On the plane again

Before I even nearly documented the amazing year spent in Pittsburgh, lucky me is traveling yet again to a new continent, to work with my sweetheart Marc and a team of other students on a water filtering project in Cambodia.

To document the journey, we'll write two new blogs, firstly
http://mm-in-pp.blogspot.com
written by Marc and me, on our personal experiences over there and random comments worth being posted.

For more technical details on the progress of the project, all team members will be contributing towards
http://khmer-bear.blogspot.com
with (hopefully) up-to-date information on the latest discoveries and results.

See you there,
Michèle

Super pastors

Every first Sunday of the month, we share communion at East Liberty Presbyterian Church: My monthly astonishment at the immense power of American pastors, whether male or female, young or old, sporty or full figured. You know how we Catholics have pre-cut hosts of about 1mm thickness, that must function much like a potato chip when it comes to break-resistance?

– Well, not so here. Courageously, the pastor holds up a full two-pound loaf of bread, gives thanks, and breaks it, EFFORTLESSLY!!

I regularly catch myself in sheer admiration for such superhuman strength instead of focusing on the spiritual significance of the event for my own life.

And I remember the fundamental difference between our two continents: Crust-free bread!

Being a light

"It means living in such a way that our lives would not make sense if God did not exist."

(read on: http://www.sacredspace.ie/en#advice)

Pittsburgh Fast Facts

as taken from http://my.cmu.edu/site/admission/page.fastfacts :

Nickname: The Burgh
Population: 1.26 million (Allegheny County)

Location, location, location: Pittsburgh is within 500 miles of more than half the U.S. population, and the city is less than 90 minutes flying time from 20 states and Canada.

Pittsburgh ranks in the top 10 as the best place to start as a young professional and to grow personal wealth.

Pittsburgh has been ranked seventh in the nation as the home of Fortune 500 headquarters. (USX, ALCOA, Heinz and PPG are located here.)

Entrepreneur magazine ranked Pittsburgh as the ninth best place in the country for small businesses.

The Pittsburgh International Airport was rated the top airport in the country and second best in the world by J.D. Power and Conde Nast Traveler, respectively.

Per capita, Pittsburghers are said to drink more coffee than people in any other city in North America.

Pittsburgh has 723 bridges, more than any other city in the world except Venice, Italy.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh is the first certified green convention center in the United States and the largest certified green building in the world.

President George W. Bush has referred to Pittsburgh as the “Knowledge City.”

Famous Pittsburghers include Christina Aguilera, Stephen Foster, Shirley Jones, Michael Keaton, Jimmy Stewart, Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Andy Warhol.

The smiley :-) was created by a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist.

Several Hollywood movies have been shot here, including the Academy Award-winning Silence of the Lambs, Lorenzo’s Oil and Hoffa - as well as Wonder Boys, Creepshow, Flashdance and Smart People which were filmed partly on Carnegie Mellon’s campus.

So sad.

Okay, so I didn't check what exactly the content of that mail was.. but I can imagine. It makes me sad how far love has been misunderstood.

Eh, ben.

Pirate Game - revealed.

Completely overwhelmed by the response to my last post – I didn't take into account that a lot of you guys are as much geeks as I am :), – let me explain the solution strategy. It uses what is called 'backward induction':


If the oldest pirate (pirate 1) is the only survivor of the big massacre, he will keep all 100 pieces of gold.
Thus, whatever pirate 2 suggest, he is gonna be killed (even if he offers all the gold to the oldest, that one will still want to kill him).
Hence, pirate 2 will accept whatever offer pirate 3 makes, for the benefit of mere survival. So pirate 3 can keep all the gold to himself, and still get his own vote and that of pirate 2.
In order to survive, pirate 4 needs to get 3 votes: His own plus two of his fellows'. He knows that pirate 2 and 1 are easy to convince: He merely needs to offer them one single piece of gold. Then the remaining 98 pieces are all his. So: If pirate 5 dies, this is gonna be the outcome of the game: 98 pieces of gold for pirate 4, no gold for pirate 3, 1 piece of gold for pirates 2 and 1, no further deaths.

So what does the youngest pirate know?
- Pirate 4's vote is his if and only if he offers him 99 pieces of gold.
- Pirate 3's vote is his if and only if he offers him 1 piece of gold.
- Pirate 2's vote is his if and only if he offers him 2 pieces of gold.
- Pirate 1's vote is his if and only if he offers him 2 pieces of gold.
Since, in addition to his own, the youngest pirate needs two more votes, the highest amount of gold he can keep for himself is 97 pieces, give one to pirate 3 and two to either the oldest or the second oldest pirate.


