It wasn’t until well into college that I realized that all the nutrients in white bread were not concentrated in the crust.  It’s not like I was vigorously debating the topic and defending the position, but it was just something that was always in the back of my mind when presented with a slice of white bread.  “No Candy in the Morning” is a relatively arbitrary rule, but threshold I’m tenuous to cross nonetheless.  And let’s be honest, I like gummy candy much more than the average 23-year old.

Before going to the movies at the Rialto in Westfield, we’d run across the street to Barron’s drug to buy candy.  With a selection far too big for a health-themed establishment, this place had a solid hold on the market for kids with a pile of change burning a hole in the pocket.  Personally, I always liked the little theaters upstairs at the Rialto, the ones where small releases started or blockbusters went to die.  The theater (or so I’m told by my crust-encouraging mother) used to be one of those grand old places hundreds would pack into to see a show.  When they chopped it up for movies, the balcony seats were close enough to the ceiling that the screen had to be pushed out into the abyss that once would have looked down, leaving a front row with a comfortable unobstructed view and a ledge to put your refreshments.  Read more of this entry…

The concept is simple: you have an expectation about how things work in the world and then as you observe actual events and experience life, you revise those expectations accordingly.  We constantly observe, predict, react trying to keep our mental model of the state of the universe one step ahead of its constantly changing shape.  The continuous flow of sensory information is projected on countless dimensions and neural connections are reinforced in an orgy of wonderfully mechanical probability calculations.  And so there’s something innately satisfying about replicating the same primal computations, even if it is with problems involving urns or dice and some contrived Gamma or 2-Pareto model.

In case I’ve piqued your interest with this crazy Bayesian statistics/psychology business I’m so fond of through my information science, economics, psychology and statistics studies (most notably Edelman’s Psych 214), you might want to get the Bayes Theorum under your belt then connect it to neural networks.  If that’s a little too aggressive for you, you might be satisfied with the comic that prompted this post’s title.  There, see? This blog is educational!

At this point you might be wondering what I do in my spare time when I’m not bettering myself through education in actuarial statistical methods or saving the world through retirement income security.  This month, I perched in a cherry blossom tree outside the Jefferson Memorial, ate Hot Truck overlooking Ithaca from the WVBR transmitter, and talked to the only friendly guy in New York City (a creepster out in front of the Port Authority who decided he wouldn’t fight me after feeling my muscles!).

And so this is where I find myself: trying to take in enough experience to reinforce the knowledge I need for my test on Tuesday.  As the sun emerges, the temperatures rise and the messages from the family off frolicking in Bermuda pile up, it seems ever the more essential not to get distracted.  Right.  I’ll get to it then…

I have this irrational fear that one day I’ll wake up and realize I’m an adult.  You know, realize at some point that you’ve unknowingly crossed the threshold into the culturally-universal archetype of the main portion of your existence.  I plan on deluding myself on this point for some time to come.  I wholly intend to be one of the old-but-not-that-old people on the AARP commercial saying “when I grow up, I’m going to do something with my life.”  That’s not to say I don’t yell at the TV every time the ad comes on “I know you’re not grown up because you’re employing a giant lobbying firm to get yourself government perks at my expense”.

It’s back to exam season until May, which basically means when I’m not working I’ll be studying for the next in the nearly inexhaustible series of professional exams I need to take to become credentialed in my field.  The kickoff event was five days in Austin, TX at the Jim Daniel seminar, hosted at the tolerable La Quinta hotel.  Read more of this entry…

It’s hard to talk about February in Washington, DC without talking about snowpocalypse.  So it turns out my first winter here is for all intents and purposes the worst on record for snow and just generally colder and more unpleasant than usual.  But since when do things turn out the way you expect them to? Read more of this entry…