Words, Words, Words

A few months ago (I know it's been ages since I've written), I was sitting in the cafeteria with some new acquaintances. These were folks I had met in the course of a math class and who might be becoming friends but it was too early to tell. We were in the loud, cavernous cafeteria room with clattering trays and cutlery and happened to see a pile of pamphlets on the table about local campus elections. These were from the different student government groups, explaining changes they wanted to make on the campus.

There were mostly groups only between the far left and the center. One in particular caught my eye because it was discussing gentrification in the neighborhood in which I live - gentrification that I have seen over the course of the years I have been here. I have many a time wondered how much of a role I play in it myself. I mentioned this to the rest of the group - and I got blank stares.

Soon, I was asked to define gentrification. Now, gentrification is a hard subject to discuss even with close friends and even when everyone has a basic understanding of the concept. Introducing it to people who were, as privileged, white, oblivious individuals, very similar to myself at the beginning of my college career - well, let's say they were resistant to the idea, as I was for a very long time. I failed miserably at explaining exactly what gentrification is and why they should care.

And I thought about other similar situations - situations in which someone has used a term that is harmful, racist, sexist, classist - and about how sometimes, I do what I wish I did all the time and confront them (kindly) about their choice of language. But sometimes I don't. If I am the only girl in the group, I usually shy away. If I am younger than everyone in the group, I usually shy away. If I am a new member in the group, I usually shy away. I wish I didn't. I'm working on it.

But part of working on it is having a bunch of explanations ready and at hand, so that at least under the pressure of being younger/new/the only girl, I don't have to come up with anything new. And then I stumbled upon this video today, which I think will help me in that respect. Maybe it'll help you, too. Because we should never shy away from that conversation.

The Case of the Missing Files

I have recently started a new job. One of my duties involves updating files that are located on a server. With the right simple software, this isn't too complicated and barely takes any time to learn. I copy the files over onto my computer, work on them, upload them again – just like using Dropbox or even getting an email attachment. The cool part is that these are the background files of a website so when I change something and want to see if it has worked, I just upload the files I changed and reload the website to see if the changes took.

This worked just fine when I started this job last January. I'm working for a small math magazine that gets distributed to some local schools. Students work on the problems in the magazine, send in solutions and accumulate points for the problems they do correctly. I'm the one who keeps the website for the magazine up and running, so people can check when the next issue is coming out, who has collected how many points during the current year, etc.

All of a sudden, just a few weeks ago, a lot of my files went missing. The biggest file, the one with the list of students from all the schools with their points on the last three issues – gone! At least, it would not show up in my program that shows me what is saved on the server. Imagine looking in a directory on your own computer where you thought a file was saved, but now the file is gone. However, the file couldn't just be gone – because when I went to the website and loaded the page, lo and behold, there was the list of students with all of their points, exactly how I had last updated it.

But I needed to update that list again. How to do it? I didn't have the file and didn't want to write it from scratch again. So, I figured out – with a bit of help from the Internet – that the GoogleChrome browser has a tool that lets you view the source code from a page. I tried it out, and – hey, presto! – there was my beautiful php code, just as I had left it, displayed in a browser tab. I copied it and created a new document, edited it, saved it under the original name, and dragged it over to the server. Here's the other weird thing: usually, my program alerts me when I put a new version of a file on the server; it asks me, as you might expect, if I would like to overwrite the old one, etc. But that time, it didn't ask me. Not only that, but when the file transfer was done, the new file still wasn't listed. I had transferred it, the transfer had been successful, and then it had been swallowed up into the ether. Except it hadn’t been. My changes showed up on the website.

This happened to several files on the server, files that I had downloaded and worked on and uploaded without a problem when I started working there. Some files were still there. I could see them on the server; some I couldn't.

This was vexing. 

I'm not very well versed in this area, so I eventually went to see our department's technical support person. This gentleman I had met only once before when I introduced myself as the new member of the magazine team. I explained my problem and he stared at me. I stared back. It is a weird problem to try to explain. 

Slowly, he rolled his swivel chair over to face his two desktop screens. On one, he opened a program similar to mine that let him look at the files on the server. I placed my laptop on his desk, displaying my version of the program that lets me transfer files to and from the server. He used one monitor to open the command line: that place where once upon a time – in an ancient pre-mouse era – we typed 'pwd' to print our working directory, 'cd' to change the directory, and other commands to run things on a computer. It is still used, and sometimes, there is nothing better.

