This afternoon brought the dream of a British bank account another step closer, though still without any knowledge of when the whole process will be successfully concluded. It also involved grocery shopping, the completion of a preliminary read of this week’s Economist, some reading on Dawes and Locarno, and correspondence with Emily and Kate. The former is heading out into the countryside with friends for the start of the weekend; the latter has returned to the city from the woods, and is processing the data on bears collected while there.
Trying to complete our first quantitative methods assignment has been frustrating. I can see that the second and third question, respectively, would be best solved by means of regression and hypothesis testing, but I don’t perfectly recall how to do either. STATA is definitely an impediment rather than an aid. For the first assignment, I am fairly sure they just want us to ‘eyeball it,’ but I would definitely rather do it in a statistically rigorous way.
Last night was great fun. The wine drinking event was actually a competition. In each of seven rounds, we were presented with an expensive wine of a particular variety, for instance Pinotage, and a cheap wine of the same sort. The objective was to use your knowledge of wine (of which I have none) and the descriptions of the wines provided to deduce which was which. Given my total lack of familiarity with many of the genres presented, my ambition was to do better than random chance would have suggested. Much to my surprise, I actually won. This is particularly shocking given that the elimination round at the end was based on one’s knowledge of cricket. Asked how many of a particular cricket related statistic a certain cricket player had accumulated in a tournament, I confidently said “twenty-one” without the slightest knowledge of what was actually being asked or what sort of number was likely. In any event, I now have a bottle of white wine from Nuffield’s own cellars sitting beside my Glenlivit.
Aside from the competition itself, the atmosphere at Nuffield was great fun. I met Carolyn Haggis – presently a D.Phil student at Nuffield, formerly an M.Phil in IR student at Brasenose. She is living proof that the program can be survived, and in such a way that you would be willing to read for a second degree at Oxford.
The event was not at all stuffy and the commentary from the two hosts (and introducers of wines) was rather amusing. We were even treated to a rendition of the South African national anthem, though Margaret tells me that it was not without inaccuracies. All told, it was a night of excellent company and good fun; hopefully, a suitable prelude to getting a lot of work done today. Many thanks to Margaret for the invitation.
Oh my young pupil– I am so proud. These are the sorts of events that make me die a little bit to hear about! A little more swanky than the Sage Wines of the World tasting. I hope this is the start of a life long interest and enthusiasm in wine. And the SA anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, has many varieties– there are the pre-, during,and post-apartheid versions. But moving, eh?
Ashley,
I thought you would approve of the event. Regarding wine, my limitations have to do with exerience, not interest or enthisiasm.
As for the anthem, the only thing I know for certain about it is that it includes four languages. That makes me suspect it to be the post-apartheid version.
I’m glad to see you’re learning to at least fake refinement, though it’s a touch ironic that the process should involve double-fisting wine, as portrayed above.