Dec 25 2011

Analysis of my Report Card: 2011-2012 Term 1

The most striking event in this school year is the first phase of BC teacher strike, that means, teachers in British Columbia will not give out report cards. However, in the end, I still got my marks on the most important subjects.

Out of boredom, and with a mind of Minesweeper solver, I looked at my partial report card, from some teachers that flash students’ marks for 1 day.

There are many sources of information when analyzing a report card. First, it is the report card itself, which can be analyzed by extrapolating trends, and second, the nature of the subject on top of your skills, for example, some subjects get really difficult in grade 11, and third, the quality of the teacher, I had 2 bad Social Studies teachers and 1 bad Math teacher, and they dropped my grades by 5% respectively (may or may not drop my letter grade, however), and lastly, personal behavior about the subject.

The first part of extrapolating is similar to technical analysis in investing. One important property to look is “grade inertia“: the tendency for a grade to stay constant. I used the word inertia because I just learning that term in physics and also because there is a term called “market inertia”. More inertia  may also imply higher predictability, or also a sign that you are not increasing or decrease your effort.

It is important to know what will happen in next year’s subject. For example, I may be taking many AP courses next year, and reading the AP website to get what to expect is important. This year’s English is about literature, which is what I hated, but next year’s English is about writing, which is what I wanted to learn. For elective subjects, the natures tend to stay constant.

A student’s grade can be modeled as a flatline or jumping function + several random functions, where the flatline or jumping function reflects the student’s aptitude and the nature of the courses, and the random functions represent the qualities of teachers and other personal factors. Academic subjects tend to be influenced by aptitude and electives tend to be influenced by teacher qualities.

Why analyze report cards? Before answering this question, I must introduce the “observer effect”, where observing something changes it. People know that getting a bad grade will make him/her work harder next time, or it may bust his morale, report card analysis may affect morale, therefore grade, more. The first reason to analyze report cards is to harness the observer effect and influence his/her effort, and second, information is power. While you will never be certain after analyzing, but in the end, you knew that affected your grades.

Here is an analysis of my report card. Before beginning the analysis, let me show some previous grades relevant to my current performance:

  • English 9 (94%, way too fun and easy)
  • English 10 (H)onors
    • 82% (a test saved me)
    • 70% (a test killed me)
    • unknown (went through training, and showed a sign of improving)
    • 80% at provincial exam (luck and result of training)
    • 80% total
  • Social Studies 9 (went though a B, got A in the end)
  • Social Studies 10 (B (decreasing to C+ at Term 3))
  • Science 9 (94% (increasing at Term 3 due to awareness of effort))
  • Science 10
    • 100% (chemistry)
    • ~98% (physics and biology)
    • 95% (biology and Earth science))

Below is the analysis.

  • Math 12 (98%): I finished all homework and wrote all of my tests with my best methods, on top of a non-strict teacher, I got a straightforward result of being first in the class. In future tests, my previous test-taking methods may not work well. Luck factor: medium, Prediction: stay
  • Physics 11H (97%): 4th in the class. I constantly fear getting non-100% on my tests.  Even worse, my first lab and my first test in Term 2 are all non-100%. I infer the cause to be not writing my last name on my lab. Predictions: fall to 95% (based on initial Term 2 results and Science 10 patterns) and stay (based on the pattern that I will get better marks next time, agree to grade inertia)
  • Chemistry 11H (96%, predicted before I even got into Chem: 92%): It seems I got lucky on my second test (49/50, but first test is ~42/50). However, Chemistry is still a Minesweeper game to me, I can make inferences, but there are chances of failing. Predictions: fall to 92% (I won’t get lucky next time), stay (agree to grade inertia)
  • English Literature 12H (72%): English is my worst subject, after making the blunder of taking Honors. Strong tendency of getting around 72% has been observed. One explanation is that I my effort is constant throughout the term (in my mom’s words: that I did not work hard enough) my grade sticks to it. Predictions: rise (different types of literature are analyzed in different terms, according to English 10/11 Honors, and skills differ), stay (from grade inertia)
  • Social Studies 11 (88%, mid-term prediction: 85%, initial prediction: 82%): There are many assignments marked out of 30 and 40, and I got decent results on tests and projects, plus the teacher is much better than last-year’s, and last, I was confident about the performance of my second test. Predictions: fall (the teacher claimed that it will be harder in next terms, and it agreed to my Social Studies 10 performance plus there was a mapping assignment which was a dead easy mark), stay (but my test mark will be rising)
  • Innovative Curriculum Design (82%): I think I am obligated to mention this because many people did not recommend me to take this course. There is a year-long research project called Learning in Depth, and not everyone enjoy it. One person claimed that it dropped her GPA, my explanation is that there are only few assignments marked, and I missed one by accident. I did my term end presentation with confidence, and even did not look at my paper, but I still got below my expectation. Predictions: rise (that mistake will not happen again)
  • Biology 11 (88%): Took it in my summer school, and it had strong inertia. Explanation is same as for English Lit..

