Entry 124: My Last Paper?

I received word yesterday that the last paper from my dissertation work has been accepted for publication pending some "minor" changes (I use the quotes, because some of the required changes don't seem so minor).  It will be nice to put a bow on this -- I worked pretty hard on my dissertation, so it's nice to see it more or less completely published in some form or another, it's good closure -- but it might very well be the last academic paper I write.  I'm not in academia anymore.  I don't have any intentions to get back into it, and I'm probably not going to be solving a whole lot of operations research / applied math problems in my spare time, because it's my spare time, and I'd rather do other things.

 [I'm not sure if this is from "The New Yorker" or not, but it's very New Yorker-esque.  It's not particularly funny, but it's not particular not funny either.]

In a way, it's a shame.  I had started to build up a decent resume, and establish myself in the field a bit (not enough to garner interest from any of the academic positions I applied for in the past, but still).  In another way, it's a relief, because the publishing process in my field isn't very enjoyable.  It's a) slow and outdated, b) competitive in the wrong way, and c) too amenable to self-serving interests.

On the first point, you submit a paper to a journal, they give it to referees, it sits in the refs' inboxes for several months, they give it to their grad students, it sits in the grad students' inboxes for a few weeks, they eventually read it, and if you're fortunate they recommend it be accepted, with changes of course, nothing gets accepted straightaway.  So it comes back to you, you make the changes, resubmit and the process repeats.  By the time it finally appears in print it is about three years after you finished the initial version, literally.  By that time everybody else has move on to other things.  It's insane.  Here's a better way.  Each institution should have its own online paper portal.  Once you finish, you put it up on that (you can have internal reviewers to make sure papers meet a certain standard) and let other people look at it.  Then the journals can browse these portals and grab the papers that have generated the most interest or those that they otherwise like and publish them.  This way researchers can still get by only reading the journals, but things would get done in a much more efficient and timely fashion.

On the second point, the thing I hate(d) most about publishing in my field is the need to "improve" upon the best solutions in the literature by some miniscule percentage.  For example, I worked on a vehicle routing problem where the objective was to get the most efficient routes (i.e., the shortest routes) possible.  I came up with a new procedure and applied it to some standard benchmark problems in the literature.  My routes were about 0.5% above the routes from the best-known procedure (not 5%, 0.5%).  I then spent the next few months tweaking my parameters, so that I "beat" the best-known procedure.  I was doing almost nothing creative, just running my algorithm with different initial settings.  It felt like such a waste of time, but if I didn't do it, it's unlikely that a referee would have accepted my work (and it's certain my advisor wouldn't have accepted it).  As a whole, our time as researchers is not well-spent shaving fractions of percentage points off solutions that are already extremely efficient.  We should be coming up with new ideas to solve new problems.

On the third point, the people who are refereeing your papers are the same people who you are competing against.  Numerous times I've been asked to review a paper where it being published will have consequences (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively) on a paper I'm working on, or one that I've already submitted for review.  I tried to be objective, but I don't think it's completely possible.  Also, the name on the paper can have a big influence.  I think all reviews should be double-blind.  

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

If this latest paper is, in fact, published it will lower my Erdos Number to 2.  Your Erdos Number is the number of degrees away, through publishing, you are from the late legendary mathematician Paul Erdos.  If you've published directly with Erdos your Erdos Number is 1.  If you've publish with somebody who's directly published with Erdos it's 2, etc.  It's like the Kevin Bacon game.

 [Paul Erdos, a very interesting man.  I recommend a biography of him, "My Brain is Open".]

One of my coauthors on this paper is a man who published directly with Erdos, which is cool, but it's mostly superficially cool, because we didn't really directly collaborate.  In fact, I provided very little of the "smarts" for this paper.  What happened is, while working on something, I came upon an interesting theoretical problem.  I couldn't answer it very well and was busy with other things (finishing my dissertation and graduating), so my advisor showed it to a guy who's very sharp, and he answered it about 75%.  For the last 25%, my advisor asked his old advisor, basically the smartest guy he knows and the one who published with Erdos directly, and he solved it.  Then, based on their notes, I wrote the paper.  So, I certainly contributed.  It was my problem.  I got the ball rolling with some initial conjectures.  I did (almost) all the writing.  I also filled in many logical gaps -- it wasn't just grunt work -- but the "eureka moments" of the paper, the impressive parts, came from other people.  Still, it's something to be proud of I suppose.  Although it's weird, I'm not really all that proud of my academic achievements.  I would much rather have a crossword puzzle published than an academic paper.  I'm not sure why this is.

