Pat is having her statistic exam next week, so she is studying hard this weekend. Somehow her nervous in preparing for the exam affects me. I already helped her walking Charlie everyday, did laundry, cooked dinner and washed the dishes on the weekend. As a arts student, Pat seems struggling in the statistic course. I wonder how tough is the course and I picked up her textbook and see hard the material can be. I spent about half an hour go through all the chapter summary. As I expected, the undergrad statistic course for psychology students is a piece of cake to an engineer. There is only one central idea connecting everything in the course: you got some sample data, then you pick a distribution curve, then apply some math formulas to find whatever parameters in the curve. There are some assumptions, from time to time, you have to test whether the sample data justify for the curve you are trying to fit. You don’t want to fit the data into a wrong curve or your experiment result is meaningless. I did not learn statistic in engineering school, but the basic concept is the same for probability and statistics course. It is the same basic mathematics to see whether a new drug is effective on the patients or to decode cell phone signal received from the antenna.
Tag Archives: school
Taxable benefit of living in school
My high school made news on Globe and Mail, a national newspaper. Revenue Canada, aka taxman, sues the headmaster and teachers living on campus understating their taxable benefits on free rent. The headmaster claim a taxable benefit of $6000 per year, on a two stories house over looking Lake Ontario. But the taxman say it should be a value of $31000, which is calculated base on the rent in the area. The case went to court and the judge rule against the Revenue Canada. The judge accept the headmaster’s argument that living on campus sacrifice their private life. It is unrealistic to assume the place rent out with the market price. The rent is cheap because it comes with the responsibility to take care of the boarding students at night.
As a alumni, I agree with the judge and glad that he had made the right ruling. Although outsiders thinks my high school is a elite school with four prime ministers on the alumni list, the fact is the students are as troublesome as other teenagers. Things just happens at night in board schools. The teachers living on campus has to deal with it. The headmaster is not exaggerating. We do have drunken students and students with emotional distress. I was caught once sneaking out to have beer in midnight and saw more than once fights break out among students who suppose to be sleeping. We also pranked the headmaster from time to time. I remember we wrap his car with toilet paper in Halloween one year and painted his lawn furniture in pink the other year. I don’t think anyone with a right mind would pay the market rent to live among 200 naughty teenagers.
Old friend
Tonight I met an old friend, we haven’t seen each other for almost 20 years. It is really wonderful that I am able to dine and chat with her after all these years. I have dinner with two primary schoolmates tonight. I keep in touch with one of them regularly but I haven’t seen the other since I graduated. We spent lots of time catching up with each other, filling in the blanks on the past twenty years.
One good thing about talking to old friend is that they help you understand yourself. They will tell you stories about yourself that you had long forgotten. My friend remembers that I like to take the toys apart and put them back together when I am in school. I guess there were traces that I will be an engineer when I am a little kid. Another good thing about old friend is you can always make fun of their age. Age is a woman’s secret. But you know exactly how old your classmates are, you went to school together!
Lasalle soccer
I met several old boys in a wedding a few weeks ago thru special connection of some MCS girls. Thru the quite complex linkage, somehow me and Edwin are invited to play soccer with other old boys. Since I had started playing soccer for a few times and already bought the gears, why not take the chance to get connections with the old boys here in Vancouver. They are practicing for the upcoming Lasallian Soccer Tournament held in L.A. Too bad that this summer I’m so busy that I can’t join the soccer trip. I can imagine it would be fun to have so many old boys from North America getting together. The practice is not as competitive as the soccer game at work, but still I’m quite exhausted after the game. The group then go to have dinner together. There are many fun stories and lots of laughs. One thing I discovered from an old boy is a cheaper way to buy cars. The tick is never buy a car from the salesperson in the showroom. After you had make up your mind on the models and options, and get some quotes from different showrooms, go to ask for the fleet department. The fleet department usually takes corporate orders, but they also takes walk in retail customers. Their price is much better than the sales in the showroom. The only concern is that they cannot compete with the sales, so makes sure you haven’t talk to any sales in the same showroom to get the cheap deal.
The Economist
Today when I was reading Economist, one of the colleague walked by cube, peaked his head and asked me what makes me read the Economist. That gets me start thinking how did I get start in this magazine. I have been known as the sole reader of the copy subscribed by the company library for a long time. Actually, tell you all a little secret, I also know the company’s password of the online account to access the Economist’s website. I first encounter with the Economist back in high school, I believe we are required to research on an article for the history course. Maybe my memory is a bit flickery, what does history has to do with the Economist? I start picked up reading it regularly when my dad had a subscription. At first I found the English of it a bit difficulty, not a surprise since it’s a London based magazine. After reading it for so many years, I had been accustomed to its style of writing. Presumably, if I’m given two paragraph from two different magazine, I could probably tell which one is from the Economist. One of my long term goal is to write like the Economist, a style that is clear, concise and yet sophisticated. Despite of the name of the magazine, it only has about one third of contain on business and economy. Its nature is a news magazine, with comments and analysis from the view point of an logical minded economist. The articles are more in depth than Times or Newsweek, with focus on the cause, reason and effects of current events than what had happened. Each article is well edited that takes me only 5-10 minutes to read. On average, it takes me 2-3 hours to finish an issue, depending on whether it has an interesting survey. There are so many good magazine out there, I used to read more periodic in university days when I lots of time. Now I can barely keep up with reading one magazine a week. My ideal reading list of each week would be, the Economist, IEEE Spectrum, Scientific America, National Geographic, New Yorker (I haven’t start on this one yet, due to its English is even more scary), PC Magazine, Next Magazine (chinese), Harvey Business Review, IEEE Computer, IEEE Communication, and last Computer Gaming World