time off

I had to back away for awhile.  I got irritated with "Coding the Matrix".  I dropped the course.  I have a short term memory problem.  I used to have a near eidetic memory with the exception vocabulary.  I've lost much of that capability over the years.  My memory is still quite good as long as I'm not being asked to memorize vocabulary.  "Coding the Matrix" was mostly vocabulary.  Even though I would pause the lectures and replay sections several times the presentation didn't work for me.  When he would say something like "There are three equivalent definitions for matrix/matrix multiplication..." my mind was already being overtaxed.  I need an anchor to control context switching not an item to hold in short term memory.  When dealing with  matrix/vector multiplication and vector/matrix multiplication he displayed the vector horizontally in both cases so I was suppose to remember there were three equivalent definitions, vectors to the right of a matrix are to be mentally transposed from a row of numbers to a column of numbers, listen for the name of a particular definition, and remember the distinction between equivalent algorithms associated with those names. 

Ah well.  I'll take the class again some other time and not try to handle two classes at the same time.  I'm not sure I will ever learn the distinction between equivalent named algorithms and appropriately construct distinct implementations.  I can view algorithms and know they are equivalent.  I would write a working solution in minutes then spend hours trying to figure out why it was graded incorrect.  Sometimes the problem was the order in which scalier numbers were multiplied, A*B vs B*A.  Getting this stuff down will be good for me even though I'd rather spent time applying Markov Chaining Monte Carlo to several domains before the algorithm gets knocked out of my memory.  While "Computational Molecular Evolution" was hard, it too introduced lots of new vocabulary, I could absorb it.  The instructor had a different approach to vocabulary.

I think I pick up Rosalind in the evenings again.  Maybe that will clear my mind so I can come back to MCMC and Bayesian analysis without the echoes from the Matrix class.  I have several applications in mind.