Partial derivatives

I'm currently in San Diego at the KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining) conference.  I was reading a conference paper that made use of a technique called "stochastic gradient descent", and although I'm familiar with it at a high level, I decided that I wanted to understand all of the underlying mathematics.

It turns out that part of the process involves calculating partial derivatives, and it turns out that I never learned what partial derivatives are, because I stopped taking math after second-semester calculus in college freshman year, and afterwards managed to ignore any equations that had partial derivatives in them.  But this time, I decide to actually learn what partial derivatives are, and in a few minutes discovered that they are actually a relatively simple concept.

So it turns out that I avoided partial derivatives for twenty years, and then learned them in 15 minutes when I actually sat down to do it.

Rolling over!

Reiya has started to roll over from her back to her stomach!  In the past week she's started to roll over onto her her tummy all the time, especially when we're trying to change her diaper.  It's very exciting because she hasn't expressed much interest in crawling yet; she seems to want to go straight to cruising.

The time when she likes to roll the most is when she just wakes up.  She loves to roll all around the middle of the bed, to the point where she'll roll into one of us and keep rolling, even though this means she has to roll in place.  Eventually she'll roll towards the end of the bed, so we have to use our feet to keep her from rolling off.

A good reason to reschedule a meeting

An email that I got yesterday:

Sorry, I won't be able to make it, is it possible to change it to next Thursday or Friday?
I apologize for the incontinence, sorry!

Deep thoughts

The older I get, the more I combat global warming, because the more white hairs I have, the more sunlight is reflected back into space.

Cute thing that Anja said

Just thought I'd throw one out:

"Baba, you know I like to kid, so when I say something that is silly, you know I am kidding."

My Chinese is better than yours, and yours, and yours

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day to do with language competency.  I had been of the opinion that most of my Chinese colleagues' English is better than my Chinese, because their English vocabularies are larger than my Chinese vocabulary.  (This is because they learned thousands of English words by rote in middle school, high school, and college.)  But I went to lunch with a colleague of mine who is very reluctant to speak English unless he has to, and I realized that vocabulary size is not the primary determiner of language competency.  Instead, competency is a combination of vocabulary, grammar, accent, and perhaps most importantly, ability to communicate in real life.  And "ability to communicate", in turn, means a determination to speak, an ability to say things even if you don't know the "right" words, and a willingness to say "I don't understand what you just said".

By these criteria, my Chinese is actually better than many of my colleagues' English.  Sure, their foreign language vocabulary is larger than mine, but they do things like not understand what I say to them (in English), not admit it, and then reply in a way that reveals that they didn't understand.  This is an example of poor communication ability.  Other colleagues never speak to me in English because they know I speak Chinese.  I'm not complaining, because this is great for my Chinese.  But it indicates, on some level, a lack of determination to speak English.  I, on the other hand, am quite determined to speak Chinese.  The point is that even though their knowledge of English may be better than my knowledge of Chinese, their use of English is not as good as my use of Chinese.

From the point of view of actually communicating, it actually doesn't matter who speaks what language better than someone else, as long as everyone speaks the language being spoken well enough.  But the realization that my Chinese is better than many of my colleagues' English is a big confidence booster, and makes me even more determined to keep speaking it.

Just shut up about the heat already

Summer appears to be almost here, with temperatures starting to get into the 30's (high 80's/low 90's Fahrenheit) most days.  What is surprising me is how many people are already complaining about how hot it is.  Most of these people are Taiwanese people who have been living here their whole lives.  Haven't they lived through 20 or 40 or 60 Taiwan summers already?  Shouldn't they be used to, or at least resigned to, ridiculously hot and humid weather by now?  And don't they know that the weather is going to get five degrees hotter by the end of June?  If they're complaining now, what are they going to do then, scream in pain?

Next, midnight laser shows

Anja wanted me to look up the weather forecast on my iPod Touch, but we somehow managed to start playing Pink Floyd's Meddle at the same time.  Anja really liked the first track, One of These Days, and insisted on spending several minutes dancing to the song before allowing me to finish looking up the weather.  (By the way:  32 degrees Celsius with a 30 percent chance of rain).