OK.  Until next time...

Entry 123: Back To Normal

Well, hopefully everything is back to normal now.  Our new used car has been inspected by our mechanic (No charge again, by the way, because he "didn't do anything" -- everything looked good so there was nothing to fix-- but he did inspect it which should be worth something.  But if he doesn't charge, he doesn't charge, what are we supposed to do, leave $50 on the ground on way out?) and by the city of DC, and is ready to be officially licensed.  Also, our AC has been fixed, supposedly.  I added the qualifier because the repair company seemed so incompetent that I find it hard to believe that they actually did something right.  When we turn it on, cold air comes out, so that's good, but I keep waiting for it to crap out again.  We had the same repairman come out three times, and I had  no confidence whatsoever that he could get the job done.  He was so inept.  I kept thinking, "14 million people unemployed and you have a job?"

[A great '80s song, and as I learned last night, the coming-to-bat music for Nationals catcher Jesus Flores.]

Actually, this ties into something I wanted to talk about.  One of the main things you hear about the state of our economy, primarily from people on the right, is that our high unemployment is somewhat the fault of the unemployed and that if they were better workers they would still have jobs.  Herman Cain illustrated this during the Republican primaries with his if-you-can't-find-a-job-don't-the-government-yourself-blame-yourself rant.  On his podcast, Adam Carolla (who's funny, but incredibly stupid when it comes to economic matters) asked the question, "Who do you know, who's actually talented and a good worker who doesn't have a job?"  He then went on to give examples of people he knows who are good at what they do and are employed, and people who aren't good at what they do and aren't employed.  His advice to the unemployed is essentially, "be better".

[Such a clown, but I'll damned if I didn't love Godfather's as a kid.]

Now, this is fine advice for an individual.  I actually 100% agree that more people need to step up and take responsibility for their lots in life.  I know many people who, whenever they are struggling, act as if the universe is just against them.  It's a confluence of unrelated events perfectly coordinated to keep them down.  They ignore the simpler, but harsher, explanation.  With that said, "being better" will not solve unemployment on the whole, because "better" is a relative term, and it is literally impossible for everybody to be better than the next guy.  Somebody has to be the worst at their profession.  Do these people not deserve to earn a living?  Should they just crawl under a rock and die?  Yes, the blame-yourself crowd is right.  If you're above average at what you do, you probably will always be able to find work.  But some very simple mathematics should lead everybody to conclude that this isn't nearly enough.  We need an economy that can support everybody, not just the best, and we don't have that right now, because we don't have enough people spending enough money.  It's a demand problem, plain and simple.  Unless we solve this, it doesn't matter how many people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, unemployment will stay high for a long time.  And I have little confidence that we will solve this any time soon, but I don't want to get into that now -- too depressing.

In other news, I went to the Nats game last night against the Yankees.  The Nats got crushed 7-2, but still it was fun.  The crowd was about a 50-50 split fan-wise.  This is pretty typical.  DC is a transient city and the Nats are only like seven years old, so the fan base isn't huge. 

We had some semi-obnoxious, hardcore Yankee fans sitting around us, who kept trying to get these pro-Yankee cheers going.  At one point, beloved Yankee Derek Jeter his a grounder that the Nats' shortstop, Ian Desmond, threw away allowing Jeter to get to second and allowing two runs to score.  A mini-chant broke out among Yankee supporters, "Derek Jeter... clap, clap, clap, clap, clap... Derek Jeter... clap, clap, clap, clap, clap..."  Being the wise-ass I am, I shouted out, "Yep, Derek Jeter.  He's great at getting on by error.  That's really his specialty."  The Yankee fan immediately in front of me turned around and said, "Hey, he's better than your crappy shortstop who threw it away."  He said it as if I own the Nationals.  Right, Ian Desmond is my shortstop.  Actually I do have him on a fantasy team, but somehow I doubt the bozo in front of my knows this.

 [Hey, Tim Riggins, Jeter stole your girlfriend.]

I took a strange route home from the game.  I took the metro to Dupont Circle with some folks, because we were going to get a post-game beer at an establishment there, but I backed out at the last minute.  I had already knocked a few back at the game (nothing like the time-honored ballpark tradition of paying $8 for a Miller Lite in a tin bottle), so I did the hangover math in my head, and determined it wasn't worth it to continue.  Ever since I got married, my desire to get drunk has really gone down.  If you take away the prospect of meeting women, binge drinking just loses it's luster -- it's really the milieu of the single man. 

