July 12th

Yesterday was 7/11 so the store Seven Eleven was giving out free 7.11 oz slurpees. Since Seven Eleven is only 2 blocks away, we all walked there and got our free slurpees. They were small but good anyway!

This past week we emailed the author of one of the papers we read because we had a question about what was in the paper. We got a prompt reply and attached to the email was a program the author had used and it was very neat! You could draw graphs and select the information you would like to know about the graph and it would tell you! One of the choices was Energy! Unfortunately it did not give all 4 kinds of energy we are working with but it is still very cool! Even though it didn’t give the energy for all 4 kinds we are studying, it does give pieces of information we could use to calculate 2 kinds of energy. Other than that it has been the same old same old. I have found some interesting patterns but the type of matrix that the patterns fit into, Toeplitz, are really tricky to work with and I have been trying to read up on them but unfortunately I haven’t gotten anywhere and no one else in the groups knows how to work with them either. I took a break from the confusing pattern I found and found a different one but I didn’t have any time on Friday to try to get information out of this pattern - I’m hoping I can in the next week or so. The main focus of this coming week will be to tie up the loose ends that we have and work on our presentation some more.

On Friday night most of us went to the casino. I had never been to a casino before so I was excited! It was nice because since it was my first time at this casino they gave me $10! Everyone got $10 free (by signing up for their casino players club) and one girl got $20 since it is her birthday month. We spent about 2.5 hours playing penny slots and had a good time. I left with $5.07, not great but considering that I walked in with $0 I was happy! And what would a carful of college girls do with free money on a warm summer night…go to McDonald’s for ice cream treats! Yum!

Yesterday was another party at a professor’s house. This time it was at my advisor’s house. He is from India and he made us some Indian food, it was good. In the past, when students have gone to his house for the party, they stay LATE-the record is 5am! It started at 3 pm and none of us wanted to stay that late. About half the group, including me, stayed until 12:45 and we could tell he was a bit disappointed that we didn’t stay later and everyone else left earlier. I played 2 games of Monopoly, catch phrase, SET, watched a movie and chatted. It was a fun day but by 12:45 I was getting sleepy.

Have a great week everyone!

July 7th, 2009

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great 4th of July!! My family came up to Mount Pleasant on last Thursday near the end of a 10 day trip they took. I didn’t have to work on Friday July 3rd and so taking advantage of the 3 day weekend we drove to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park near Empire Michigan. It was very beautiful!! The sand dunes were amazing! The scenic drive was very scenic and the short hike we went on was very nice. At one of the stops on the scenic drive, there was a 450 foot dune that went down to Lake Michigan. A bunch of people were walking down, and then back up (the hike up didn’t look fun)! Thanks to some locals we learned that if we walked down the beach about a mile, we would come to a beach and steps over the small dunes there that went to another lake and a parking lot. Mom didn’t want to climb down so she drove over to the lake and picked us up. I enjoyed the climb down and the walk down the beach.


On July 4th we enjoyed the cherry festival downtown Traverse City. Emily and I made little cherry pies. We looked around, tried samples of cherry products, enjoyed lunch and then sat down to watch the air show. I had never seen an air show before and it was amazing (although slow at times). After the air show we took a drive up one of the peninsulas and saw some more nice views. We then headed to the hotel beach and lounged around for awhile. We had a late picnic dinner in a park as we waited for the fireworks to start. It was a very nice display. It was nice seeing my family and I’m glad they came to visit! I can’t believe I only have about 2.5 weeks left! The REU is going really fast!



Now for the math. About awhile ago we all gave midterm reports. Each group made a power point type presentation and gave a 20 minute presentation with their results so far, their conjectures and what they wanted to work on for the rest of the time. I feel like our presentation went well. Our advisor had a few comments but nothing very critical, just details to fix. Of course it could be better and we will work on it more for next time. It took a bunch of work to prepare for the presentation because we had to type up everything in LaTex which took a long time, it was worth it though because everything has to be typed up by the end anyway and this way it will be a lot less overwhelming at the end. After seeing the presentation, I was just reassured that I really am glad I got the project I did. I find it really interesting. We have not had as many results this past week as we did the first few weeks but we are getting into more challenging things now so that is expected. Oh well. We still have a bunch of results and I’m sure we will have more before the project is over. We have about a week left for actual researching. Then we have to prepare our final presentation and give a practice talk. On the last Monday there will be a conference at CMU for all the REU groups in Michigan and we will present to each other. For the last 3 days we will be typing up our final report. Yikes! The time is flying by!

A few other things I’ve done for fun:
- I went to a play with two of my roommates at the CMU summer theater
-Saw fireworks the week before the 4th in Mount Pleasant
-There was a party a professor’s house (each professor in the REU program will be hosting a party at their house between now and the end)
-Went out to lunch a few times
-Several games of Mafia
-Finished reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”


I know I have not covered nearly everything that has happened in the last 2 weeks so if you have any specific questions, feel free to send me an email!