A week of work

A week of work Last week was one of those weeks where I had either a test or something due every day of the week. Monday: 18.310 test corrections were due. 18.310 is Principles of Applied Mathematics, the discrete version (18.311 is the continuous version). In this class, the tests are deliberately made very difficult, but we can earn back up to half the points we lost if by correcting our mistakes. Its a nice feature. Tuesday: I had a 7-10 page (it ended up being 8 pages) paper due in 17.405, which is Politics and Conflict in the Middle East. My paper was on the relationship between religion and politics in Lebanon and Iraq. It was an interesting topic. Lebanese politics are really confusing, in case anyone was wondering. Wednesday: The weekly 18.310 problem set was due. It had a lot of implementing Euclids algorithm, which at first glance seems more like number theory than applied math. Well, it is number theory. But its useful in creating codes, which is why were learning about it. A lot of 18.310 has something to do with codes. Thursday: 9.71 midterm. I was pretty happy about it. 9.71 is fMRI and High-Level Vision. When I say this, unless Im talking to another course 9 major, the usual response is What?, so Ill explain that fMRI is functional magnetic resonance imaging. Its kind of like an MRI, except that it takes lots of pictures instead of just one, and instead of just showing the anatomy of your brain, it shows which parts are being activated. So the class is about the use of fMRI to study vision. Friday: The weekly 18.440 problem set was due. 18.440 is Probability and Random Variables. This problem set was on chapter 5, which is Continuous Random Variables. For all that, thoughI felt a little bogged down, but not overwhelmed with work. Having been in both situations, I can say that Id rather have my due dates for my classes be spread throughout the week than have all of them due on the same day. One of my major extracurricular activities was my part of the UA Committee on Orientations report on Orientation 2006 and the state of Orientation. More on that in a soon-to-be-written entry. What did you do last week?