So I walked form Dupont Circle up to Adams Morgan / U St, with the intent on taking the bus or walking home.  Being hungry (paying for overpriced ballpark beer is one thing, paying for shitty overpriced food is another) I decide to get a slice of pizza.  Now, in DC we have something called the "jumbo slice" and it's ruined late-night pizza eating.  In a race to the bottom competition, all pizzerias have attempted to get bigger and cheaper and greasier.  Unlike in a city like, say, New York, where you can actually get a normal-sized good slice of pizza.  All you can get here is a disgusting folded-over slat of oil and cheese, with paper-thin semblances of a doughy base and a crust.  Where's Herman Cain when you need him? 

I swore off jumbo slices years ago, so I went to the one decent pizza establishment that didn't serve them and ordered a slice.  But of course, a jumbo slice was handed to me five minutes later.  They had apparently changed their ways and started serving jumbo slice -- so sad.  I took a few bites of it and then tossed about four fifths of it into the trash.  I absolutely hate throwing away food, especially when I've paid for it.  But I also hate stomachaches and heartburn, and my $5 was gone either way.  No sense making a sunk cost fallacy.

I narrowly missed the bus home, so I decided to walk the remaining two-miles home.  It was just as well as the bus was jam-packed anyway.  But, in a stroke of super good luck I saw another bus coming only minutes behind the one I missed.  I hopped on that one and it was nearly empty, presumably because everybody was already on the first one.  I was home in 10 minutes.  It made up for the bad pizza experience.

Well, that's it.  Until next time...

Entry 122: Triaging Nuisances

Two major nuisances have beset S and I the past few weeks.  As I mentioned before, the central air conditioner in our house has a leak.  Then, on Friday, a mechanic told us our car also has a leak that's causing coolant to mix with oil.  Apparently, a proper fix would require replacing the entire engine and the radiator for $5,000.  That's literally more than the car is worth, so the mechanic suggested the we get a new car.  He didn't charge us for the diagnosis which is nice and makes his story more believable.  Since I don't know enough about cars to ever call BS on somebody, I'm always very wary of mechanics and the like.  But he's a pretty bad huckster if he's lying to us to not take our money.  We've been in his shop a few times before, so he's probably just being a good businessman thinking he'll forgo the $50 or so now in hopes that we'll come to him next time we have a $500 problem.  It's smart because we almost certainly will.  

[Everybody's immediate thought when their car stops working.]

Our car is relatively old and on it's last legs (coincidentally, the AC also didn't work), so we were planning on buying a new one anyway, but not until next year.  Suddenly, we didn't really have a choice though as there is no realistic way for me to get to work other than by car.  Get a new car went to the top of our nuisance triage list, ahead of fix AC.

By the way, I use the word "nuisance" instead "problem", because I think of "problems" as being long lasting and more deep-seeded, whereas "nuisances" are just annoying while they last, but once you fix them, they completely go away.  So, losing you house, going bankrupt, being unhappy with your life, having cancer, being unable to find steady employment, getting divorced -- these are problems, these actually affect you on an emotional level and have consequences even when (if) they're resolved.  Needing to fix one's AC unit and buy a new car are just nuisances, once they're solved, they're solved.  You move on and don't really give it a second thought.  While this mindset puts things in perspective a bit, it's counteracted by the law of our.  Our nuisances feel like a bigger deal to us than other people's problems because they're actually happening to us.  Unfortunately, we can't completely wave things away and say, "No worries, it's not a real problem."  It doesn't quite work like that.       

Anyway, we eradicated one of our nuisances.  We bought a new (for us) car, a 2010 Toyota Prius.  We're going green, I guess.  There really isn't a better age for buying a car.  Adam Carolla, a huge car nut, sometimes gets calls from people on his podcast asking for car recommendations, and he always says something along the lines of, "Get whatever you want.  Everything works now.  Everything is good now.  Buy something a little used because it's worth the price reduction."  So there's that, and then there's the Internet which makes price gouging very difficult.  Just go online and you can immediately get an idea of a fair price for any car, and fair might be underselling it a little bit.  You can probably get the best price for a car, because you can sort by price.  If the dealership doesn't offer a low price you aren't going there because they aren't even coming up on your sort.  They're almost compelled to put the lowest possible price online.  And, everybody has a smart phone now, so if you think you're being overcharged, you can price compare while you're physically at the dealership.  Technology has titled things in favor of the buyer.

[No, we didn't buy a Canyanero, or any SUV for that matter.  By the way, this is a truly ingenious parody from the days when "The Simpsons" was a truly ingenious show.  My favorite part is when the school bus in run off the road and then all the kids inside salute.]

