Going back to the Motherland.

So I finally made a decision about what stats PhD program I will attend. I had it down to two rather good choices: one in Pennsylvania and one in Iowa. They were both about equal in terms of research fit and prestige. The one in Pennsylvania had a church, too, while the one in Iowa was close to my family and easier to travel to and from the places I need to travel to. In the end, the one in Iowa won out. There's a Greek church 30 miles away, so that's feasible. It's an easy half hour.

Anyway, I'm listening to Sretensky Monastery Choir's Pascha CD a lot this week because of Pascha.

What I've Been Up To

I just read Debt, a very good book. The author is an anarchist and you can tell he's coming from the radical left, but he doesn't really have an agenda in the book, at least not one that you can't ignore. Rather, he's giving you a lot of information and tools to reconsider your relation to debt and society. Most importantly, he demolishes the just-so story arising in a lot of economics books that money arose to replace inconvenient barter trade. Political interpretations of modernity, of course, should be taken cum grano salis.

So I've gotten into a bunch of PhD programs in statistics and I'm waiting to hear back from one more (I'm #1 on their waiting list at the moment). I'm considering offers and have to make a decision, essentially, by April 15th. Coincidentally, this happens to be Pascha (Easter) this year. Of course, I'll have my decision before then, especially as it's a Sunday. In retrospect, the high yield I got (essentially: flawless victory) meant I should've aimed higher than having my "reach" schools ranked at about 10th, but I was constrained by the fact that I could really only do January 15th application deadlines. And that some of the "higher" schools don't quite do what I want to do (viz: Chicago is very heavy on theory, but I'm more interested in applied). Looking back, Michigan had a 1/15 deadline. Crap. Should've applied there, they're trying to expand and improve their ranking and are doing so by doing exactly what I am interested in. Well, whatevs.

I went on a trip to visit a couple schools. While on the trip, I stopped off at a monastery north of Pittsburgh. So here is a review: A+ would go again. Best feature: they typically say "You/Your" instead of that "Thou" nonsense.

I have been playing very little chess and lifting very few weights.

So that is what I have been up to.

I'm not a fan of Rod Dreher...

For a lot of reasons, but I will give credit where it is due. His article on Ron Paul is great. I wholly agree with him. Racism is bad.

Assorted thoughts on the New Year

My resolutions will be my usual ones.

It seems my 401(k) went down 3.99%, which is not as bad as I expected based on the last half of the year. Given the limited options available, I think in the next year I might move toward a much more bond-heavy portfolio, as I am not optimistic about the market this year, either. If things were more flexible in the 401(k) and I had the time and skill, I would bet on high variance, but you can't really do that in a 401(k). Anyway, I can't retire yet this year, that's all I know.

I have some secret projects brewing for this year. They're secret, of course, and may not pan out.

I guess what I might also resolve to do this year is pack my lunches more often. Well, that's that, I suppose. Another year.

Church web sites suck.

One thing that has always annoyed me is that a lot of churches suck at the whole "web site" thing. Namely, it's really really easy to have a web page that says when your services are for Christmas, Theophany, or Easter at least, say, a month in advance. And makes it easy to see. Seriously, on Thanksgiving, if I go to your parish web site, I want to see, on the front page, your regular service times, your address, and your Christmas schedule. If you're on the Old Calendar, fine, by December 15th. At the beginning of Lent, I want to see your regular service times, your address, and your Holy Week schedule (or at least your Pascha schedule, I understand if you haven't nailed down how many presanctified liturgies you're doing that week). If your church web site does not make those three things quite obvious, you fail it. Those are the three things I would probably want to know about your church, so if you do not tell me that information immediately without additional mouseclicks, you are not doing the right thing on your web page. Also, if you send out weekly bulletins, you might want to mention the timing of Nativity services starting a month in advance.

My own parish's website gets at least a B+ here. They had an up-to-date monthly calendar available which listed all the services. However, it was not until this week that you could see immediately on the front page the times of services for the Nativity - there is a weekly calendar on the sidebar. If I recall correctly - perhaps they had an announcement up earlier. The parish I will be at for the Nativity gets a C. I found the information on the site eventually and, in retrospect, the schedule in PDF has apparently been there since 10/31. It takes a few clicks to get there, the information was not announced in their weekly bulletins, it seems to be in conflict with the google calendar, ugh.

What's in the news.

So I've kind of been thinking about returning to school to do research in statistics or operations research. There are a lot of possibilities. One that looks kind of cool is stochastic combinatorial optimization. Y'know. It's combinatorial optimization. Except stochastic. Think, like, Monte Carlo or Las Vegas algorithms. Or getting into other types of stochastic systems modeling or algorithms stuff. Generally, stochastic programming. Or something more along the lines of statistical computing, namely, researching new methods for getting meaningful knowledge out of data. I'm starting to fiddle around on Kaggle. There's a common thread through all of that, making decisions under uncertainty.

Anyway, so I'm applying to a handful of schools and seeing where that goes. If I don't get in anywhere, well, okay, too bad, I'll get on with my life.