Good thing I’m taking a couple of classes at the USDA grad school to prep for real grad school in the fall. I have no idea why the USDA even has a grad school, but the nice thing about it is you can take classes for about $400 a pop, which – in DC – is a great deal because it is about as good as Montgomery College in terms of price, and you don't have to go all the way out to the end of the red line for it.
So, I'm taking statistics. The professor means well, though he keeps making transcription errors in his problems – transposing values, getting his columns mixed up, going back and checking his notes, realizing he can’t read his own handwriting, apologizing, erasing everything on the board, starting over, making the same mistake a second time, etc. If it’s a technique to get the class involved, it works wonders, because we all routinely chime in now to keep him from going too far down the wrong path.
His English is good but not great. Yesterday, in particular, we got some unexpected comedy when discussing probabilities. He was talking about flipping coins, except he would forget to pluralize “head.” So, this led to lots of statements like:
“Ok, now you’ve gotten head twice. What else can happen?”
“How many more times can we get head in this example?”
“What is the likelihood that you will get no head?”
And so forth. Comedy gold for the ten-year-old in me.
1 comment:
Awesome. I have the same basic reaction when ever we need data and get a dump of the tables.
I think my wife took classes at the USDA to prep for her entry into Georgetown's grad school about 12-13 years ago. Odd.
And belated congrats on Hoya-dom!
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