However, in real life, most people don't think as far... so rest assured, with such bloodthirsty pirates, a few people will die because we fail to teach game theory to poor mortals around the world! :) :)

Pirate Game

Since the film 'A beautiful mind', everybody should have somewhat a notion of game theory. (Remember the bar scene with the blonde and her friends?)

So I'm taking this class this semester on the topic, (no worries, though, the FBI hasn't asked me to work for them yet). We analyze all sorts of games, and I'm just writing up the pirates game, modeling some business process (what did you expect? :)) :

There are 5 pirates, ranked from the oldest (1) to the youngest (5). After having looted 100 pieces of gold, they return to their island and decide to share the loot and retire. The way they propose to do it is the following:
The youngest pirate proposes first an allocation for the gold (assume that each piece of gold is not divisible). Everybody votes either in favor or against the proposal. If the proposal has strictly more than 50% of 'Yes' votes, then it is implemented and the game ends. If not, then the pirate is killed and eliminated from the game. Then the youngest alive makes a proposal. We do this until one of the proposals is accepted.

For completeness, assume each pirate prefers to be alive rather than getting killed. Also assume that between killing and not killing, a pirate always prefer to kill another pirate.

Always something happening in these maths classes. :)

More than mere kindness

I came across this quote by C.S. Lewis, and because I do have the best intentions to keep this website alive, I decided to start this revival by my reading highlight of the day.

There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness [...] is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished (Hebrew 12:8). It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

- C.S. Lewis, from 'The problem of pain'

Sista Reunion

Nachdem rund 11 Monaten auf entgegengesetzten Kontinenten konnte ich meine Schwester Tina am 1.Januar endlich wieder in die Arme schliessen. Während ihrem Urlaub mit ihrem Schatz Sevi besuchten wir zu viert San Francisco und machten uns auf einen Roadtrip der Küste Kaliforniens entlang. Schade nur, dass nach einer halben Stunde beiden Youngsters schon die Augen zugefallen waren! :)

Road trip pictures

I feel like I am finally starting to properly appreciate this continent. Its variety is breathtaking, and its nature awe inspiring.

Das Brieftaschenproblem

... und seine Lösung. (© Kevin McCann, mein Landlord/Hostdad)

Nun ist das so ein Problem mit den Herren und ihrem obligaten Portemonnaie in der hintern Hosentasche. Nach einer gewissen Zeit lässt das Gewebe nach, und macht einem von Ehefrauen nicht gern gesehenen 'Loch' platz. Oft werden solche Hosen dann entsorgt - obwohl ja sonst noch voll funktionstüchtig. Doch Hilfe naht: Erfinder McCann machte heute Abend seine revolutionäre Idee bekannt:

Wir bräuchten einfach eine Kirche, die 10x10 centimeter grosse Flicken für 5 Dollars verkauft, wovon dann 4$ an hungernde Kinder in Afrika gehen. Den will man sich dann gerne auf den Hintern kleben, damit jeder sieht "Jawohl, ich spende!" Es ist dann nicht einmal mehr so wichtig, dass die Farbe mit den Hosen harmoniert.

Wie zu Junggesellen-Zeiten ... :)


What a wonderful thanksgiving! And I actually don't even feel overeaten. :) It's fun to eat a whole afternoon... there were two other families that came to our house (one couple with a beautiful Scottish accent) and to finish it off, we watched Ratatouille (that's right! A movie starring a freakin RAT .. I hope I will be able to sleep). And the fantastic side effect: We have leftovers!! :)

Infinity for engineers

HOTEL HILBERT has infinite number of rooms. On ar particular night all the rooms were occupied, but a VACANCY sign hung outside. A potential guest arrived, and the desk clerk gave him the key to room 1, after asking the occupant of room 2 to move to room 3, the occupant of 4oom 3 to move to room 4, and so on. The next night an infinite number of new guests arrived and none of the old guests had checked out. ’No problem,’ the desk clerk announced. He moved the occupant of room 1 to room 2, the occupant of room 2 to room 4, the occupant of room 3 to room 6, the occupant of room 4 to room 8, the occupant of room 5 to room 10, in general the occupant of room n to room 2n. That freed up infinitely many odd-numbered rooms for the infinitely many new arrivals.

