Aruba what an Island! Part I

Aruba what an Island! Part I

Snorkeling in the Caribbean sea, in Aruba

This winter we finished our 30^th anniversary year of festivities with an outstanding vacation in a beautiful island in the Caribbean Sea. The wonderful beaches we enjoyed, the fantastic people we came upon, the wonderful interesting places we visited were something special for the end of a year full of work and dedication. So, we planned nothing ahead as we usually do. This time we just waited to be wondered for the locals and it was phenomenal. I will tell you about the hotel later and its personnel that was a key factor for that to happen. Now, I just want to tell you about the Jolly Pirates! We had a real adventure. Besides the numerous times we had snorkeled and sailed or done other sports by the ocean; you could concluded or anticipated another reef with some fish, some shipwrecks to make coral flourish, been in a sailboat for half day with some lunch and open bar, what else? We have done that many times but not quite. First; the swing, that Sebastian enjoyed a lot and I took lots of pictures of the whole parade of magnificent swinging tourists including my son doing all kind of acrobatic dives to have fun and by the way impress us a lot. I did not do it because I chicken out! Good I did that because the next days I had a gruesome exercise.

Second; it was different because we had a stumbling situation. A tourist was in the open ocean without any special gear to announce that he was there, he was out of the buoys safe zone and there were plenty of other ships, boats and recreational aquatic crafts…We passed very close to him. He started shouting the entire bad words repertoire he had and claiming the boat hit him. The crew immediately asked him if he needed help or in any way to aide him with a boat they have at the back of the sailing boat… When I was snorkeling I went to see the propeller and it was so tinny no wonder the sails were necessary, but it is a very slow sailboat for tourist to have fun. I tell you this because there is no way the guy was seriously hurt… He did not stop shouting and rejected any help. He had time to go ashore and called the police while we were snorkeling again and swinging. We saw him the whole time looking at us with menacing posture; the kind nice crew of the Jolly Pirates went to report to the police. They did not tell us, anything at least to us and we did not ask. It was kind of annoying, because the attitude of the swimmer was extremely angry. Well the next day we were on the news, in the local newspaper!

Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch, we were so tired from all the activities and because we had kind of a choppy sea with a kind of strong current and tide, we needed to snorkel in a way that we could be safe and on time, and not to be drag by the ocean very far away. We were just in wonderful time to go to the hotel and get ready for dinner. Oh! Dinners in Aruba are something special but that is for another post. In the mean time… A video for you! Enjoy!  Sometimes we crowd with Jolly Pirates 

The Worries of Likelihood

   

  .... Between friends, they told me : The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in this matter

In probability theory there is a great deal of art in setting up the world, in solving the problem, and in applying the results back to the real world actions that will follow. -- The Art of Probability, Richart Hamming

For practical purposes we are forced to accept the awkward concept of "relatively random" meaning that with regard to the proposed use we can see no reason why they will not perform as if they were random(as the theory usually requires). This is highly subjective and is not very palatable to purists, but it is what statisticians regularly appeal to when they take "a random sample" -- they hope that any results they will have approximately the same properties as a complete counting of the whole sample space that occurs in their theory. --- Hamming on randomness. BETWEEN FRIENDS I ANSWERED: Well I disagree in a way. First assumption Mr. Hamming says that because a late rise is difficult to grasp. No, I know we did not have the technology to calculate many of the curves. Second, just because there are paradoxes we lack grounded intuition? Ha! Life itself is a paradox if you want to look at it like that, and intuition has helped us to survive as species. I suppose he is referring as art because the entree data can be subjected to opinions and not facts or subjective matters or populations that are not clearly defined. BUT there are many practical fields where probability is a very useful and powerful tool. Example: thanks to Markov chain theory we have electricity at home, number of roads per car, number of bank clerks per client... all need probability. Do you want to know if a product is within acceptance quality range? Use probability... The fact that people do not like forecast is because the lack of control they want to have about something... I just read your thoughts about Evolution and they are indeed immersed in probability... Genome is governed by probability law. We can be so accurate now that for the scale that human life is; it is enough to be in a very ample range like in the calculations for the driveless car. And about randomness it depends of the number of objects that the sample has and how it is treated, there is a need of sufficient items in the sample to counted as random, there has been many experiments to probe randomness very interesting ones maybe I shall talk to them in a video... And so, the videos went...THEN MY WONDERFUL FRIENDS TOLD ME....Randomness is in this context is subjected to a random seed key used for different cryptography algorithms. Randomness in itself is relative in nature, true randomness is possible but highly impractical in real world scenarios, like in cryptography. Entropy sources like radioactive decay, mouse clicks (not completely random though) provide the source of complete randomness.
Randomness does depend on the the number of objects but still I do not agree in this manner. For example, Binary bits can provide relative randomness for different purposes. Randomness is very interesting topic in itself, and may need a complete class of thoughtful discussion to overcome it's subdue complexities. MY ANSWER WAS.... Yes, you are right but we are talking about different range of measurements, in all those examples you are talking about the edges of randomness where you can not be sure about it. I am taking where dimensions are so big and/or small and contained (let's think that is where... Newtonian Laws can be applied). That is why even the notations get confusing and the angry statistician went mad(among other details) in the class of Intro to Statistics by Sebastian Thrun. I do not know if you took the class and saw the comments. THEY SAID: did the class, but didn't saw the comments he he.. SOMETHING HAPPENED IN THE CLASS...You saved yourself of a great deal of controversy that even the Professor gave an opinion in the Udacity Blog and I posted my opinion too in my blog. Oh! It was very dramatic at that time for me, today I really would like an harmonic understanding...

