Another really nice weekend

Dear Diary,

I am getting really good at enjoying my life. :D I am very happy at the moment with my life.

Friday was a nice day of science, good news, and climbing. Yesterday, on Saturday, I decided not to work and went climbing again with BB and AR at noon. We had a pretty good session and I made some progress on the long, overhanging 6a+ and AR and I tried our luck with a tricky 6b.

It’s interesting because we kind of climb at the same level. She has much better technique and is very controlled in her movements. But I am a bit stronger and am more comfortable moving dynamically. So it’s cool to work on a route/problem with her because her approach is very different from mine.

In the evening, we went to a presentation that a colleague invited us to. It was a bit strange because none of us knew what to expect. It was something about modern dance and science and a presentation about the results of some experiments. It turned out to be very interesting. We had a very good discussion with the people involved in the project afterwards. It’s a really cool project about testing to which extent intentions expressed by dancers on stage are understood by the audience. And, more interestingly, whether creating certain types of situations on stage has an effect on the audience’s behavior after the show.

The project is interesting and everyone involved is convinced that something is happening. So qualitatively, they are very sure. But the data side of things is a bit meager and the analyses they did on the data was not the best. Since the person responsible for the science side of things is a friend of mine, I’ll definitely stay in touch and see whether I can contribute to a better way of analyzing the data. I had some ideas and sent out some e-mails to people this morning to see whether what I want to do is possible. It’d be dependent on using some software to track the position of people in a video. Which is definitely possible – it’s just a question of how easy it is. Because if I had the data of the position of each person in the video for each frame of the video, I could quite easily write some code to do some fancy analyses that’d be much more convincing than what they have now. And ideally, that’d also give new insights to the people in the project. We’ll see whether anything comes of it. Might be an interesting collaboration with the people at social psychology.

Today, BB’s parents, his sister, and her new boyfriend came to our place for brunch. RN slept here and was around as well. It was really nice and a good start to the day. I went out to get some groceries afterwards and then we went climbing again at 3. AR and I worked on a 6a+ route that I tried for the first time on Friday and it was a lot of fun. The route seemed quite difficult and required a lot of strength in one section. Then, when someone else climbed it, we realized that there’s a hold hidden around the corner that you can’t see from where you’re hanging! We climbed up to the right using holds that were intended for the feet instead of towards the left where there was an actual hold! That made it a lot easier but we were too tired to actually send it today. But I feel like I might be able to do it sometime this week or next. I am very close. :)

Now, BB and I’ll go to the Sushi Mall around the corner for dinner. I’ll invite him to celebrate getting the grant. As I said, another great weekend. The weather was pretty nice but next week, it’s going to be 26C during the weekend and our good friend GP will be visiting from London. Really, really looking forward to that!

Not another side project

Dear Diary,

a couple of days ago I posted about a possible data analysis job that I might get into. I was planning to spend Saturday working on it to figure out whether I’d be able to do it.

On Saturday, however, I sat down and thought about it and decided not to do it. I didn’t feel like work because my week was pretty exhausting. I can only do the work for this in my free time, though. Even though some extra money would be nice, at this point, my free time is worth more to me than the money. So I sent an e-mail to my friend explaining the situation and recommending someone I met at a conference last summer. She’s a PhD student at the lab in Amsterdam and knows much more about this than I do and is much more qualified than I am to do the job. Ideally, the analysis gets done and she gets some extra money. And I have my free time. So we’re all happy. :)

Since I got the money to work on the project and have two other things to finish up during the summer (and also want to enjoy my free time!), I just didn’t want to make the commitment to such a big project. I’ll be busy enough without it and money is not really a concern right now (even though it’s always nice to have more, of course). But what’s the point of having more money but no time to do something with it?

Exhausting but awesome day

Dear Diary,

today was a pretty exhausting day. After a long night of rapidball and squash last night (according to my Fitbit, I ran 17.7km), I was quite tired last night. I had to get up early, though, because I spent all day at a symposium today.

