Tuesday, February 12, 2008

My mathematical mind can see the breaks / so I'm gonna stop riding the brakes

I am such a dork.

In my genetics assignment, we are to find LOD scores, and maximum likelihood estimates in one of the problems. We are to estimate the MLE by plugging in 5 values (chosen by the professor) and saying which gives us the maximum value. Well, this isn't enough for me.

At one time or another, I was fluent in the language of calculus. As most languages go, once you stop using them, you begin to forget important communication tools. But, I was determined to find the REAL maximum value by taking the derivative of this absolutely horribly ugly function, then setting it equal to 0 to find the maximum value. This took about 10-15 minutes, which was a horrible waste of time, but, darnit, I proved to myself that I can still do some mean calculus!

High five.

1 comment:

Dan said...

Yep, you're a dork! :) I think it's been long enough that I couldn't do squat in calc anymore... and maybe that's a good thing. Though I'm thinking about taking the GMAT this year, so it may be time to brush up on at least my stats skillz.

Girls only like guys with skills. Bo staff skills, nun chuck skills, you know? Skills.