One last thing to mention is grade crisis. Grade crises can happen like accidents (getting from high to low abruptly), or happening for a long time (like economic recessions). They happen when a grade reaches below expectations. For me, English and Social Studies were constant centers of attention and sources of conflicts. My English 10 grade was so threatened that I got my writing trained, while my Social Studies and Math grade, my mom mentioned, and took no action, which for me, there was no action to perform because I suffered from bad teachers. Solutions to the problem appear as you analyze the causes.

1 comment   |  tags: , | posted in School Life

Oct 11 2011

Steam Download Not Working

Steam Download occasionally suspends for no reason, and it is difficult to resume it. It is probably because my computer is outdated (while my mom laughs at my “cute little” computer). However, this time, it stucks at 666.6 KB/s!

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Sep 25 2011

What’s Next for Kumiko?

It has been over 1 year since I have been working on the Kumiko language. It began as a project to create an unambiguous language using Japanese and Chinese phonologies. Then with some long work in the summer, a documentation was published. Now, Kumiko is a mess of difficult-to-pronounce sounds, plus, I realized I am not using any prosody in Kumiko, therefore, I looked at the pitch accent system Japanese and Korean got.

Pitch accent is basically a simplified tone system that only distinguish between high and low tones based on the accent in one of the syllable in a word.

For Kumiko, a pitch accent system, redundantly supported by stress and pauses, can be used to lexically separate a sentence.  The word classes in Kumiko on pitch accent will be:

  • Root: HL
  • Compound: HLHL..
  • Tight Compound: HH…L (even number of syllables)
  • String/Literal: HH…L (odd number of syllables)
  • Operator: L or H/ (/ is a final consonant, similar to the -p, -t, -k in Cantonese and Korean and the sokuon in Japanese)

With stress on first syllable and optional pauses after each words. The advantages for this system are:

  • The previous Kumiko self-segregating morphology is only a show-off, saying everything without stopping is unfeasible, people will pause and stress anyways
  • A tonal system similar to Gua\spi is difficult to master, but Kumiko’s pitch accent is simplified enough to be understood
  • More one-syllable operators, plus they are easier to pronounce
  • Distinction between tanru (vague compound words) and lujvo (tightened compound words that deserve dictionary entries) in Lojban, without memorizing rafsi (combining forms) and dealing with complicated phonotactics (see http://dag.github.com/cll/ for more details)
  • Because more syllables are allocated for operators, the retroflex consonants and the / can be dropped
    • The Mandarin r will be added so all Latin alphabets are covered in the romanization
  • The change in writing system (root: featural/hanzi, op: abugida/mathematical ideogram, string: abugida) in the standard orthography will provide morphological information, plus speeding up reading
However, they have problems such as:
  • Pitch, pause and stress are secondary features that can be misheard in noisy environments
    • (in Lojban, CVC syllables assists lexical analysis on incorrect stress patterns)
    • Because of the removal of the /, “buffering” final consonants can be used to end words
  • Songs in Kumiko will lose morphological information unless taken care specially
  • Pitch need to be covered over mora, not syllables, for example, one pitch will be assigned the whole words like “hau” and “raN”. Assigning new rules for multi-moraic words may solve that problem
    • It is awkward to pronounce everything independentally by mora
    • This problem also weeds out append-N-negation for almost all operators

I am opting for improving and implementing the pitch accent for Kumiko, however.

On the side of semantics, the words for impossibility are being redefined:

  1. Impossibility that cannot be stopped, for example, faster-than-light travel is (physically) impossible and nothing can change it, or the (computational/logical) impossibility defeating a level-100 monster with a level-1 monster in a deterministic video game
  2. Impossibility by regulation, such as breaking the law, breach of contract, disobedience of command, where doing something could result punishments
  3. Impossibility due to loss of information, for example, recovering a deleted file or trying to build something but its blueprint was lost
  4. Impossibility by choice: The agent has freedom/free will to do, but chose not to do
  5. Infeasibility, doing so could cause noticeable economic/financial/health damage

Also, Kumiko’s semantics will be broken down to two levels:

  • Algebraic Semantics: concerning the manipulation of algebraic symbols, including products and connectives to describe relationships between objects and events. Like Mathematica’s symbolic computation system
  • Operational Semantics: concerning the actual occurrence of events, including the actual meaning of the exclusion connective. Like Mathematica’s execution of statements based on symbols

The exclusion connective will be described in different ways (hypothetical, since the definitions are subject to refinement):

  • Phonological: /su˨/, low pitch
  • Orthographical: A X inside a circle OR a consonantal glyph of /s/, with a diacritic of /u/ above it, an abugida layout
  • Morphological: Simple Operator word
  • Syntactic: The exclusion connective is a connective, which means it is an operator that has higher precedence than logical operators, and has same precedence as series operator.
  • Algebraic: The exclusion connective is commutative, distributive over product, and associative
  • Operational: The exclusion connective means two events happens in any order, but there exists no time when both events are happening. For example, no two people can occupy one washroom at the same time
Of course, algebraic and state variables will be distinguished. The bigger impact with the two branches of Kumiko semantics is that, the English word “if” can be translated in three different ways: the logical implication (the → in logic), the substitution decision (Haskell if) and the operational if (like in C++ and Java).

Here is an artificial example (I can’t think of a good side effect here, so I used hand clapping as an (awkward) example. In programming, printing a text is used as an example of side effect):

  • The light is on. Flip the switch, if the light is on, then flip the switch, or else, clap your hands.

If the if is algebraically resolved (checked by the listener before doing anything), then “if the light is on” will be true, so the statement will be rewritten as follows:

  • The light is on. Flip the switch, if the light is on (evaluated to be true when the speaker is giving the instructions), then flip the switch, or else, clap your hands.
  • The light is on. Flip the switch.

Therefore, the listener flipped the switch and the light is now off.

With an operational if (checked by the listener while carrying out the instructions), the result is different:

  • The light is on. Flip the switch, if the light is on, then flip the switch, or else, clap your hands.
  • (after the listener flipper the switch, the light is now off) If the light is on (which is false), then flip the switch, or else, clap your hands.
  • The listener claps his hands.
The light is already off in both cases, but the listener clapped his hands in the second case.
While the light are dark in both ways.

no comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Kumiko Language

Jul 31 2011

Fireworks

The Summer so far…

I got straight A and B’s on my report card. My English mark is B, which is a pass. It seems I am not destined to fail any subjects. My highest mark is Science, with 95%. Other subjects, average 90% for my good subjects and 80% for my bad subjects.

I got 80% on my English provincial exam, which contributed to my pass, and I got 92% in Science provincial exam, which is satisfactory.

Half of the summer vacation has passed. I spent most of the time fearing that the summer is going to end since I realized 1/4 of the summer has passed. I also have cases of stress.

During the summer, I applied for the summer school for biology. It is because I don’t like biology (as much as other science subjects), and I can avoid a lots of classroom time spent on biology by attending the summer school, plus summer schools can cover less detail. Currently, my mark is 89%. The advantages for me of going to the summer school is that I can get exercises by walking, and also keep my brain working.

If you are applying a summer course, make sure you apply a subject you like and has minimum homework. This makes sure you can have enough fun.

