Yuki works on thesis & Christmas...

Yuki came to my house yesterday. She worked on her thesis, which she will defend on 25 January 2006. All moving along.

She ate dinner with us (chicken, carrots, and salad, with homemade Irish oatmeal bread). We chatted with the dogs, sat in front of the fireplace, and looked at my daughter's (Ann) photo project. Ann is an undergraduate fine arts major with a photography emphasis at Penn State. Then, we took a few pictures at the Christmas tree and front of the fireplace so that Yuki could send a little Christmas flavor back to her family in Taiwan.

Yuki will have completed one year as my graduate assistant by the time she returns to Taiwan. Tough job. She especially has hard work to do with my data analysis class. Lots of assignments to grade. She also has performed a great deal of service to our academic program at Penn State. I will miss her.

I have invited our graduate students to enroll in "Supervised College Teaching," a three-credit course in which they can help me teach the data analysis course. I will select my new graduate assistant from among those who help with the data analysis course during Spring Semester 2006. So far, only one student has requested enrollment in "Supervised College Teaching" to help with the data analysis course. I guess there is not much interest in receiving a graduate assistantship, at least to work hard with me. We'll see.

The whole ball of wax: chrisfmasse.com

Chris F. Masse runs a information-packed web site on prediction markets. He has the latest, greatest, most prominent, and most trivial links to anything (and, I mean anything) about prediction markets. From his web site, major topics covered include:

"Blogs — Books — Consultants — Exchanges — Media — News — Opinion — Papers — Presentations — Resources — Scholars — Search — Software Columnists — Courses — Digest — FAQs — Journal — Labs — Markets — Meetings — Multimedia — Speakers — Spin Outputs — Spin Spots — Think Tanks."

He defines a prediction market as

"a real-money market that floats a prediction (i.e., an event-driven futures contract) and puts a 0–to–100 price on that contract —price that we understand as the probability of this event." (see http://www.chrisfmasse.com/2/prediction_markets/)

I like it! As you might know, we have a major initiative in prediction markets underway.

The snow DID arrive...

23 degrees F outside, with wind chill bringing the temp down to 18. We did get snow. My guess is that 8-10 inches of snow accumulated. The local schools are closed. Penn State classes begin as normal at 8 a.m. today. Faculty arriving early should use the four parking garages. Employees performing non-essential services should report at 10 a.m. Activities unrelated to classes will begin at 10 a.m. I have a meeting at 10:30 am and a luncheon at noon.

My athletic club is closed, so I am at Dennys for three poached eggs and coffee (quite ordinary swill).

Life in winter in the northeastern United States.

Snow is on the way to State College, Pennsylvania, so the forecasters say...

From National Weather Service:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STATE COLLEGE HAS ISSUED A HEAVY SNOW WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 11 AM EST FRIDAY.

BY SUNRISE ON FRIDAY...5 TO 8 INCHES OF A FLUFFY AND DRY SNOW WILL COVER MOST OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA...WITH 8 TO 10 INCHES POSSIBLE ON THE RIDGES.

THE SNOW WILL TAPER OFF TO SCATTERED SNOW SHOWERS BEFORE NOON. ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS FRIDAY MORNING COULD PUSH THE TOTALS CLOSE TO OR EVEN OVER ONE FOOT.

One foot? Fluffy and dry? Hmmm, snowblowing?

Weyerhaeuser here in January...

Executives from Weyerhaeuser an international forest products company with annual sales of $22.6 billion, will visit us in late January to discuss applications of economic information markets. The company was founded in 1900 and currently employs about 54,000 people in 19 countries. It has been ranked in the Fortune 200 since 1956. Weyerhauser is a very diverse business.

The coffee this morning is Seattle's Best in a 16 ounce paper cup from  Otto's Cafe in Kern Building on the University Park Campus of Penn State University.