For the first fifteen minutes, I didn't say a thing. He looked, tested, copied, uploaded, scratched his head, squinted at the screen. Nothing worked. On his computer, it said there were 193 files on the server. My computer registered only 177. Sixteen files were missing. Files that had nothing to do with each other.

He made a copy of certain files, changed the server settings, re-uploaded everything. I restarted my program and looked again. Still 177. He changed the basic settings of my program. 177. We looked at every single preference setting that could be changed in the program. 177.

About forty-five minutes had now passed. I had put my backpack at my feet and was admiring his patience but I wasn't thinking we would get to the bottom of this.

All of a sudden, he spun his chair around and began to type in the command line. Lines of code popped up, he entered new commands, looking into the settings of the server. Then he looked at me. 

"When did you start working with the magazine?" -"January." 

"And you could access all of the files at the start?" - "Yes."

"When you uploaded them, they were still there and you could then download them to edit?" -"Yes."

"So it just changed at some point recently? Recently the files just started not showing up?" -"Yes, exactly."

He smiled. "Every file that is missing was uploaded to the server in March," he said.

I stared blankly.

What followed were five minutes of typing during which I felt very silly, not understanding this breakthrough. After those five minutes, he refreshed my program once again and… all the files appeared. 193.

What was this miracle cure?

He explained to me that buried deep in the server, the files edited in March had not been saved with some numerical date, as I had expected – 03/05/2016, for example – but with the actual month written out. So, on this German server: 'März': the only month with an umlaut in it (those little ¨ dots). And my poor American computer couldn't read them. Couldn’t read the dots, and thus, couldn’t read the date – and did not display them. This explained why there had been no problem with those exact files when I had edited them in January and February, and why they then disappeared so mysteriously after months of being fine.

We smiled at each other. "Wow," I said. "Thank you so much! I never would have thought of that." He grinned, and it was like, together, we had vanquished an invisible foe.

Then, since we really don't know each other at all, I gathered my things and exited rather awkwardly. But still – we now share that victory.

Here's to all the computer detectives out there. Cheers!

Groundhog Day at the Pittsburgh Airport

I'm at the Pittsburgh airport, Concourse D. I’ve gotten to know it quite well over the last 24 hours. Yesterday, I arrived at the aiport around noon, waited in the security line, took the train to the departures terminal and found my gate a good hour and a half before take-off – like a responsible traveler. Gate D80. Our departure time came and went while we were being provided with updates from our gate agent roughly once every ten minutes. I wandered. I found a Starbucks as well as some nice tables with comfortable chairs, and stood in line behind a besuited businessman who sheepishly asks for a lattice of extra caramel on his iced latte and turns to me and says this caramel is the highlight of this day. Back to D80. Our last update was just to tell us when our next update will be. It is now three hours past the original departure time. The problem is not in Pittsburgh; the problem is in New York City. Weather. I’m not even trying to go to NYC, simply through it to Frankfurt. But in NYC, nothing is going in or out. Eventually, our flight was cancelled. I was rebooked for an early afternoon flight the next day to catch the exact same flight from JFK 24 hours later. 

Now, seasoned travelers will know that this type of cancellation entitles the travelers to practically nothing. (When there is a mechanical malfunction, some maintenance problem that even just delays a flight, you might be eligible for compensation as those are technically the airline’s fault. That's what happened to C and myself a few months ago, during our saga of a return from California.) This means that this time, even though I needed to find accommodation for the night, the airline could offer me at best a „distressed rate“ at one particular hotel (which may even have been full, considering the number of passengers who were delayed until the next day) – and that’s all. Even that distressed rate would have been a blow. But luckily, serendipitously, my mother – who had dropped me off at the airport a mere 6.5 hours previously – was still in the general area doing work, and she could simply pick me up again.

We had a lovely evening and a relaxed morning together, and here I am again – but now I know the terminal. I go to the faster alternative security checkpoint, which I didn’t do yesterday. I don’t fight with the water fountain that insists on pouring water horizontally, at an angle that doesn’t agree with the neck of my reusable water bottle. Instead, I head to the water-bottle refilling station that I found late in the afternoon yesterday. I go back to the same Starbucks to get a cup of tea – the gentleman behind the counter looks at me. I look at him. „Were you here yesterday?“ – „Yes. Were you?“ He was kind yesterday and is kind again today, giving me an extra tea bag in case my journey today gets delayed again and tells me I can just come back and they’ll give me a cup of hot water for that teabag. I won’t tell him that my backpack is stuffed with Peets coffee.

