Short update

Well, it has been a long time since I have posted anything new (my last one was at the start of Dec!!!). I thought instead of continuing on my main thread of thoughts, I would just do an update on my situation.

3rd Year Project

So as you know (or you will do now) I have been working on my 3rd year project, I am amazed at how much I have done in such a small amount of time but still so much has to be done (even now I feel guilty as I am writing this instead of working on it).

Basically it is a project on Data Mining for Student Performance, the aim is to eventually predict what individual student marks will be for future modules based on previous years results. It looked easy at first but then it kept getting bigger and bigger as I delved deeper and deeper. So my main challenges are:

• Providing a nice interface
• Optimising the analysis for classifying the data
• Aggregating all the source data and so on.

All of these provide their own unique twists on programming, something I quite enjoy but it does get very long and tedious sometimes. The three types of classifiers I am using are SVM, Regression, and Perceptrons.

Right now the interface is very basic you can get results from a database, you can run a classifier(from 3 that I have picked) and generate results, so it is small step from there to actually predicting potential results for new students. But no graphs yet and no separate modes for tutor or administrators :-( Also my classifiers are a bit rubbish, currently the best I can get is 30% correct I can get higher but that is a result of Overfitting the data.

Here is some output from my project, yes it looks boring with just a few numbers but what is very important is what can be done with this or how it can help students. It should be invaluable.

Girlfriends

Yes its that thing that no one wants to put on their social profiles but I figure it is an important part of my life at the moment so it deserves to be here. Well it has nearly been a year with my girlfriend, was it steady? No not really. Did I like the questions I had to answer about marriage and all that ‘where this relationship is going?’ No. But the main question is am I happy? You see I have always been around people or tried to be around people that make me happy or at least happy in overall rounded sense.

The problem with my relationship is I wouldn’t see the forest for the trees, so yeah we would discuss deep things like religion and marriage and children but we would forget the most fundamental thing of all, are we happy together? Right now it doesn’t feel that way, it seems that her and me are on different pages, hell even on a completely different book. So right now I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, I’m so far into the box I can’t even imagine what is to think out of the box. I think maybe because I spent too much time getting caught up in this whole serious relationship thing, we haven’t had time to actually have a good time together or to actually be happy, after all are we not supposed to be happy together is that not what relationships are for? For now I think I need a break from this, may permanent, maybe temporary.

Book 5

Another thing I do with all this amazing spare time I have :-P is a course in ‘Realising the powers of Junior Youth’ or ‘Book 5’ as it is locally known. Basically I am helping out a Junior Youth class, so I thought the book would give a good theory as to help in the practical element. So far it has been quite good, it has guided us (‘our little study circle’) through what power the youth have and what we should also try and accomplish and I guess it will go on to show how we can mould that together. Now of course there is quite a bit of emphasis on the quotations of the Baha’i Faith and some quotes that I have never heard of or even believe that people act upon e.g.:

You have probably heard one expression or another of the popular belief that youth should focus on having fun, they will have to face the serious matters of life soon enough. This is clearly not in agreement…

This goes on to ask what is the underlying assumptions for this notion? This can be discussed at length, as youth do have more fun as they have free time but it doesn’t require them to abandon responsibilities, as youth do have to take on responsibilities from an early age. < rant > I guess my frustration here comes from the obviousness of the quotes and the obvious answers that need to be applied to them. So I find it quite amazing when some people find religious quotes so amazing or profound when these ideas have been known for years and even part of common society but I guess some people just need another way of gaining common sense knowledge. < rant > But overall discussions are good, even if I am the only one making them :-p and I guess the quotations do give us some very interesting points to discuss.

Chess (or chess.com)

I have got my love of chess back, after so many years of not playing. I found my friend one day playing a turn by turn game on facebook. I asked him what app he was using and replied it was simply chess.com facebook app. Now I wasn’t going to install yet another facebook app, so I decided to sign up proper instead. Now I am not a fan of online gaming, LAN yes, split screen yes but online no.  But chess is so simple, just requiring your brains and not trigger happy reaction time. Well I got my flatmate to sign up and my girlfriend (of which we will never speak about that game… EVER!!!) and it has been lots of fun. Highly recommended,  just for the brain stretching required to actually win a game against a worthy opponent is totally worth it. May become addictive (especially when playing against n00bs).

Anything else… No not really, learned to make fajitas and chane, bought my first ever tea bags, took apart my portable hard drive to change the size, made sun jars,  found some very interesting architecture in the form of an apartment block but that’s about it…

Well back to the grind.