New Challenges
I'm on day four of a seven day respite. I have found rest periods to be a crucial stage of the training cycle, but also the most challenging. Not training wreaks havoc on my life; my productivity, personal hygeine, and sense of what's important all suffer. Some examples: I've gotten up five times since I started this post, and I'm not even sure what I accomplished. Today was my first shower since Saturday and I was excited to try the "Citrus Lift" shampoo and conditioner that my sister had in the shower but I was too distressed by the prescence of the word "bodifying" on the bottles that I didn't really enjoy it. I spent the rest of my shower pondering whether or not "bodifying" was actually a word (it's not) and why someone would put that in print? This is what I worry about when I'm not at school or training and under pressure.
I do get to do a lot of pleasure reading during these weeks. I finished "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell which were both excellent & quick reads. Now I've started "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman and have most decidedly not been impressed. So now my dilema is whether I should dredge through the remaining 400 pages so that I can justifiably disparage it or give it up and suffer the inner humiliation of not finishing a book. These things become so much more important when I don't have workouts to do and papers to write.
A math gripe against Friedman: On page 67 Friedman says: "But then the law of large numbers started to kick in, and the pace of doubling slowed." What?! The law of large numbers has nothing to do with how fast a number doubles. The law of large numbers states that the average expectation of a set of random variables of a population will approach the mean of the population as you make the set large. In other words, if I estimated the weight of all catfish in Lake Chelan by catching 10 fish and finding their average weight. If I repeat this a LARGE number of times and average my means then I will be able to come arbitrarily close to the true mean of the weight of catfish in Lake Chelan.
Hopefully I can survive the next three days of inactivity without going crazy!
I do get to do a lot of pleasure reading during these weeks. I finished "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell which were both excellent & quick reads. Now I've started "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman and have most decidedly not been impressed. So now my dilema is whether I should dredge through the remaining 400 pages so that I can justifiably disparage it or give it up and suffer the inner humiliation of not finishing a book. These things become so much more important when I don't have workouts to do and papers to write.
A math gripe against Friedman: On page 67 Friedman says: "But then the law of large numbers started to kick in, and the pace of doubling slowed." What?! The law of large numbers has nothing to do with how fast a number doubles. The law of large numbers states that the average expectation of a set of random variables of a population will approach the mean of the population as you make the set large. In other words, if I estimated the weight of all catfish in Lake Chelan by catching 10 fish and finding their average weight. If I repeat this a LARGE number of times and average my means then I will be able to come arbitrarily close to the true mean of the weight of catfish in Lake Chelan.
Hopefully I can survive the next three days of inactivity without going crazy!
posted by LAV at 15:52
2 Comments:
Laura,
I just had a few minutes(because I work until 7pm tonight) to catch up on your doings...busy (cow)gal!
I loved your gourmet "in the room" dinner.....reminded me of many such meals I had in my dorm room at Iowa State many years ago. I'll try to grab a few minutes here and there so I can keep up with what you're busy doin'!
Take care and have bunches of fun,
Meg
This is hilarious. I don't know if "bodifying" is a word, either.
Post a Comment
<< Home