Right down the line

Whitman's graduation is occurring today as I write this. I'm a bit sad to miss it. There are a few students, I will really miss seeing around campus.

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Laura and I walked over to the cathedral area to do a bit of souvenir shopping and the craft fair.

There were a few interesting things, but nothing really in the sweet spot. In the theme of taking pictures of places we've taken for granted all year, this is a shot down the tram line in front of the cathedral:

I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn't get run over by the tram.

On the way back to Triana, we stopped in one ceramics shop around the corner from us and found a few promising items. I think we'll shop in our neighborhood a bit this week and see if we can find some things we like.

Souvenir Shopping

Neither Laura nor I are big shoppers. That said, we've known since we got here that we'd like to buy some kind of souvenir to commemorate Sevilla. Before leaving Hungary, we bought a modest water-color painting of one of the ubiquitous bright yellow trams that served us so well during our stay there. This time around, we're looking for a print or painting of the Triana Bridge (the best bridge). We've seen a few items like this around town and the plan was to pull the trigger on something today. There's a shop down the street that has some nice prints. We thought it might be cool to get something hand-made right in our neighborhood. To boot, Laura noticed that this store was represented in a craft fair this week over by the cathedral. Noting the operating hours of the craft fair, we went over this afternoon around 5:30pm only to find it closed because of Yet Another Procession (YAP).

Fortunately, the craft fair goes for a couple more weeks, so we'll get there eventually.

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The full moon this evening rose around 9:15pm local time. I still haven't figured out how to photograph it clearly, but it was lovely to see:

The subject of our much sought after print in the evening light:

Make Spain Great Again

I saw this VOX party tent at the end of our street this evening:

This is the Spanish equivalent of "Make America Great Again". Nationalistic, anti-immigrant etc.

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Laundry day:

I'm really enjoying the return to summer weather. Laundry is so easy. Put it on the roof, pick it up two hours later. It never rains. In the winter, I'd put laundry off and put it off until finally it had to be done. Then it would take days to dry on the rack in the apartment.

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I think I've done what I can do with clustering. On to supervised learning.

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I talked to Kathy on the phone for a while this evening.

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Since the MLB season started, we've been in the habit of watching the Seattle Mariners in the mornings here. They're so bad now, that a few days ago, we started watching the Phillies instead and just catching the Mariners highlights. We may have jinxed the poor Phils though because now they're playing as poorly as the M's.

Oh well, we also have the Giro d'Italia to watch each day.

YAP

Yet Another Procession. Hearing loud fireworks overhead for the better part of a half hour this afternoon, I was wondering what the heck was going on. When Laura got home from class, she said there was another procession going on. They do like their processions here in Sevilla.

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The Galilean thermometer was damaged in shipping, so I ordered a replacement:

It arrived today. It's all glass and a wonder that these items ever survive shipping. This one is intact. I'm going to ship the damaged one back tomorrow using the packaging that this one came in.

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The days are getting longer and longer here as we approach the summer solstice:

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Learned a bit about my clustering problem today. Turns out the clusters were mostly sorting the students by their grade point averages. I'm going to try a different approach tomorrow by normalizing the grade point vectors and hope for more interesting clusters.

Explore/exploit

I am enjoying the book Algorithms to Live By. The tension between exploring and exploiting is an interesting dichotomy. For example, you decide to go out for a meal. Do you go to a restaurant that you like and is familiar? (exploit) Or, try a new restaurant? (explore) In this context, the word exploit doesn't have negative connotations, it simply means that you make a decision by exploiting (using) information that you have. By contrast, the word explore means to intentionally choose an option about which little is known. There are a number of applications discussed in the book from studies of randomized medical trials to choosing the best slot machine in a casino. While a number of variations of the explore/exploit question, often it boils down to how much time you're willing to commit to gathering information. A young person with many years of life left, is more willing to explore. An older person, with perhaps only a few years of life left, is more apt to exploit. Or, to be less morbid, if you are going to move across the country tomorrow, you're more likely to go to the restaurant that you know and love than to try a completely new restaurant on your final night in town.

There are algorithms that help you balance the explore/exploit so as to maximize payoff. After all, you may like your regular restaurant, but if you don't explore, you may never learn about the restaurant around the corner that's 10 times better! The simplest, and one of the most effective algorithms, is the win-stay, lose-switch algorithm. Exploit until you "lose", then switch to something new. Of course, real life isn't so simple, but it's a fun problem to wrestle with mathematically.

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I had Spanish class today. I'm paid up through next week. I haven't decided whether I'll continue after that even though the class does continue. Right now I'm leaning towards buying two more weeks which would put me at the week when my sister and her family arrive for their week-long visit. After that, we only have two weeks left in Spain.

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I went down to the river to take a few pictures. The moon was almost full:

Lots of rowers out:

The (best) bridge and its shadows in the evening light:

The neighborhood trash and recycling center, haha: