Well, that was a quick two weeks. I graduated, took my Masters comprehensive, flew to the capital of the confederacy, got a job I didn’t apply for, bought a plane ticket to the middle of nowhere, destroyed an airplane, and planned a Kerouac-style road trip. We ought take these from the top, I suppose.First, the graduation. Whew. Done. That was a quick four years, for real. I dunno; it just seems like more happened during high school, doesn’t it? Cars, girls, late nights, independence - we got all that back in the day. Even the leaving bit isn’t quite the same, because in college, we did it every year during the summer. At the end of high school, it was a big deal whenever someone took off - I remember a couple dozen people here in my room. And even after leaving, you know most of your crew will be back nine months later. In college, it’s like, alright, peace man. And we’re thinking it’s gonna be like back in the day, but it’s not like that, you know? My college friends gonna be everywhere from Washington to South Dakota to Boston to Mali to Iraq. We ain’t gonna be back next year, kickin’ it and playing Madden, ya know?

Even the graduation proper wasn’t the same. It was straight-up Noah outside in Boston the last couple weeks - raining so hard people were halfway to taking a canoe down Comm Ave. My graduation was divided into two parts - a big ceremony for the whole school, outside, with the graduation speakers. I called my bud about an hour before the ceremony. “We’re not going, right?” “No.” The smaller graduation ceremony was just my department (I went to International Relations instead of Economics). The IR Dept. had 400 or so graduates itself, though, so all we had was a simple announce your name and honors, cross the stage, grab the diploma, and you’re out. After graduation, I was still on campus for a week because I had to take a 3-hour Masters Comprehensive to get my Masters degree. It wasn’t too hard, but the content included everything from four different classes, and there was a lot of pressure since failing any part means you don’t get a degree. Fingers crossed.

Remember how one of my professors was going to see what she could do concerning grad school? I got an email from her about a week and a half ago saying that she’d sent my name down to the Federal Reserve in Richmond, and that they needed a research economist. Last Monday, I got a call from Richmond. On Tuesday, I formally interviewed over the phone. On Friday, they flew me down to Richmond for an office visit, and by this Monday, they’d given my a job. I sent in my official application this Tuesday. See, nepotism can work for you if you work it.

The job is pretty sweet. Basically, it’s a 2-year position to prepare you for a Ph.D. in Economics. You take math classes at Virginia Commonwealth University (on their dime) and help the research department at the Fed with papers. By help, I mean everything from data collection to writing proofs to doing programming. The guys I talked to do there had really learned a ton, and were going to kill the econ programs they were headed to. To top it all off, the pay is pretty good and Richmond is dirt cheap to live in. If I plan all the classes properly, I think I can finish an M.S. in Math/Operations Research while I’m there, which would be great.

I was a bit wary of Richmond before I went, though. Richmond is a city of 400,000 in the middle of Virginia, and was the capital of the confederacy back in the day. I half expected plantation houses dotting the landscape and still-legal slavery. It’s actually not that bad. There are a lot of HQs moving down there, bringing along fellow carpetbaggers, and a few hip neighborhoods to live in. Plus, for the cost of an apartment in the ghetto in Boston, I can get a sweet place in the best part of town in Richmond. I’m going to head down there at the start of August.

Right now, I’m back at home in Eugene for a week or so. It was quite an ordeal getting here. I’d sold almost all of my possessions before I left Boston, so nearly everything I own now fits in suitcases. Unfortunately, it’s mostly books, so it’s quite heavy. I checked two enormous bags on the flight home, and had a stuffed backpack, and a way-overstuffed maximum size carryon with me on the plane. It probably weighed 75 pounds. Since my seat on the flight from Boston to Chicago was one of the last to board, I quickly tossed my carryon into the overhead, and gave it a push inward. Pop. Pop. KAPOW! When I’d pushed the bag back, it popped the hinge on the top of the overhead compartment, causing the whole compartment to hit the 40″ florescent tube in the back, shattering the glass all over. Yeah, I got some looks. Luckily, the technician that came aboard decided we didn’t need to change the light until Chicago, so we didn’t have to switch planes. Note to self: don’t overstuff the carryon that much.

I’m in Eugene until the 1st, then I’m going on a trip which I bought with some of that money from selling my stuff. I got a flight from Eugene to Singapore (via SFO and Tokyo Narita) for 828, which is quite a deal as these things go. I’m going to sepnd 2 days in Singapore, a day in Kuala Lumpur, then head to Borneo to climb a 13000 ft. mountain (Mt. Kinabulu) and trek down a jungle river for a few days. Then it’s back to Eugene on the 14th. Good plan, huh? I still think Iran would’ve been cooler, but I’m basically going to the cheapest fun place I can find at the last minute.