(From The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, by Paul Hoffman)
http://learn.tsinghua.edu.cn:8080/2002315664/smallstories/hotel-hilbert.pdf

Skydiving

Ich bin endlich dazugekommen, ein paar Fotos hochzuladen. Enjoy!

(Die Slideshow läuft etwas rasch – die Photos können aber auch direkt hier angeschaut werden.)

Sorry, Shahin.

Afin d'être une grande fille responsable de son avenir, j'ai consulté le réglement d'études de l'epfl avant de m'inscrire pour les cours du printemps, pour d'abord découvrir que le master pour enseignement a complètement été aboli! Jawohl, meine Damen und Herren, die moderne Kantonsschullehrerin von 2009 wird rund fünf Jahre Hochschulstudium auf dem Buckel haben, mit einem 'Master of Science'–Abschluss in exotischen Auswüchsen wie "Fredholm Operatoren" oder "Steenrod Algebras"* bevor sie mit einem kurzen Jahr Pädagogie-Schnellbleiche auf die Jugend losgelassen wird. A bad joke? – Nada!
The world class university that I am currently attending regards it (with good reasons) as sufficient to put a PhD-Student (donc un étudiant qui n'a obtenu que son titre de bachelor) in charge of a Calculus class for Architecture freshmen, but the average Swiss high school requires a 'Master of Science' to teach the basics of vector addition. Hat da irgendjemand ein Problem mit Selbstüberschätzung?!
Mais bon, bref: L'epfl n'offre plus de 'Master en sciences pour l'enseignement' et je ne vais pas me taper une année de PLUS qu'un futur manager de Wall Street pour me battre avec des ados (ou peut-être si, mais mon altruisme aura 18 mois de plus à grandir :)). Bleibt eine wesentliche Frage:
"Master of Mathematics oder Master en ingénierie mathématique?"

(Kein Wunder, sind so viele Mathematiker als Philosophen bekannt geworden – bei all den weltbewegenden Fragen, auf die man an einem Montagnachmittag stösst.) Und da habe ich mich dann eben mal ein bisschen schlau gemacht, schliesslich möchte ich meine Frühlingskurse ja nicht nächstes Jahr wiederholen müssen. And what did I see?
> Master of Mathematics
Surfaces minimales, Géométrie riemannienne, Algebraic topology, Mouvement Brownien (you can't eat it though), Introduction to Coding Theory.

> Master en ingénierie mathématique:
Monte Carlo Methods (though there is no circus involved), Modèles linéaires et plans d'expérience, Modélisation mathématique du comportement, Graphes et Réseaux, Mathematical modelling of DNA.

Ich hatte einen orangen Leuchtstift in der Hand, um interessante Kurse farblich hervorzuheben, aber die 'pure Mathematik'-Seite ist erschreckend leer geblieben. Ist mein Wissensdurst nach Partiellen Differentialgleichungen etwa schon gestillt? Does my heart not thirst for more personalized theorems whose proof takes more than a week worth of classes? Qu'est-ce qui m'est arrivé??

Mais alors... a girl's gotta take her choices... zwar bin ich immer noch keine Ingenieurin (π ist nun mal nicht 3.14) – aber den Master werde ich auf der "angewandten" Seite verbringen.. und in zwei Jahren (hopefully) den fancy Titel eines "Master of mathematical sciences" (ingénierie mathématique) in meinen Händen halten.

– Sorry, Shahin.



* Kei Sorge, Papi, ich verstohns au nöd. :)

Reading highlights

The biggest academic change in crossing the atlantic ocean (and my sweetheart will testify) is the amount of reading to do. And given that a fourth of my exchange year is already gone, I thought I might as well make a little collection of the most outstanding tidbits of American college literature (I added in brackets the names of the class):

> The saddest thing ('Design of Educational Games') – Ian Bogost explains why the computer game 'Animal Crossing' is so cool:

"The whole family shares a single GameCube, so the game's persistent state fascilitates natural collaboration between family members with different schedules. For example, a child might find a fossil during the afternoon, then mail it to her father's character in the game. At bedtime, she could let dad know that she needs to have it analyzed at the central museum so she can take it to the local gallery the next day. As critics Kurt Squire and Henry Jenkins wrote of the game, 'Families (of all types) live increasingly disjointed lives, but the whole family can play Animal Crossing even if they can rarely all sit down to dinner together. When families do gather, the game offers common points of reference and common projects to discuss.'"