I also worked on several projects in the summer. First, I built a game, LaserTD on Unity3D. You can play it on Kongregate. I liked how it defeated all other noobish games (published at the same day) when it was released.

Second, I am working on a constructed language called Kumiko, which is a logical language based on Chinese, Japanese, English and Lojban. The wiki is set up at http://shinkirou.org/kumiko/wiki.

The Fireworks

Back to the fireworks. Yesterday (2011/7/30), I went to see the fireworks in Vancouver. I had a lots of experiences walking through the downtown and on the way to the beach.

It began with a long SkyTrain ride. In the boredom, I listened to my iPod, not satisfied from my old songs. Then some physics stuff came to my mind. I hung one of my headphones to measure the acceleration caused by the SkyTrain. However, the headphone wire was not flexible enough, and the weight was not sufficient, so it can only measure obvious accelerations at begin and end of a cruise.

Then, after some tedious transfers, I walked out of the station. I have a habit of touching the rail of the escalator to release static. Most times, I get nothing, but I got some big shock twice.

In the walk through the downtown Vancouver, I played some music to fit the mood. It has been a long time not seeing city nights. Then goes the riverside. I remembered I had mistaken a bridge with a hotel when looking from far away.

I settled at the beach. With the knowledge of computer graphics, I starred at the water, and recalling Blender tutorials of water reflection (this is a closest match: http://www.blenderguru.com/how-to-make-puddles/).

The fireworks started, now my physics knowledge kicks in. I noticed how the fireworks launched, then slowed down, and bursts. The particles are spreaded out in a sphere, and I liked how they dropped toward the ground in a orderly pattern.

The firework lasted, and we cheered over really big bursts. I also used my parent’s camcorder to zoom into the launch site, along with inspecting the firework particles in detail.

Sorry that I do not have any pictures taken, but it is in the camcorder.

We walked back to the SkyTrain station with same route. My bladder was moderately full but I managed to control it. (last time, I drinked and sat through Transformers 3). I listened some chiptune music on the way back.

I arrived home at 12:30AM and quickly rushed to the bathroom, then several minutes of eating and some Twitter business, I slept at 2 AM.

To sum up, the fireworks was a relaxing experience, it relieved my stress and also got me thinking.

Closing

Here are some songs I recommend you to listen to

and here are my recent drawings: http://shinkirou-org.deviantart.com/gallery/

However, I have something that needs your comment. There are some difficult consonants in the Kumiko language, and I need to know if they are difficult enough for non Chinese and Polish speakers. Here is the consonant set:

  • b [b]
  • c [ts]
  • d [d]
  • f [f] [ɸ]
  • g [g]
  • h [h] [x]
  • j [dʑ] [dʒ] [ʑ] [ʒ]
  • k [k]
  • m [m]
  • n [n]
  • p [p]
  • q [tɕ] [tʃ] (from pinyin)
  • r [l] [ɾ] [r]
  • s [s]
  • t [t]
  • v [v] [β]
  • w [w]
  • x [ɕ] [ʃ]
  • y [j]
  • z [dz] [z]
  • l [ɖʐ] [ʐ] [dʒr] (ran out of alphabets)
  • ql [ʈʂ] [tʃr]
  • xl [ʂ] [ʃr]
The question is, are the retroflex sounds difficult enough so that they should be removed? There are workarounds for them such as retracting (instead of curling the tongue) like in Polish and using workaround sounds like [tʃr]. The another minor problem is that the [dz]-[ts]-[s] consonants are not symmetrical, (many languages use [dz]-[ts]-[z]-[s] where in Kumiko, Chinese and Japanese, [dz]-[ts]-[s], where [dz] and [z] are merged). This problem is also addressed in Ceqli: http://ceqliblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/phonology.html

no comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in General, Kumiko Language, Physics, School Life, SHiNKiROU

May 13 2011

Updates

I have been moving away from my blog and my site for a long time, because of mainly Twitter and Stack Exchange sites.
A person cannot keep going to a same site everyday, it is invertible for you to switch sites and change your browsing habits. According to my browser, I have been visiting Stack Exchange Code Golf, deviantART, YouTube, Troll Science and various funny picture websites such as Fail Blog and CollegeHumor.

