’m sure she and elsaf will have a lovely time, if Elsa’s able to make it up there.

Tomorrow morning I’ll use one of my 15-day City of Heroin cards I got for Christmas to start up the addiction again. My only concern is that the game will completely sap my break such that I don’t get my college stuff done. I shall try to be strong. However, I’m itching so much to play again that I’ve got to do it. 🙂 I’ve already decided that the first toon I play will be my archer on the Freedom server – Pointed Stick. 🙂 Those 15 days have to last me until the end of the semester (April 28th or so) when I use the 30-day retail code for World of Warcrack. Ah, I’ve missed my little Elf and Dwarf hunters. (Not hunters of elves and dwarves, but hunters who are elven and dwarven.)

If I can tear myself away from CoH long enough tomorrow, I also intend to go to Fairborn for my Indian Fud/DWM run. Should be a nice day, even if the weather isn’t nice. (Of course, if the weather is really crappy, I’ll go to Fairborn another day of Spring Break.) Other plans for the break include FINALLY cleaning out closets and getting stuff together to take to auction, cleaning the house completely, reading, doing more college work, hanging out with the kitties, and whatever else I happen to think of doing. 🙂 Should be fun!