We took advantage of this and tried to make the purchasing experience as painless as possible.  We decided to get a hybrid because we'll save big time in gas money (basically we doubled the mileage we get), and because we want to act snobby toward all non-hybrid owners ("Some people actually care about Mother Earth"), so we did some research and found a few dealerships to check out.  We went to a Honda dealership first to check out the Civic Hybrid, but the one we were interested in sold minutes before we got there.  So we went to the Toyota dealership, found a used Prius with the right mileage at the right price, gave it a spin, checked out all the features, and pulled the trigger.  Why not? 

S was a little apprehensive about "rushing into something" and said that we should check out other dealerships, but I said what's the point?  We know what they have.  We've already looked through the entire inventory online.  It's the same cars at the same prices.  What we got and what we paid is exactly in line with everything we've seen online, all the reviews from all the sources, and from our friends who also just bought a Prius.  There's diligence -- researching, test driving, taking the car to a mechanic during the 7-day free exchange period -- and then there's doing stuff that doesn't really help just because you feel like you should.  We did / are going to do the former.  I'm not down with the latter.

[Stan's "Hybrid Song" on "South Park"]

We had a pretty cool salesman.  He was an older Bruce Dern-looking guy.  He was definitely presenting the car in a glowing manner, as you'd expect, but he wasn't super-aggressive or anything.  Overall, it was a relatively painless experience, but that didn't stop S and I from having our disagreements over some financial aspects.  She's just much more risk averse than I am when it comes to certain things, because she's about peace of mind and I'm about numbers.  For one thing, I just wanted to use our savings and pay for the car out of pocket, and she wanted to finance to keep more cash on hand.  This doesn't make sense to me because in the the unlikely event we had an emergency and needed the cash we could just borrow it then.  Now, maybe it would be for 10% instead of 3%, but that hypothetical 7% difference on a hypothetical amount of money just isn't worth the real extra $1,000 we're going to pay in interest.

For another thing, and this is the bigger one, I was adamantly against the additional coverage.  For $1,700 we could get the extra insurance that covers everything, well everything, except of course the stuff that we already have covered, like collision, or theft, or roadside service or any of the other stuff that we actually might need fixed.  Anything we might actually need fixed falls under "normal wear and tear" and isn't covered.  (By the way this coverage was initially quoted at $2,200, but when I balked the financier magically procured a promotional code from a colleague that "saved" us $500.)  Sure, there's a small chance the inverter or converter or whatever the main part of a hybrid engine is called could go out and that would be a $4,000 hit to us (this is the example the financier gave), but again this is hypothetical money versus the real money we're guaranteed to be paying by purchasing the coverage.  And even if that does happen, and we're out $2,300, then maybe we save this the next time we turn down insurance we wouldn't have used on something.  There are catastrophic things you should insurance against, getting really sick, your house burning down, your car getting stolen or totaled in a crash, etc., but for everything else you're almost certainly better off saving the money and paying out of pocket if / when unlikely mishaps occur.  S sees my point on this, but her thing is, "I know it's a ripoff, but it gives me peace of mind," and my response to that is a loud exhale, an exacerbated shake of the head, and hopeless stare off into the distance.  With that said, I'll give you one guess as to which way we went on things. 

Alright, that's it for this entry.  We have to go a party S's former boss is throwing.  It's a tea in Georgetown -- very high society.

Until next time...

Entry 121: Set Them Freon

Before tying the knot, I never expected that freon, or any refrigerant, really, would ever play a prominent role in my marriage.  But, here we are.


["If you love somebody, if you love somebody, set them freon... free, free, set them freon."  This song actually caused a little fight between my friend RB and I.  It came up during the audio round of a pub trivia game, and I thought she said it was The Police, so I wrote that as our answer.  We got it wrong because it's actually just Sting, which RB insisted that she said in the first place.]

The AC unit in our house has a leak, and it's causing some domestic strife.  This weekend was fine, because the temperatures have been relatively mild (yesterday was gorgeous, today is the same, mid 70s - mid 80s), but last weekend and early this week it was painful (high 80s - low 90s).  It was too hot for me, and if it's too hot for me, then it's sure to be absolutely unbearable for S, because she's with child and even if she wasn't... well, let's just say toughing out physically uncomfortable situations isn't exactly her forte.  And if you wanted to whip up a volatile household concoction here are some good ingredients: sweltering heat, pregnancy, large unanticipated hits to your household budget, difficult insurance and repair companies.

