Spanish Dragonfly

I woke up in the middle of the night with a good idea on how to improve a proof in a paper I'm writing. Unfortunately, it kept me up for about a half-hour. Eventually, I fell asleep again. Fortunately, when I woke up in the morning, it was still a good idea. I spent most of the day re-writing that part of the paper (including re-generating some figures).

***

I started reading the boldly titled All of Statistics by Larry Wasserman. The claim is that this book provides a quick and rigorous introduction to statistics for people that already know mathematics. So far it's been good. I worked through the first chapter on probability theory. I proved a couple of exercises. Turns out probability theory is a lot like set theory and I really like set theory.

***

It's been really lovely here in Sevilla these past few weeks. In the afternoons, it's warm enough to open the windows in the flat. When I got home this evening after my daily walk/run along the river, I was startled by a loud, intermittent buzzing sound. After a while, I zeroed in on the sound and it seemed to be coming from behind this framed poster in our hallway:

I warily took down the frame and turned it around:

and found this Spanish dragonfly. I took the frame out into the building courtyard and managed to get it to fly away. Glad I figured it out because I really didn't want this thing alighting on me in the middle of the night, or even buzzing annoyingly behind the poster frame. Now everybody is where they're supposed to be.