> Some general culture for y'all (Productions- and Operations Management)

"Bow ties have been around for more than 300 years, their origin traceable, as one story goes, to the court of Louis XIV of France in the 1600s. The King noticed a company of Croatian soldiers who wore white-silk kerchiefs around their necks. The King apparently loved the look, and appeared at court shortly thereafter with the white kerchief plus some lace and embroidery to heighten the effect, along with a small bow in front to finish it off.
Originally, the Corats had wrapped their necks as a charm to guard the area against sword swipes. 'Cravats' comes from the French cravates, which referred to the Croatian soldiers."

> Incredibly useful (Logic I) – life would be hard without this:

"p ⋁ p ⊃ p"

> Tonight's program (Measure and Integration) – not my passion:

"Let X=[0,1] with the Lebesgue measure and let un(x) := sin(πnx), forall x∈[0,1].
a) Show that {un} is equi-integrable.
b) For every rational r∈[0,1], find liminf (n→∞) sin(πnr), limsup (n→∞) sin(πnr).
c) For every irrational x∈[0,1], find liminf (n→∞) sin(πnx), limsup (n→∞) sin(πnx).
d) Prove that {un} converges weakly to yero in Lp([0,1]) for any 1≤p<∞, and weakly star to zero in L∞([0,1])."

My 21st Birthday

Nein, das dann eben doch nicht. That's for weak beginners. Ce qu'on n'est pas, nous, évidemment. Im Gegenteil, nous, on est des amateurs des VRAIES sensations fortes:





More pictures to come.

Enough of this

Genug von dem /Assez de ca:


... and of this / und von dem / et de ca:

Mon cheri vient a Pittsburgh! No sechs mol schlofe! I cannot wait!!!!!!!

Long overdue pictures

(click on the pictures to open the corresponding album)
(clique sur les photos pour ouvrir les album correspondants)
(klick auf die Fotos um zu den zugehörigen Alben zu gelangen)

downtown Pittsburgh

CMU Math Club @ the Pirates Game

Nathan in Pittsburgh

Saturday Morning Market

my apartment

Can't take the Swiss out of her

So since all of you Americans know about facebook, let me give a brief introduction in German (I'll come back to you) :

Ihr lieben schweizer Studenten, Tina, Dani, Patrick, Miriam, Philipp, Simone, Corina, Irene, DJBurns, Rainer, ... selbst wenn ihr aus dem Ostschweizer Farmland kommt, würde es mich sehr freuen, euch bald auf www.facebook.com begrüssen zu dürfen! Nebst einem einfachen Weg des In-Kontakt-Bleibens bietet diese Seite nämlich auch einige Selbsterfahrungs-Features: So fühle ich mich gerade unglaublich verstanden, habe ich doch soeben diese beiden Gruppen "You know you're Swiss when.." und "You know you've been living in (German Speaking) Switzerland too long when…" entdeckt, mit Aussagen wie:

> you love Migros and you swear that some of their products are better than anything you've ever seen elsewhere
> you have ever been asked who the president of Switzerland is and then failed miserably trying to explain why you've lost track
> you laugh when Americans believe that Swiss Miss is a Swiss product, but then have no clue that Nestlé and Rolex ARE
> you get amused when you see Swiss German people being subtitled on German television
> you have learned three to four languages and think this is completely normal
> you walked to kindergarten without supervision, wearing a large orange triangle around your neck
> when you are asked to explain how certain things work in your country, you have to use the phrase "it differs for each canton, so..."
> you are used to drinking from any public fountain in the street unless there is a warning sign that says "no drinking water"
> you think that driving somewhere for four hours is a hell of a long time
> you are in a non-European country and can hear people talking Swiss German and just go up and strike up a conversation with a complete stranger (I did that in Uganda! :))
> you think it's fair that you can only wash clothes once a month
> you prefer plain chocolate to candy bars
> you put Aromat on all your food
> you love Migros Budget
> you prefer Swiss wine
> you don't feel embarrassed when you order something non-alcoholic in a bar
> you only eat fondue in winter (Chéri, DTSers: It is there, in the Swiss German section! I knew it!!)
> you know the words to the Swiss national anthem
> you wonder why anyone would want to shop outside of working hours
> you say Grüezi to everyone, and consider it impolite when they don't say it back
> you call your cell phone "handy" and a projector "beamer" (I never thought about that.. we're actually strange.)
> you think that air conditioning makes people sick
> you think that Sunday should be a day of rest
> you read this far.

Oh Thurgau, du Heimat.