Well, other than the scads of things that I've learned about in class... and there are scads, so let's just hit the highlights for now:
1. Multiple spell-out and loss of constituents. Brilliant, crazy, very computationally-apt.
2. A countably infinite convergent series can be proven divergent? Whahahat?
3. How to do changes and reverse turns in waltzing.
4. A remarkably vulgar* word in Latin, with useful variants.
5. How to build a sailboat for <=$200. HACKERHOUSE PROJECT YES.
*I sincerely mean this. I refuse to write it down anywhere that could be proximity Googled to my name.
No, I did not learn an exotic new variation on tar and feathering!
I learned the actual term from Prof. L for that sing-songy characteristic that people's voices have when they're talking to small children. The actual term is pitch excursions -- which is something found in what some people call "motherese." We also discussed more experimental techniques used with infants and children, but I already knew some of them like high amplitude sucking (HAS) which is yet another hilarious* thing about majoring in Linguistics. HAS is actually something from the Skinnerian playbook since you need to get the baby to indicate to you when they're noticing new stimuli, and babies are pretty much sleepy and hungry lumps** with no muscle control. However, they come into the world equipped with a sucking reflex so that they can drink milk, and linguists have figured out how to make that work for them. Simply put, you give the babies a pacifier hooked up to a transducer and wait until you can get a "baseline" level of sucking. Then, with each "stronger than baseline" suck, the computer presents a sound. Babies quickly figure out that high-amplitude sucking will produce novel sounds, and babies are apparently all about novel stimuli. Eventually, the babies can be conditioned so that they will perform HAS in response to novel stimuli.
I also learned today from JJ that Chomsky named A and A' chain movement from this:
A = argument, which was what was traditionally held to hang out at [spec,TP]
A' = is from set theory, denoting the complement of A.
ARGH. I have so much trouble holding on to these two concepts because they are named in such an opaque manner. Don't even get me started on Principles A, B, and C.
*Analyzing the syntax of sentences featuring "What the fuck/hell is wrong?" and "The shit hit the fan." are also grist for the humor mill. That, and Prof. H's claim that the only way to build a language learning machine is to have sex and wait for nine months.
**They are cute, but still, pretty much lumpy.
Learned today about bee communication with regard to the solar ephemeris. More interestingly, bees can accurately plot out the path of the sun where a best-fit line would get it wrong. Apparently the rate of change of the sun's travel through the daytime skies varies!
The rest of the lecture covered experiments from Crane and Nakayama that had already been discussed in 240, but still quite interesting.
So I've decided to try and blog more frequently about the great and interesting world around me, and what I learn from it.
I'll very gently start my engines by saying that I heard something interesting from E. today that divide-and-conquer algorithms differ from things like Gauss' kindergarten adding technique* insofar that the divide-and-conquer algorithms perform the same trick on progressively smaller buckets while Gauss' technique involves an intellectual re-expression of the problem. This feels like a subtle but interesting view on the topic.
"You can entertain, confuse, and make small children cry with this problem."
(with regard to the Bridges of Konigsberg Problem)
I've also learned about innate learning modules in animals (Bees! All of my linguistic readings are indeed covered in BEES.) and how there is a hierarchy between senses (odor > color > shape) for the bees. Additionally, it is difficult train animals into behaviors that are misaligned with their "functions". For example, pigeons can be trained to peck at things for food, but it is harder to train them to hop for food. (The opposite goes for noises and whatnot.)
C. told me about the Cantor set today, where you take a line segment between the closed interval [0, 1], cut out the middle 1/3, and continue to do so for the remaining segments ad infinitum. You can sum up the remaining segments as a geometrical progression... and get 1. Additionally, in spite of removing chunks of line segments, the set has the same amount of points after as before, and is thus an uncountable set. The Cantor set is apparently useful for breaking people's theories.
There . I still remember Prof. H. bringing up Cantor's diagonalization during a lecture in Syntax II last semester, which is tantalizingly on the tip of my tongue. Must find it in my pile of notes.
Additionally, I learned that when water mains are repaired, the water pressure will be higher after the fact. Unpleasant things may happen as a result.
*For numbers 1..n, the sum can be expressed as (n(n+1)) / 2