The Hour of Code is here CODING!!!!! YEAH! :D

A Happy Experience, with Tremendous Empowerment for Their Students and Completely Adorable by All?

    
     Universities, centers of knowledge have been created many years ago. They have for missions to spread, among other virtues, wisdom and true in their communities. There have been many philanthropists that are or were sharing their wealth to create these fascinating places. All of them have rules, timelines, and costs. Some of them are created by national systems and there is no tuition involved, or is just symbolic.

  The poor, the isolated, and the minorities have to struggle with all the deficiencies that their trades have, before they can join without stress the full experience of higher education. Some people can deal with a big amount of stress, others don’t and that has nothing to do with their wealth, gregarious personality, or if they are part of the general population, or normal people (statistically speaking). Nevertheless it helps to have enough money to have acquired a good basic education to pursue a higher one. To be connected to find out the easiest path with the best results, and to be part of the group to work together and enjoy the synergy of learning as part of a team.

   How to know if the course, courses you are taking are going to enrich in an effective way your career? Wow! For that, I have heard so many opinions; you almost can have a book of them. Just some of them are; it doesn’t matter what courses you take as long as you know, you have connections, you must be part of the people with influences so, go to institutions where the children of the top society are. Another opinion is; go where you know the institution has more successful and prestigious alumni and/or professors. Go where you can have personalized guidance and mentoring. Go where you can have the most diverse community, go where you are the opposite of your family values, go where you can afford it, go where moral and religion is first; go as far (or as close) as your parents are. Go where they value the people’s voice. Go where you have the most parties, best installations, best dorms etc, etc, etc… When you are there;

    as a student sometimes you get into the stressful facts of a) a great deal is expected of you and b) you have no control over whether you will perform well; according to Martin Seligman. And well, that is not nice.

  Oh no! What are all those aspects, why is not simply, what are the institutions of knowledge doing?

   Besides the campuses, and personal, they have a master plan for each career. They got into that plan with some key elements; the industry, the government, the professors, and students. They plan for the future, they analyze trends, market, necessities and the most probable scenario that can occur when people graduate.

   As you can see, it is a combination of facts that can be target with accuracy, if you know your data, and you have a good stochastic method to apply; the outcome will have a reasonable, hopeful outcome. We can use the term believe in many statements explaining why an institution decides something over many options. The truth is that there is the technology and mathematical methods to be more precise than ever if we can simulate with enough and correct numbers. The future can be known with a narrow clearance; to a scale so narrow that we can almost said that we are certain of a successful career. And that is why I totally know that the technology used in Udacity to choose the classes, the professors, the amount of time expending, and the grading system is the best. Just take the class of Artificial Intelligence with Sebastian Thrun.

    As a new way of learning, or new system, data is needed. It is not sprouted randomly, they have to collect enough information to create a model, which by this time, it is very optimistic to say but perfectly reasonable to think they do.

    So, Udacity is a center of knowledge, they have rules, timelines and costs. They have philanthropists, a mission, and a virtual campus that is composed by the forums, coffee breaks, hang outs, contests, and other beautiful and useful things, to interact with their community.

     Udacity have the collaboration of not only one university but several, and the industry has a vital presence. They have a verify certification which is a key factor to acknowledge the rigor and recognition of a learned skill.

    When you are a student, you are the product of an educational institution, one of the most stressful things for a mentor, teacher, professor, or educator is the idea that…” The ability of a student to do well in a class has something to do with their class”… a quote from the book Brain Rules by John Medina.

    To solve this anguish statement people go to the statistics and if they have, like at Udacity, a pass rate of 83% surpassing many of other classes in other campuses; it is when we can dance in the rain because we know, they conquered a storm. That is a huge achievement! As a student your concerns of performance are gone, and yes, a great deal was expected from you; you have sweated it and earned it; in a controlled, wonderful, and nice environment; with an assertive amount of stress. Because think of it, you know you did it, and you feel it in your brain, nothing can change that inner satisfaction, that helps to go on and on.

    So, who are the clients in a center of knowledge? Students, their families, communities, countries, and the world are. The students have the duality of being the product and the client, this paradox come from the bare nature of knowledge which is part of the unique trait of being humans and have fun learning and developing our cortex during our existence.

   Many of these thoughts have been evolving in me for many years, due to my experience as a professor of Industrial Engineering, and as an Educator and Tutor; I think this is the time to put them down as a response to a call by Sebastian Thrun for a public discussion about Udacity offerings, and the future of higher education. For the enrolling of many, we can see it as a happy experience, with tremendous empowerment for their students and completely adorable by all Udacian’s Communities.

The Power of Networks | MIT Technology Review

The Power of Networks | MIT Technology Review
 Indeed
“It depends completely on the individuals that form a network or are key members of different organizations,” explains @Wilhelm Woess. “When the most interesting individuals associate with a network, all those who contribute with their own knowledge as humble (or big) it might be, share with others, gain from others’ interesting perspectives and knowledge. But some networks attract only weak knowledge and one-sided prejudice, or plain opinion without much explanation or insight. High quality journalism is a good example how important and indispensable good networks of the right people are.”

We totally agree.

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Not Size That Counts Wow!!! An amoeba has more DNA than a Human Being!!!!!