I began to submit my art to my deviantART account. I drew many Kasane Teto pictures, and most recently, “Battle Explode Dragon dx”.


Battle Explode Dragon dx by ~SHiNKiROU-org on deviantART


Sailor Teto by ~SHiNKiROU-org on deviantART


Teto and Miku by ~SHiNKiROU-org on deviantART

I also discovered a realistic space flight simulator, Orbiter. It features a complete solar system, accurate orbital physics, a good set of ships and countless plugins. I recommend you to try it, it is a freeware.

I also began watching anime. The titles I have started are K-On! and Infinite Stratos. I found myself browsing the web too much and not watching anything.

In school, I am under academic stress. English (10/11 Honors) got a lots of writings and novel readings, Social Studies got stressful projects, Japanese got a cooking project and I was put to fear, my Science grade dropped to 95% because I am bad at biology. English and Social Studies are my worst subjects. I failed the English Mock Provincial at 55%, and I think I am the worst in the class, despite of the fact that I was on the top (92%+) last term. I think the main reason is the increase of expectations. I got about 72% on English, a failing term. Now, I just finished learning about academic essays. I found it more useful than analyzing literature. I hate literature, because I don’t have attention span to read long texts. My mind will wander around in one minute.

Last term, I got 73% on Social Studies, the main cause is the Math Contest, where I missed one Social Studies class and I missed what to review for. However, I finished a mark-saving quiz at last. English, on the other hand, the term did not end with a final test, unlike term 1, where the test boosted my mark up.My Math grade increased from 90% to 95%, and my Japanese grade is nominal. I got away with memorizing vocabulary because they are rarely tested.

I got to build a “sumobot”, a 4×4 inch battery-powered robot to be put into wrestling matches. The project was frustrating to build, because when I fixed one problem, another problem shows up. However, I am still the fastest person in the Electronics class. I drew a chibi Teto on the front.

The Planning class got a bad teacher. She is impatient, plus, one annoying student made things worse. I got less than C- in Planning. However, I passed the WorkSafe BC test because I made lucky guesses. P.E. grade nominal.

Projects are the real cause of my stress. I would rather have a long, boring, grade-changing test, so did other people I have surveyed. In China, there are no poster projects, all homeworks and tests. I am best at objective, high-stakes, multi-choice exams.

When I complained about bad teachers to my mom, my mom answered that there are no bad teachers and you need to adapt to all types of teachers. I have talked to some students about their experiences and found there are distinctions between good and bad teachers, including a Social Studies student teacher who gave a lots of projects and a Math teacher that puts fractional mark for homeworks.

I hated my parents, especially my mom. Me, mom and dad all have different surnames. My parents were constantly in conflict. My father is dumb and whiny and my mother gets angry easily. I will be put in stress if my mom enters my room and asks me to find things. I have my secrets. I also refuse to study when my mom tells me to do so. My mom is also worrying. She constantly remind me to be cautions of safety and such. I wonder, if I told my mom about a shoplifting incident happened weeks ago, my mom will probably say “and remember you must not ever shoplift” to me.

I hated it when my mom revises my writing. She freaks out over every single grammar and structural errors. I feared my mom. That is the reason why I always lied to my mom that I never had English and Social Studies homeworks.

At school, I found myself repetitively drawing spaceships and chibi characters on my notebook. Before, I drew Kasane Teto and impossible shapes all over the place. When I am frustrated, I scribble lines on paper with my both hands.

Long before, I know that when a human types random characters on the keyboard, the distribution of keys tend to lean on the home rows, so I wrote a program to analyze over 3000 characters of random keystrokes.

Sequences like “sd”, “fg” are the most common ones, and home row keys tend to follow an another home row key. It also means humans and monkeys are not good for testing the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
If you are interested, you can download the full Excel file here.

Now this concludes my blog post, hope I can hide this safely from my mom so she won’t force me to revise it with her.

no comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in School Life, Stack Exchange