Lecturing

Tomorrow I will give a lecture on the central limit theorem. I have yet to find a way to emphasize the significance of this theorem to my students. I don't blame them for not understanding it as I didn't get it until well into my first year of graduate school.

I like this result because it pretty explains why pollster can "scientifically" predict election results, and justifies the use of surveys, opinion polling, product testing, and other various sampling procedures. I like it even more because it relies on the use of the normal distribution; and while there are many distributions in statistics, my preference is the normal distribution because it is intuitive and widely applicable.

I plan on giving my students a project tomorrow as well. Basically they must construct a profitable gambling game involving rolling dice or tossing coins; a good gambling game should entice the player to want to play over and over again in spite of the odds guaranteed to be against him in the long run. This is a new project that I am trying out and so it will be interesting to see what kind of projects get turned in. I really wish online gambling were legal in the US; sheesh...I wish gambling were not so heavily regulated, statisticians would be self-employed millionaires!

On another note, I am feeling slightly more motivated about my research which is good because I really need to plan out an exit strategy for my thesis. I am also looking forward to attending the sequential monte carlo methods conference next month as SAMSI. This will be the first conference I attend that specifically focuses on my area of research. I am also looking forward to meeting with Arnaud Doucet; after reading so many of his papers and citation while conducting my own research, he has become a celebrity to me in the land of particle filters. We had one correspondence through email in which he told me what I was doing was not right...I was just glad that he responded. But, I have had very good experiences at the conferences that I have attended thus far and hope this continues.