After the symposium, there were free drinks and I sat with some colleagues and celebrated the fact that I got a pretty substantial amount of money to work with for the next year. I also discussed my current data confusion with them and showed them my plots and explained the situation to them. SB said that the problem might be that the participants are too good. The idea is that there’s a ceiling effect that distorts the data and reduces the correlations. That’s something worth looking into, I think.

After that, I went home with RN to grab my climbing gear and then we went climbing. We were there at around 6:00 and climbed for about two hours. I felt quite exhausted and tired and didn’t expect to be able to climb very hard today. But it went better than I thought. I warmed up and then spent all my energy on an overhanging 6a+ route that seemed hard but doable. I am able to do all the individual moves but wasn’t able to do them all after each other. They all require quite a lot of strength so that I get tired faster than I can get up the wall.

In the end, I tried a 6a+ in the longest overhanging wall in the gym. I didn’t expect to get up as high as I did (about half way) and will keep trying it in the next weeks. My plan is to use those difficult, overhanging routes to build strength and then go back to the even more difficult 6b(+)’s I’ve been trying to see whether it makes them feel any easier. The limiting factor is still forearm strength and endurance. I can hang on to all the holds quite easily but my forearms get pumped with lactic acid quite quickly rendering them completely useless.

After climbing, RN and I went past the supermarket and then made dinner. A nice curry with some sweet potatoes (as vegetables in the curry). It was surprisingly good. Now it’s 10 pm and I am pretty tired. RN went out to meet a friend and my roommate is at a meeting for something. I’ll do the dishes now and then go to bed and read for a little bit.

I am still in a really good mood but also very tired and think it’s a good idea to get 8 hours of sleep tonight. Maybe even nine. I ate a lot tonight and hope that the rest and the food will give my body the tools it needs to recover so that I can have a productive day tomorrow.

We got the money!

Dear Diary,

today, I got an e-mail from my supervisor informing me that he got a phone call from the person responsible for distributing the funding we applied for. He was very enthusiastic and really liked the proposal. Actually getting the money is not only a formality. Really, really good news!

I still can’t quite believe this. It means my contract will be extended by three months. And it means I’ll have more money to go to conferences and travel to the US at least once but probably twice in my last year. It also means I’ll have a student working for me starting towards the end of the summer. And not just volunteering but actually working: he’ll have a 40% position to as a research assistant.

It also means I’ll have a lot of stuff to do in my last year. This is going to be a big project with multiple experiments that all need to be planned. But it’s going to be awesome! This will really open a lot of new doors and allow me to expand my project into another direction that’ll be very interesting. I’ll also be able to collaborate with really good people in the US. Overall: fantastic!

So I am in a really good mood today. :)

Still confused about my data

Dear Diary,

today, the author of the paper that my study is based on replied to my e-mail. He really is an awesome guy. He said he understood my concern and has never seen correlations that low. And he sent his entire dataset! Awesome.

I only have 56 participants (which is quite a lot for a psychology experiment) but he has almost 600. I double-checked my code and verified some things and am now 95% sure that I didn’t mess up and this is not just a stupid mistake on my side. That would have been bad for my ego but at least it’d explain the low numbers.

I also sent my data to him so he can verify and double-check. We’ll see what he says.

Then, I wrote another script to run a simulation. The problem is that the correlations with vary depending on the participants (obviously). The more participants, the more stable the result because you’ll approximate the “true” correlations. I only have 60 and he has 600 so his are more reliable estimate. But the question I was wondering about is in which range correlations should be to be considered normal (using his datasets as the standard for “normal”). Therefore, I coded a simulation in which I picked 60 random participants from his study and computed the correlations for those. I saved those and then picked 60 random participants again. I did that 5000 times to end up with 5000 values for each correlation. Then I looked at the distribution of those values and compared them to the values that we found.