But, we've been managing.  The saving grace has been a window unit in our attic.  When it gets too bad, S can go up there and chill out, literally.  We put an air mattress up there so she can even sleep there when need be.  It sucks not sleeping in the same bed, but it's better than having S get too hot and go insane, and snuff me out with a pillow while I'm sleeping, so that I'll stop generating heat.  I won't join her in the attic, because it's actually too cold for me.  She likes to crank the air conditioner up to sub-arctic levels and then cozy up under the comforter.  This makes absolutely no sense to me.  I follow a more natural cold to hot progression.  The only reason for the air conditioner, in my view, is if you're sleeping in with only a thin sheet, with the ceiling fan on and you're still too hot.  I mean, if you're too hot and you have a jacket on, what's the logical thing to do?  It's the same principle to me at night.

Anyway, this week is supposed to be mild, so if we can get our AC fixed this week, we will be fine.  But, that's a big if.  We bought maintenance insurance through our mortgage company for just this type of thing, but it turns out, our policy isn't exactly what we thought (huge surprise, I know).  The big thing is that we can't use any repair company we want, we have to use our insurance's preferred company.  We can't even contact the repair company directly, we have to contact them through our insurance.  This completely destroys any incentives to provide fast, quality service.  The insurance company doesn't really give a shit, because they aren't the ones living in the heat, and they're the ones who have to eventually pay the bulk of the bill, so if the service is slow and crappy, what's it to them?  Similarly, the repair company doesn't have to make us happy, because we aren't their direct costumer.  It's not like they will outright ignore us.  It's more like they'll give us a twelve hour time window on a Friday, show up at 7pm during a thunderstorm, and then proclaim that we have a leak which they can't attempt to locate or fix because it's too dark and wet out.  But don't worry they'll call us later to schedule another appointment, and if we're really in a hurry, we can feel free to pay a different company out of pocket to come out and try to fix it faster.  Oh, and also, they need a $60 check for you deductible.  Yeah sure, here you go, thanks asshole.

In other news, a friend and colleague of S's is taking a new job (in the same company) and moving to a new state, so we hosted a surprise party for him last night.  It was a real surprise party in that he had no idea what was going on.  His wife duped him into thinking there was a PTA event in our neighborhood and that they were just going to stop by our place to say hi.  Even upon arriving he didn't get what was going on.  He thought we were having a party that they weren't invited to and that they were intruding.  It wasn't until he noticed that the only attendees of our party were his coworkers who were all yelling "surprise" at him, that things clicked.  It was pretty funny.



It turned out to be a good party.  I spent a decent portion of it playing "soccer" with a beach ball with some kids (everyone against me).  It was fun, but I ended the night with a huge grass stain on my jeans, and a split toenail.  Playing in flip-flops when there is a 7-year old boy in sneakers, who's style of play is to kick whatever is in front of him as hard as he can all the time, is not the world's smartest idea.

The parents of the 7-year old boy had the craziest birthing story I've ever heard.  It was 6pm and the doctors were expecting the delivery to happen around 12am given the current state of things, so everybody left the suite except for the parents.  Before leaving they suggested the about-to-be mom use the bathroom because she was about to be anesthetized and she'd probably be more comfortable it she went now.  So, she goes to the bathroom, and SPLASH, out comes the kid, into the toilet!  She didn't even realize it because she nearly blacked out from the pain.  The dad hears the splash, comes in, and takes the kid out of the toilet.  No doctors or nurses are in the area.  Is that crazy or what?  It shows some serious negligence on the part of the hospital staff (which isn't very comforting as it's the same hospital we're going to), and some serious Johnny-on-the-spot-ness on the part of the dad.  Had he not been around the kid could have drown in the toilet!  Pure craziness.

Well, I think that wraps up this entry.  I have some episodes of The Ultimate Fighter to catch up on.  The finale was on Friday and I didn't even know the new season had started already.  I've actually been kicking around the idea of taking a mixed martial arts class, myself (get it, "kicking around"?).  I don't have much desire to actually fight somebody in a match, but the discipline and toughness it teaches, along with the cardio workout I would get, make it pretty attractive.  That's the thing about MMA.  Detractors say it's human cockfighting and too brutal (almost certainly less brutal than football, but that's a different topic), but it's actually an intricate craft that one has to hone through hard work.  Thugs don't get rewarded in MMA, they get annihilated by technicians, who actually train and focus.  In my opinion, the values the sport teaches are overwhelming positive.  And it's fun as to hell to watch.

Anyway, until next time...