For now, I’m enjoying my tea and then I’ll it's back to – believe it or not – D80, where I sincerely hope, pleasant as this has been, that it does not all begin again.

On a slightly lighter note...

I have my first oral math exam this coming Saturday and it happens to be in Topology, one of (I think) the most playful and fun branches of math - and one that math-lay-people can get their heads wrapped around, at least a little. So, if you feel like thinking about some of this, check out these links:

First off, two very cool topological spaces, Bing's House (or the House with Two Rooms) and the Infinite Earring. Let me know what you think!

And now, a video - of a lay-person's proof of a very cool theorem in Topology (no lectures needed!)
 about how under certain, simple assumptions, you can show that two spots on the earth have exactly the same weather...


Alright - I'll get back to the technical details of these spaces - they are less fun than the articles I've posted here, but I suppose, as a mathematician-in-training, I have to accept that they are important.

Thoughts from Brussels

Two Germans, two Americans, a half-English, half-Canadian girl from France, and a half-Bulgarian half-Dutch girl from Germany get onto a bus in Brussels on their way to a restaurant. There they meet up with another three Americans as well as a mostly Dutch, somewhat American man. They eat Eritrean food for dinner, drink Belgian beer, eat French bread for breakfast and speak in a glorious mishmash of languages, including folks attempting to mix and compare Flemish with the German dialect of East Frisia, depending on who is sitting next to whom at what time (and how many beers have been drunk).  They are musicians, interpreters, students, and EU Commission employees – and they are all Unitarian Universalists, which is how they all happened to meet.

I have to say, it was a pretty cool weekend. I didn’t really expect that I would start going to a UU church again at my current age. I did grow up as part of a UU congregation but I started to feel rather anti-church (even anti-UU church) during my teen years and a bit after – so when I found myself on the train and going to a service of my own volition in January 2015, I was pretty surprised. But I’ve been thrilled with the community I’ve found there – it’s really quite something.

I could say a lot about how it feels to be going to this church or about UUism in general – and maybe I will in another entry – but this one I wanted to use to talk about something else that hit me while I was on that bus in Brussels.

I was standing next to Claudia who was talking to a very good friend of ours (the half-Bulgarian, half-Dutch girl from Germany). As Claudia is from East Frisia, an area of Germany that is quite close to the Dutch border, she grew up hearing a little bit of “ostfriesisch Platt”, or the East Frisian version of the Low German dialect. Now, you have to understand, East Frisians think that the Platt that is spoken in the town 10 kilometers away is not real Platt, so this is a dialect that can be spoken many ways! One of the fun about East Frisia is its proximity to the border – because that means that there’s a little melding of languages (also, the language was there before the border, after all!). So, she and our friend were trading phrases back and forth in Dutch and Platt, figuring out which ones were similar and which ones weren’t, which words existed in both languages with the same meaning or in both languages with quite different meanings. I was listening and chuckling, but I can’t understand very much Dutch at all and very little Platt (I have a decent passive understanding of phrases like 'Does anyone want another cup of tea?' and 'Oh, what a shame, it’s raining again!' since those are the things I hear around the tea table at birthday parties in Claudia’s hometown – but that’s about the extent of it!).

So, these two were talking and everywhere around me on the bus, there were other languages I couldn’t understand. There were a few Italian men chatting a few steps away, teenagers having conversations in Dutch and Flemish, and the bus announcing its stops French announcements. I have a teensy bit of French in my repertoire (haha) but only as much as three college semesters and virtually no time spent in a French-speaking place will get you. I am of course fluent in English and damn near fluent in German, but that didn’t really matter, surrounded by bilingual Flemish and French street signs. I felt pretty helpless.

I’m not saying ‘Poor me, I only know two languages’. I realize that the company I keep really over-represents bi-, tri- and even quadrilingual people. But that time on the bus nevertheless made me think about the powerlessness you feel when you worry that you might not be able to communicate, might not be understood in a strange place. And I thought about how harshly we judge people who do not speak our own language – even ones who speak it well grammatically, but have an accent that is hard to understand. Mangled pronunciation, searching for words, the inability to form sentences the way a native speaker would: What do we think when we hear such things? We assume, even if it’s only for an instant, that the speaker is stupid.

This is, of course, ridiculous. We know, I know, in every rational part of my brain that a person's foreign language skills have practically nothing to do with their intelligence.  I have also spent a good deal of time abroad and have met people from all kinds of places – and yet I do this, too. It is cruelly common, this reaction.