For the one part, our correlations are inside the distribution and we might just have been unlucky to end up with low values. For the other part, however, the correlations are nowhere near the distribution. This is really, really strange. I still don’t know what to make of this.

I’ll be busy all day tomorrow and will have a meeting with my supervisors on Tuesday. I am curious whether the guy has time to look at my data and my code and still hope that I made a mistake somewhere. I don’t think so, though. Then I’ll have to see what my supervisors say about this.

And I’ll have to wait for the grades because all the interesting analyses depend on them. However, I am a bit suspicious of the data if I can’t reproduce correlations that should be there. Hmpf.

Squash and rapidball

Dear Diary,

today, I had my weekly competition training. It was really fun and I was in good shape. I think I improved a lot technically but not that much mentally. I really need to learn how to focus more on playing “smart” and scoring more points. The problem is that I usually just play for fun and will always rather go for the “nice” shot than for the smartest shot. I find it much more satisfying to play a hard shot then end the rally as soon as possible.

After squash, I played what is called rapidball. It’s kind of like racketball but on a squash court (and the ball is a bit different – but still suuuper bouncy). It took about half an hour to get used to it but it was a lot of fun. I really do enjoy almost everything that involves a racket and a ball of some sort.

I ended up being on court for about four hours tonight. Now my feet hurt and I am quite exhausted…

Proposal submitted

Dear Diary,

today, my supervisor submitted the proposal for the project we want to get funding for. This is quite exciting. I think it’s a good proposal and I really hope we get the money. It’d be an awesome project to work on that’d open a lot of new doors and opportunities for me.

According to our collaborator in the US, we should hear from the person responsible for the funding quite quickly. Fingers crossed!

Almost done teaching

Dear Diary,

I am now almost done with the teaching during my PhD. This week, I had the last two meeting with my groups. With the Wednesday group, we organized a BBQ instead of meeting during the day. It was fun and delicious. With the second group, we met at the regular time today and everyone brought some candy. It was also quite nice.

Tomorrow is the deadline for their final papers. I’ll get 18 papers to grade that’ll all be around 3,000 words. After I have graded those, I’ll be done with teaching. So the end is near. :)

Another side project?

Dear Diary,

a friend and former colleague just approached me with the proposal for a project to work on during the next one or two months. It’s a pretty advanced and complicated data analysis job. He got the offer and approached me because he thought I might be able to do it. I am not 100% sure I can but I know where to start and how to approach it. Then I’d have to see whether that’d work or not.

On one hand, I feel like I am already too busy and shouldn’t agree to do yet another thing. On the other hand: the pay is very good. And it’s an analysis technique that I wanted to get to learn more about anyways so this might be a good opportunity to learn it and be paid to do so.

I just called my friend to discuss the situation and will use Saturday to read up on what it’s all about and see whether I feel like I can do the job or not. Then I’ll decide. Sounds like an interesting opportunity!

Squash tournament and Game of Thrones

Dear Diary,

yesterday, on Monday, I spent most of my day at a squash tournament here in Groningen. It was a team championship kind of thing where 45 of our people played against 20-something people of the other squash club here in Groningen. The entire weekend, our club celebrated it’s 30th anniversary which is why so many people were in town and signed up. Which meant we had a lot of players and the other team had to play twice as many matches as we did. I played three matches yesterday. It also meant that we got our ass kicked because they only enlisted their better players and we didn’t discriminate at all.

I played pretty badly yesterday and wasn’t happy with my performance at all. But the atmosphere was good and it didn’t matter. There were a couple of nice matches that were fun to watch and a BBQ (with limited vegetarian options) afterwards. Then there was a party with a DJ but I left at around 8:30 to go home. A bunch of friends had dinner here and we started watching season 5 of Game of Thrones afterwards. It was a lot of fun. We’re probably going to make it a bi-weekly event: watching GOT at our place.