Getting back on Flag Day still leaves me 6 weeks until work starts, but luckily my roommate (the guy working at Google and living near Portland now) also doesn’t start work until August. We’re planning right now to drive around the country for 5 weeks or so and see the sights. Should be fun, right? After this trip, the fun ends and it’s time to enter the world of work drudgery. Ah well.

One last thing: If you’ve got cure AT bu.edu as my email address, you ought switch for kevincure AT yahoo DOT com, since the BU address will stop working in the next few months.

Check out this interesting post on genocide. I’ve never understood why “genocide” is such a big deal. It’s not that I don’t think mass killing is a big deal - that’s an enormous harm. I just don’t think that mass killing targeted at X culture is more harmful than mass killing in general. Cultures come and go, assimilate and dissimilate; we’re not too concerned that the state of Trebizand isn’t on the map, or that Moorish culture no longer survives.

As the linked post notes, isn’t the problem with the Holocaust, for example, the fact that 11 million were killed and not the fact that those 11 million included Slavs, Jews and gypsies?

So only two finals to go now. Problem is, they’re the hard ones. I’m looking at my metrics midterm right now, and I still don’t know what to do when they spit things like:

2. (b) Let x be multivariate normal, mean zero, sigma = I. Suppose A is a matrix of rank r. If A is idempotent, show that x’Ax ~ chi-square with r degrees of freedom.

Or:

3. (a) Show that the true variance of the forecast error in an OLS regression is given by sigma^2(x(n+1))’(X’X)^(-1)(x(n+1) + sigma^2.

Yeah, tough week coming up.

Two buds and I just finished up our final M.A. paper, though. We somehow managed to make it so that watching March Madness was part of our preparation. Good plan, huh? You can peep the paper here. It’s called “Upset Special: Are March Madness Upsets Predictable?”  Using a ridiculous large database (essentially, every first round March Madness game since 1985) that we compiled, we show that you can consistently predict first round upsets, and thus that the seeding in the NCAA shows consistent bias.  Crazy, huh?  The statistics aren’t that complicated in the paper, so you should be able to understand it with just a basic statistics background.  I’ve also included the STATA code if you want to replicate the results - just email me for the database.

I sent word of the paper to a few of the basketball stats guys.  Amazingly enough, Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Cavs, actually threw an email back.  It was just something like “Cool, I’ll check it out.  M.”  But still.  A billionaire in the email box.  Not bad.

It looks I’m gonna have a year off next year before grad school, as I didn’t sneak off any of the waiting lists.  I’ve got a professor here who might make some calls and see if they can sneak me in somewhere.  I didn’t know that actually works, but she thinks it’s possible.  Barring a miracle, though, it looks like DC until the end of August, and then taking a loan and traveling until next summer.  Good plan, right?

It’s actually way cheaper to travel than you would think.  I’m planning to buy the following plane ticket for about $4000+tax.  Really, the round-the-world ticket fares are amazingly inexpensive. PDX-SFO-SYD-AYQ-PER-NRT-HKG-URC, HKG-DEL, BOM-BKK-RGN-BKK, SIN-HKG-JNB-MRU-JNB-VFA, DAR-LHR-THR, DXB-CAI-BCN-IST, MAD-CCS, EZE-SCL-IPC-SCL-SYD-SFO-PDX.  That’s Portland to San Fran to Sydney to Ayers Rock to Perth to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Urumqi, overland through China to Hong Kong.  From HK, fly to Delhi, overland to Mumbai, fly to Bangkok to Rangoon to Bangkok, overland through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore, from Singapore to Johannesburg via Hong Kong, Johannesburg to Mauritius and around the Indian Ocean island (Rodrigues, Seychelles, Reunion) and back to Johannesburg.  Fly from Johannesburg up to Victoria Falls, then overland to Dar es Salaam.  Fly from Dar to Tehran via London, travel south to Iran to Dubai, fly Dubai to Cairo, and then Cairo to Istanbul.  Meander overland from Istanbul across Europe to Morocco, and then back up to Madrid to catch a flight to Caracas in late April or so.  Go across the mesas to the Amazon, then through Brazil down to Buenos Aires.  From Buenos Aires, fly to Easter Island via Santiago, then return to Sydney, and finally back home.  How’s that for a route?  So if I end up buying the ticket, you guys are gonna have to meet me somewhere right?  Let’s say September in Australia, October in China, November to January in SE Asia, February and early March in the Indian Ocean, Africa and the Middle East, mid-March to early May in Europe, and late May to the end of June in South America.

I take it I’ll see you then.

OK, it’s back to studying for ‘metrics.  Peace.