Hey Kids, Conics!

See, if my teacher were cool, he would have started our last class with that line (Which I, too, have always wanted to use.).

Our last class as in the the last one we had but also as in the last one we'll ever attend. The time for boring lectures is past and only tomorrow's finale lays before us. I'm taking a little break from my review at the moment. I'm not really concerned about the test since it's multiple choice and that means it's going to be even easier than usual. I am concerned, however, because I'm just not getting the last topic we covered. Which was conic sections in case we're not on the same page. Which is more than likely since when it comes to conics, I'm so far off the page, I'm worried the teacher is going to come over and yell at me for coloring outside the lines. Just not comprehending conics at all and with a test tomorrow that's not a good thing. It's weird because I tend to have a very good spacial sense. But when it comes from going from an equation of, say, a hyperbola to a graph or vice versa, I'm just at a loss. Oh, well, it's the kind of thing that'll shake itself out once I get a few more sample problems under my belt. It's just there's precious little time to do so.

Anyhow, I thought I'd take the time to put down some thoughts about the class. Since tomorrow I'm going to be busy with last minute cramming and after that, busying myself with the little present I've set aside as a reward for successful completion of this course and, therefore, unlikely to do much of anything that requires thought. But, as it stands, I can sum up the class in one word: boring. There's been a lot of material covered and it's taken some serious effort on my part to stay current on it but it really doesn't feel like it. It's been eight weeks now and I can't really believe it because class itself seems to grind on so much. It's not so much that my professor is boring, he actually seems to be doing a decent job of teaching. It's just listening to his voice droning on as he's at the blackboard is like chugging a glass of warm milk laced with...something else that makes you sleep.

If you'll recall, when I first started I mentioned he had an accent that I was trying to place. I've got it as somewhere in the upper midwest now. But the thing is, I've spoken with him informally – after class or in the halls, that sort of thing – and it's much less pronounced. Verging on unremarkable (Unless you're interested in the whole accent thing the way I am.). But when he's publicly speaking, when he's addressing the whole class, say, his voice changes. It's not an uncommon phenomenon but what I find interesting is how his enunciation changes to something out of a 30s newreel. It's that clipped, nasally, tweedy sound of what passed for proper diction. The style of the time. Just without any inflection whatsoever. Puts me right to sleep. On the plus side, I have a notebook full of doodles to go along with my notes and I might just a have a little surprise in the works with regards to that.

But it's a minor complaint. He covers the material thoroughly and explains the mathematical concepts in ways that make sense to me which is all you can ask from a math teacher, anyway. He could have been livelier, more personal, more interesting but it's math. I'm not sure I want the teacher to try to be hip and cool and with the “lingo” on the “streets” because that way lies Poochy.

Still, all in all, it's been a harder class than I expected but, in a lot of ways, I'm glad I took it.

Script Frenzy: MATHS!!!

You know I love the statistics. Anyhow, with the latest missive from the High Holy Temple of Frenzy, we get some numbers to play around with. According to the aforementioned post there were 7876 participants. And of those 1072 “won” by entering a 20+k into the word counter (Like my own slightly fraudulent but impressive looking 24k. Oh, I wrote that much. I just didn't write a finished script.). That's, as the post mentions, about a 14% success rate. Or 13.6 something percent rounded up. And, indeed, that's underpar from historical NaNo levels which tend to hover around 18% no matter how many people sign up. That 20k word count is seductively deceptive, I'm telling you. We won't know until some more in-depth numbers are released whether people who enter any amount into their word counter, donate, or even just post on the forums are more likely to succeed. But I suspect the historical trend that such factors have some correlation to success rates will hold true there as well adjusted for the new environment.

But, also from the official site we have the overall word count. Which stands locked at a staggering 29,496,834 words. The Young Writer's Program says they've got another 219k. So call it 30mil. And with the few precious data points we have we can extract some other information. Such, each of the nearly 8k people involved in the contest wrote nearly 3.75k of the nearly 30 million word total. The average participant, then, got only just under a fifth of the way there. About 18~19%, really.

The donation picture, by the way, is much improved although still not exactly rosey from a few weeks earlier when it stood at about $20,000 out of a $120,000 budget. It's up to over $30k now. So, still, each dollar of the budget has underwritten something like 1k of the word count. And each of the nearly 8k people involved has donated, on average, about $4.

The GoodSearch total, by the way, stands at a staggering $40.59. That's pretty good at a penny a search. June ended with $34.84 in the bank but, keep in mind, we started on the 20th with a mere $0.60 and made roughly 350 searches a day since then (I search a lot but not that much. So somebody else out there is putting some change into the jar, so to speak.). We've earned $5.75 already in one and a half days already this month, so at about that same rate. Carry that out over a full month and you'd have around $100. Over a full year, that's $1200. At a penny a search. So, not exactly going to solve the problem, but not exactly chump change, either.