The Royal Wedding

Anja drew a picture of the Royal Wedding on Friday:

She drew it entirely from memory two weeks after seeing it on TV.  This picture is of Kate and William at the ball after the ceremony.  A bridesmaid is still holding the bride's train, and many people in the background are watching the newly married couple.  The castellations at the top of the drawing show that the ball is taking place in a castle.

Tornado!

On Thursday a tornado touched down in Xindian during a thunderstorm, three or four kilometers from our house and less than a kilometer from Anja's school:

Live-blogging Anja and Reiya playing

Welcome to the Webster-McCullough household on a Sunday afternoon; I am live-blogging Anja and Reiya playing together.

Reiya is currently sitting in her Pack and Play playing with Chieni's cellphone.  She especially likes the decorative purple doodad attached to it.  Her nose is running because she has a cold so I just helped her with that.

Meanwhile, Anja has been pushing the entire Pack and Play, with Reiya in it, around the house.  Anja and Reiya both this this is hilarious.  A couple of times Anja stopped suddenly and Reiya fell over onto her back and continued to play with the phone as if nothing happened.

Anja is now playing peekaboo with Reiya.  Reiya thinks this is fun, but it's not clear that it is as fun as the phone.  Ah, now Reiya has put her hands on the side of the Pack and Play to look for Anja.

Occasionally Anja starts shaking the Pack and Play or doing something else that she definitely knows better than to do, so she has to be told off.

Now Anja says she wants to go downstairs to the playground, so she is pushing Reiya back into the study where the Pack and Play normally goes.  And now we're off.

Chinese zodiac

Today Anja drew the entire Chinese zodiac from memory:

At the top is Rat, because "Rat is in first place" (note the "1" above the topmost rat).  Then the 12 animals of the zodiac are drawn in four rows of three:  Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Rooster, Dog, Pig.  Then Pig is repeated at the bottom because Pig is in last place (with a "12" next to the final pig).  Each of the 12 animals has a check mark above it because Anja went through after she drew them to make sure each one was there.

Finally, Anja cut the drawing in the shape of a diamond, so it would have the same shape as the Chinese New Year scrolls in our house this year.  Ours just have a rabbit on them, so Anja obviously decided to go one better.

On iPod Pleco flashcards

I'm currently on a Chinese language-learning roll, thanks to two recent developments.  The first is that I decided to try out some Chinese flashcard software on my iPod Touch, and ended deciding to buy the flashcard add-on to my brilliant Pleco Chinese dictionary.  The Pleco flashcard functionality turned out to be also brilliant, so I've been adding and reviewing new words for a couple of weeks now, and have already learned about 150 new words.  Since vocabulary is by far my weakest area, this is, as I have already alluded to, brilliant.

The second development is my decision that all words are equally worth learning.  For a long time, I ignored words that didn't seem immediately useful.  But now I think I've reached the point where I need to learn everything I can, as it's surprising how many apparently obscure words come up in ordinary conversation.  So for example, I've recently learned the word for "yeast", the phrase "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (i.e. capitalism), and the word "hétóng", which is actually the Chinese pronunciation of a Japanese water sprite.  I shouldn't exaggerate; most of the words I'm now learning are still what I would classify as core vocabulary.  For example, the five new words I've added most recently to my flashcards are "puppet", "rubber", "washer (the kind that goes on a screw)", "rust", and "design".

In that list, one out of the five words, "washer", is arguably less common.  When I get to the point when four out five words is uncommon, then I'll probably feel that I speak fluently.  I don't know how long that will take, but it will be a fraction of the time that it would be without the Pleco flashcards.

Fairies and mermaids and fireworks oh my!

Anja drew this picture today:

Starting at the top, we see fireworks and music playing (the notes at the top right), and clouds with three moons on the right.  Below these are fairies.  the black dots are pixie dust, and the larger black circles are fairies that are in the midst of appearing out of pixie dust (because that's how fairies appear).  All of the fairies have wands and black shoes (not sure why they have black shoes).  I am told that the leftmost lower fairy is actually Reiya; this seems like a post hoc assignation.  Anyway, below/amongst the fairies are three much larger mermaids.  The mermaid in the middle is Anja, the one on the right is Chieni, and the one on the left is Anja's Aunt Cynthia.  The mermaids are jumping out of the water, and at the bottom of the sea are clownfish ("Nemo fish", of course) and seaweed.  It's sort of a masterpiece.