So, while feeling like I had one of my senses cut off in that bus in Brussels, I appreciated for a fraction of a second what it must feel like to constantly worry about your inability to communicate or about being judged prematurely by strangers because of it. In addition to that I had this experience in Brussels, a few kilometers from the European Commission, where all kinds of decisions are being made about the flood of refugees coming into Europe. I thought about all the upset and unrest in Germany in reaction to the influx of refugees and about this internal bias. A bias which is so very unfair, and which makes it easier to classify strangers as somehow profoundly 'other' and 'less than'.

I hope to be able to remind myself of that feeling I had on that bus in Brussels every time I feel myself falling prey to this kind of bias. We need to realize that we're all strangers most places we go, and that it is a privilege to be able to live in a place where we understand people and are understood.

A case of Universititis

Today, I helped grade exams for the first time – as one of twelve teaching assistants in “Linear Algebra I” at the university here. First, let me be clear – we do not assign the letter grades. We receive solutions for the problems and work in groups to correct them. One group corrects problem one, the next problem two etc. Within each group we discuss how many points should be awarded for each part of "our" problem. We can then use that as a rubric to ensure that all members of the group grade "their" problem the same way. Once the professor sees the distribution of points for each problem and for the exam in general, he or she will fix the letter grades.

Now, this exam, like many math exams at this and other German universities, is going to end up having students who have less than 50% of the points who still get passing grades – because if they didn't, far too many people would fail. Out of respect for people's privacy, I won't post the specifics of this class – but I don't know any introductory level class here (Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability Theory) in the last few years in which more than half of the students would have passed if the passing grade had been left at 50% (some, even after that line was lowered to 35%). 

However, I should give some context. In a math degree in Germany, it's totally normal to fail once or twice. If the exams tend to end up this way, it's only natural. Especially if in your first or second semester you don't really realize what's expected of you. Nobody attaches these big moral weights to failure the way (I think) we sometimes do in the States. And, since it doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, it's not such a big deal to repeat a class. 

However. There's a wrinkle. If you fail the same class – say, “Calculus I” – three times, you are out. That means that you’re barred from that particular course of study at that university. And you’re not allowed to study that subject anywhere in Germany. Now, for some people, it might not be such a big deal – you had math as one of your two minors. Well, switch your minor and do the rest of your studies and it's all good. But if you were studying Computer Science, Math, Physics, Biology – done. That's why I saw so many German med students when I was studying in Budapest.

Oh, and there are no other grades besides the final exam in each course. The homework you turn in (at least in math) is your way of proving you should be allowed to take the exam in the first place. In this last class, you were required to get 2/3 of the points on the homework assignments (2/3 overall, not per assignment) in order to be allowed to take the exam. But after you're registered for the exam, that doesn't help you. (Footnote: maybe a tiny bit, if the professor is debating between a B and a B+ say, and they see that you always actively participated in the class – it might bump you up a tad.)

One day – two or three hours – and a semester's worth of material. Better hope you have a good day. And, if you can, really understand the material.

Kind of stressful.

However, let's flip the coin. 

Now we’re in a calculus class in, say, a liberal arts college in the US. Homework counts for 1/3 of the grade. Two small midterms count for another third and the final counts for the last third. And someone maybe – MAYBE – gets a C. Or someone gets a B-. And students and parents complain.

Grade inflation is real and serious. Professors, particularly ones without tenure, are extremely vulnerable to course evaluations and there’s a strong correlation of lower grades and worse reviews of professors (I know, I know. It’s hard to separate the feelings of ‘How much I like this professor?’ from ‘How good of a professor this person was in this class?’ but considering someone’s career is very affected by it, we should at least try). And yes, college in the US is extremely expensive – so flunking a class is like flushing lots of money down the drain. But that doesn’t mean professors should let students through who, in every sense of the word, did not make the grade.

But what about the other system, where some people work hard, maybe improve a lot in the course of the semester – and then fail on one day.

Discouraging some students and inducing a panic that makes them want to cram everything for one day (and not learn it all properly, because they feel they can’t in that amount of time) or pampering students and letting some slide so as to avoid angry parents and bad evaluations…

Also, let me add a disclaimer. I’m not a professor. I don’t really have a leg to stand on when I try to spout these views. So, take all of this with a grain of salt. But I am the daughter of a professor and have spent the last seven years in and around university systems. What am I getting at? Well, I’m wondering what the best way is.

