Wednesday, March 29, 2006

This is a class I plan on taking next quarter.
The topic is "Mathematical modeling of cancer". The course will introduce the students to cutting-edge research in cancer modeling and expose them to a wide variety of mathematical tools. These tools are not specific to cancer modeling and can be used in a great variety of research areas.

The course will combine elements of mathematical modeling, dynamical systems and applied stochastic processes. The instructor will give introduction to all these topics. We will talk about cancer initiation and progression, dangerous mutations, Darwinean selection acting upon cells, chromosomal instability, stem cells, and treatment of cancer. The course will be based on Komarova's book, "Computational biology of cancer: lecture notes and mathematical modeling".
I know, it sounds really cool, until you get to this part:
The only prerequisites are undergraduate Ordinary Differential Equations and Probability.
Ooh. I have taken undergrad probability, and got very little out of it (for an instant I thought maybe I'd double major in math and stats, until I took probability and realized that statistics is boring). As for ODEs, I've spent most of my infant mathematical career getting heart palpitations at the mention of differential equations, so I think I'm going to sit in on the lower division course on diff eqs this quarter and pretend I'm a freshman again. Rock.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

One of my calculus students wrote this on their final exam. Anyone know what it says?
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Saturday, March 25, 2006

My boyfriend just hooked up his Super Nintendo. Goodbye Spring Break.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Meme stolen from Debbie who stole it from Lydia:

Think of your favorite underrated film, type the name into Google and do an image search. Find the best pic, post it in your journal, and have your friends guess the movie.

This is actually my new number one favorite movie. OMG, so awesome.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

WHOOOOO!!!!!!!! Done with finals! Spring break! Party! WHOOOOO.


PS: My plan of action for the evening is to watch Party of 5 and grade a bunch of calculus exams. I know, I know, I won't go *too* crazy.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

"Terrorists are threatening to kill a couple people! We have no choice but to declare martial law on the entire city of Los Angeles!"

"Oh my god! You're right!"

You'd think that as emotionally unstable as I already am, I don't really need to put myself through the weekly trauma that is watching 24. Oh god.

Monday, March 13, 2006

You know, they say people drive too much in Southern California, or that too much of the land here is taken up by sprawling parking lots. I don't know, I just don't see it.
This is one of two reserved parking spots outside a McDonalds across the parking lot from the Pick Up Stix where I get dinner occasionally. Posted by Picasa

Friday, March 10, 2006

One of my calculus students' quizzes. For that record, that is totally not the right answer.
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Monday, March 06, 2006

I have digital cable, with that neat-o program guide with descriptions of all the shows that are gonna be on. Sometimes these descriptions leave something to be desired, like "The lives of four boys in South Park, Colorado." But the description of tonight's episode of 24 was spot on.

"President Logan muddles his way through more intense decisions."

Cary's observation was that Mike Novick has never missed David Palmer more than when they were talking to Laura Palmer's dad tonight (that's a different Palmer). Logan is such a fabulous president.

Friday, March 03, 2006

I'm not at school, because it's wet and my pants were wet and I hate my algebra professor and I feel like I have a grip on metric spaces, and there's a guy from Cox coming at 4 to see why my internet's all wacky, and I would have had to rush home to meet him, and I wasn't in the mood for that, or for being at school any more, so after going to school, wandering around and getting nothing accomplished, going to Panera with Beth and Tim, and dropping Beth-the-only-good-student-among-us off at MSTB, I had Tim give me a ride home. Now I'm going to go do some analysis problems out of the Rudin book, because I really am a good student, and I'm going to drink tea and maybe fall asleep. So there.