Old Xindian

On the weekends, I take Reiya on walks to help her take naps, and in doing so I've become very familiar with the narrow lanes that access the old walk-ups that make up most of Xindian.  Chieni tells stories of growing up in the early 80's living in apartments like this, with fields right down the street where you could go and catch tadpoles.  Soon thereafter, all of those fields were also turned into apartment buildings.

New high-rises are being built, but only on the arterials on the edges of the old residential sections.

A rare splash of color among a sea of beige and gray buildings.

Even for newer buildings, zoning codes don't require much in the way of setbacks.

I passed by this open door walking home from work one evening.

I'm not sure why, but people living in older buildings seem to grow more plants than people living in newer apartments.

Moving companies used to paint signs on the wall of their customers' buildings.

A bird's eye view of the walk-ups.

Management

Today I had some time to work on our recommendation algorithms, and I made some good progress.  I was doing so well that I decided to work on it a bit more at home, but when I got on my computer and checked my email, I immediately got drawn into a series of management issues.  It made me think of what Shakespeare didn't write in Twelfth Night:

"Be not afraid of management: some are born to manage, some achieve management, and some have management thrust upon them." (not Act II, scene V)

Durian ice cream

Having lived in Taiwan for over three years, I don't taste something for the first time very often anymore.  But Anja and I went out to eat hot pot tonight, and they had a self-serve ice cream section with four unlabeled flavors.  We each got a scoop of chocolate chip, and a scoop of a yellow ice cream that looked like lemon or banana.  When I took the first bite, I thought to myself, "This tastes a little bit like durian."  When I took another bite, I thought to myself, "This is durian ice cream."  It was much sweeter than fresh durian – after all, it was ice cream – but it had the same flavor of garlic and meat.  I set the bowl aside, but after a few moments I had to have another bite to make sure it really was durian, partly because I've only eaten durian once (though the flavor is impossible to forget), and partly because it was just so hard to believe that anybody would actually want to make durian ice cream, let alone serve it to paying customers.  I kept setting the bowl aside and then eventually having another bite, and each time, the flavor was still durian.  Finally, I asked the waitress, who confirmed that I was right, and alleged that it was very healthy for women (obviously; otherwise, no one would ever eat it).

After I set my bowl aside for the last time, Anja, who had finished hers, asked if she could eat the rest of mine.

sss, ih, tuh, sit!

Big news in the Anja Reading department today, where Anja announced she wanted to read some words, and proceeded to pronounce out and read several words from The Cat in the Hat almost entirely by herself, with me only giving her the sounds of the vowels.  Among the words she read were "sit", "hop", "fun", "cup", and "now".  Anja said she is looking forward to when she is five, because then she will be able to read the whole book by herself.

Moo

Anja got some animal masks for Christmas.  Today, she complemented her cow mask by drawing a cow body – Holstein I would have thought – complete with tail (which she is holding).

Chocolate chip coconut oatmeal cookies

Our project today was to bake cookies!  I found some coconut flakes in the refrigerator, so I added them to my normal favorite of chocolate chip oatmeal.  Anja helped until she accidentally dumped the hand mixer and several cookies' worth of dough onto the floor.

You can fly!

Anja and I just watched Peter Pan, and she drew this picture of Peter Pan, Wendy, John, and Michael flying:

Note Peter Pan's hat, complete with feather, and John's top hat and umbrella.

Ugly but fascinating

One recent evening I was walking in Xindian, which is a densely populated city filled almost completely with dilapidated five-story walk-up apartment buildings from the 60's and 70's.  I have hated these buildings ever since I moved here, because they are ugly, dirty, and run-down, and more often than not have amateur and distinctly dangerous-looking electrical work running across the exterior walls.  But on this day, I looked up at these buildings and realized that they are historical.  They represent Taiwan's past, before its large-scale move into high-tech manufacturing triggered 20 years of rapid industrialization that resulted in the modern standard of living that people enjoy today.  So yes, they are ugly and horrible, but at the same time they are fascinating historical landmarks.  They make for interesting pictures too, in a Road Warrior sort of way.

Recommendation engine humor

This is almost what I do:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/desperate-pandora-employees-scrambling-to-find-son,17905/