Homework, Social Life, Sleep: Choose Two

Let's talk Psychology, homework, and sleep.

Though the events of last Wednesday are hazy at best, I think it went something like this:

7:12 PM -- A member of the cast of my radio show had to skip that evening due to excessive homework. This was problematic because another member had already declined the day before.

7:35 PM -- While having an emergency production meeting with my co-producer I call the last cast member, aside from ourselves, to say not to bother coming to the show that evening because "Dexter and I are going to find something to do by ourselves."

8:15 PM -- With less than an hour before showtime (and after my first idea to do Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" is shot down) we decide to do Stephen King's short story "1408" because we figured there was enough dialogue between the two characters to pass it off as a radio drama ). Then again, there was an awful lot of narration, so we decided that one of the two of us needed to be the narrator -- me, because Dexter wanted to be John Cusack. Fine, but now we need someone to play Samuel L. Jackson's part. (For those not in the know, these were the actors who played the two main characters in the movie adaptation of the same title.) "I have an idea: can Samuel L. Jackson be a woman?" The answer was yes and, thanks to a persuasive 30-second conversation, the cast was made.

The show went a bit longer than usual and, remember, we only had three cast members. By the end, my voice was having difficulties and there are some unfortunate sounds of water being gulped at the end of the recording.

I know what you're thinking, where does Psychology fit in here? It doesn't, that's why I was up 'till 6 AM doing a homework assignment that usually would've been completed over the course of two days.

11:30 PM -- Statistics homework

Now, I'm not sure whether my method of doing statistics homework is unusual, but I don't think it's typical. After about a decade of struggling with mathematics classes I finally decided to change part of the way in which I do the homework. Before I begin working through any calculations I write (type) the entire problem out. While this may be a time-consuming method of doing things, it helps in a way I attribute to cognitive momentum (a phrase which I just made up, but which has probably already been coined by psychologists the world over). The idea is that you do something easy -- transcription -- and while reading over the problem a couple of times you can start to get vague notions of where it's going and of what kind of answer to expect. Additionally, it's extremely helpful when checking my work after it's been graded. If there's just a bunch of numbers and symbols on the page I find it difficult to find where my errors lie. If, however, everything is typed and worked out line by line, it's easier to find the faults. Usually, for me, it's an error in transcribing from the book where I do something like write a 3 where there should be a 2 and have the whole problem get messed up at step one.

Continuing on with what I mentioned in my last post, I've decided that it'd be a capital idea to write an entire statistics text book using zombies for all the examples. Throughout the book there'd be a natural progression from Chapter One's discussion of outbreak to Chapter 12's on the complete annihilation of humanity.

Try this: To evaluate the effect of a zombie virus antidote, a sample is obtained from a population with a mean of μ = 80 and the treatment is administered to the individuals in the sample. After treatment, the sample has a mean of M = 95 and a standard deviation of s = 13. If the sample is n = 16, using a two-tailed test at 5% significance, are the data significant to conclude that the antidote has a significant effect? Remember, the future of humanity depends on it.

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Bonus Class Update

In Technical Theatre the class became Foley artists. A Foley artist is someone who makes sound effects for movies with whatever's lying around. Named after Jack Foley, a guy who used to do the sound effects for silent movies, Foley is in virtually every modern movie because the same microphones that pick up actors' voices can't always pick up the needed sound effects. Foley becomes especially necessary in epic motion pictures with explosions or arrows whizzing by or sword fights. Pictures like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," a scene from which we watched in class and for which we proceeded to make sound effects using whatever was lying around. You want the sound of castle walls exploding and chunks of stone falling to the ground? Try large plastic bowls falling accompanied by blocks of wood. The sound of armor-clad orcs marching? Try two people marching on hollow steps while jangling chains. It went better than I make it out to have.
Bonus list: the five measurable qualities of sound: Duration, Pitch, Location, Volume, and Timbre.

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Make sure to get thyself to CMT's Cabaret this evening in the Grind to hear some great show tunes sung by your colleagues.