As to the German system, I’m not a fan of the ‘one exam, one grade’ method. I think difficult exams are all well and good but I think something – either a midterm or the work on the homework – should also contribute to the grade, if possible. That might also give some people the hint earlier on in the semester that they’re not doing what it takes for the class and make them either drop it or start working harder. As for the American system? That’s a trickier problem, I feel. Do you give honest grades on assignments during the semester to give students the hint, but always give better ones at the end to feed the beast of grade inflation because the students can’t help that they are caught in the middle of it? Or do you stick it to the inflation system and risk your position by grading honestly?

I think there is no easy answer, neither to these questions nor to the predicament as a whole because these issues are very tied up in the two educational systems. The German system, which is also just getting used to the Bachelor/Master thing (they used to just have a ‘Diplom’ degree which kind of lumped both together) and it’s very new to even require grades for early classes instead of just having a handful of large exams toward the end of your studies. The American system – especially the liberal arts wing – is set up so differently: with our "customer-oriented" private colleges, emphasis on teaching and guidance, a student-to-instructor ratio that would be unachievable in public education, the financial strain put on families – it’s hard to turn an enormous ship on a dime. You have to make tiny adjustments and see where they take you.

I believe the answer to this question resists simplicity, if I can paraphrase John Green.

And one of the thoughts I have so frequently is how privileged I am to be able to look at both of these systems from the outside. I think it has allowed me to notice some of the flaws and perks of both. I wonder where each system will be in ten or twenty years' time.

Creatures of Habit

I love having a routine. I love knowing what I'm going to do next and what's going to happen after that. I somehow feel like when there is time boxed out for an activity, there is somehow more time to do that than if the time I had were unlimited. - well, for unpleasant activities, that is.

Sometimes I have wished during my student career that at certain times of day, my books, my notes, or even my laptop would disappear. Maybe they would only be available to me between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon. That means, after that magical time in the afternoon, I cannot work anymore.  Bliss.

Actually, I'm fairly skilled when it comes to setting deadlines for myself and setting aside time to rest, but I am currently learning that this becomes more difficult when there are fewer things to do - and when the deadline is six weeks away, not one week away (like a homework assignment, for example).

At this moment, I have one exam (on March 12th) and then, of course, that Bachelor's thesis. Which is coming along, but slowly. I'm currently trying to work out a proper schedule for myself for this time (now that classes have ended and my days seem to be yawning expanses of time that could be used for sooo many things).

The other thing that has been on my mind lately has been a quote - and of course, I'm not sure exactly who said it the first time, but I believe I heard it first from Stephen Colbert. Sometimes I feel thrilled to sit down to work on my paper, ready to write, full of ideas of how and why and in what order to say things -- and on other days, I will clean the entire apartment before sitting down to do my work because I don't know where to start. I'm not inspired. But, as Stephen or (I'm sure) several other people have said - 'inspiration is wonderful and enough for amateurs - the rest of us show up to work'.

So, it's okay if I don't produce something amazing when I sit down to type or work through a proof. The sitting and the trying and the engaging with the subject matter might be enough - at least if I'm sitting and working and I happen to stumble upon some inspiration, I'll be ready for it.

BUT - in order to get me sitting down, a schedule might be in order. I'll get to it.

Hello again!

It has been simply ages since I have written! I do miss it but at the moment, I'm up to my eyes in research for my bachelor's thesis, which, being in the field of algebra, means that I'm staring at piles and piles of things that look like this:

Algebraic nonsense. No, not nonsense. Just a lot of g's and f's and h's...

Still, I've hit a very productive stride the last few days and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  Much better than the blank panic I felt before!

Also, in my last few days of working at odd hours, I have been struck by something I don't think we hear about a lot - and that is the kindness of the internet. Oh yes, there's also the awful, mean underbelly of the world wide web- demons haunting the comments section, cyber bullying and much much more - but there are some nice corners, too. Some things that just make one realize how thoughtful we homo sapiens can be.

Imagine, lying in a bed and being unable to sleep - plagued by worries. Google for thirty seconds and find instructions on breathing to help you relax, or (a favorite of many people) old, familiar videos that might make you forget your worries - or, what I consider the most thoughtful of all -- someone who has uploaded a youtube video that consists solely of 45 minutes of the sound of rain falling, since apparently I'm not the only one in the world who loves falling asleep to the sound of rain. Also, of course, the typical databases of recipes - for everything from quinoa-banana-chocolate muffins (I've made three batches) to your own shampoo (using rye flour? I tried it this morning. I'll see how my hair is this afternoon!). It's just a cool place, a lot of the time.

Alright.

Back to those g's and f's and h's.