There has been a shakeup at work. Projects come and go. One of our larger project hopefuls from Homeland Security we lost. A few other projects have been delayed as is the norm at the beginning of the summer. So, we are experiencing some belt tightening during the time before our next project. My projects are generally unaffected. Oh, my research was to go into those other projects. It was especially going into Homeland Security project. Even so, I continue to work on the technology because it is vital to other similar projects to that one. My research is central to a lot of projects. Since I am the only one in some parts I think that my efforts will continue to go unchanged during the belt tightening. It is just uncomfortable to see others in discomfort. New projects are coming. It is just a stressful time for me seeing everything that is happening. The rumor that IBM will layoff 130,000 US employees is also alarming. As a stock holder I don`t like it much. As a member of that industry I am especially uncomfortable. This comes from a report by Robert Cringely on the PBS website. It seems unlikely but it shakes worker confidence in the economy and jobs reports.
So I have not been working on my website. I am planning for our vacation in a few weeks and reading. I have to find a new place to swim for the summer. The park district will be closing the indoor pools at the high school. I am kind of upset about this. They say it is not cost effective. It is not a matter of cost effectiveness. The park district has said in the past that it is there to provide recreation to all in the city. If that is so then it should be like AT&T in the early days of the telephone levying a tax to cover wiring rural areas. It was not cost effective to wire rural areas but they found a way to make it work for everyone. That meant that everyone had telephone. Everyone should be able to take advantage of something that they are taxed for. If it only works for people that are home during the day then that does not work for everyone. I need to recreate. I pay taxes. I expect to be able to use the facilities.
Below is what I published to the PhD status subcommittee:
PhD Progress Report 2006-2007
Student: TheStudent
Adviser: TheSudent`s Adviser
Dr. {head of progress report subcommittee}, I am writing this to inform you of my progress for the past year and to discuss my plans for the next year. You have ask for me to discuss my progress in 3 specific areas:
1) Discuss any significant progress towards the completion of your dissertation proposal or defense.
2) List any significant publications or other research activity during last year.
3) Describe your plans of the upcoming year.
I trust that this document will fulfill the requirements of me. The last year has been a frustrating year. One in which I look back over the amount of work that I did to get to today and am overwhelmed by what has happened. Without the materials I have kept along the way to tell me what has happened and this very exercise of writing this review I would not have believed it myself. Although, today I feel that I could do it all again based on my feelings about the situation, I still look in disbelief back at what I have done. You can see a time line of events at the end of this document.
Going into the last Candidacy Exam of April 2005 I had completed about 8 months of survey work over my intended area of research. I had not written anything for publication because I feel that this area is a new twist on old ideas and had not gotten my advisers direction on any of it. I have talked to {TheStudent`s Adviser} and presented my ideas at his student gatherings. I still think that there is work to be done before any of it is written for publication. I intend to do something with Financial Engineering models and Model Driven Development. I`d like to bring Formal Language Constructs to the "R Language". But, more on that later. I have not been able to proceed because of my position in the program. I hope to explain in this paper. I have been many times turned away for my request to continue working with my adviser on my dissertation, publications or just taking classes. Because of your request I still feel a need to explain myself and my plans for the next year.
To explain myself I need to give you some history. The history leading up to the 2005 exam is known by the PhD committee in my petition for continuance after the 2005 exam. For a little review, after the 2005 exam I waited for my results. When I had learned I failed I was very upset. Since I had prior job experience as a Software Architect for the largest bank in the world and had management and technical control over one of the largest architectural departments and projects there, I believed back then that I had done what was on the test in the real world. I had also done a very thorough study for both of my past exams. I, some time before the test, had lost my job, had a very sick son born and had an uncle die and waked on the day of the test. But, I also believed that it was because of a learning disability and the affects on it by stress where I was influenced to failure by circumstances in my life. You can see this information in that document for petition on file with DePaul University. Through the DePaul PLuS Program I began my appeal.
After the test I acted very quickly to petition. It took a little time to get an answer for my petition for appeal and an action plan from my adviser. I needed the information from my adviser on how to carry out the results of the appeal and what should be done to return to school. After getting that appeal action plan I needed to find a doctor and setup the assessment of my learning disability. By the beginning of 2006 I was attending doctor visits to gain an assessment of my learning disability and also working with the PLuS program. I had already been working with the PLuS program from years before. Both of these activities are emotionally painful, exhausting, and costly visits. I have been evaluated many times but every time it is just as painful. With the assessment and submission back to my adviser and the advisement office sometime during the fail quarter, either very near or after the fall exam date, I was granted the right to take the exam again. This right was given based on the PLuS program and the results of the testing and doctor`s analysis.
Since I had not gotten the desired results on the other two exams, this time was going to be different. I planned on studying the same way and duration I had before but this time I would make everything public. I had nothing to hide and everyone needed to know the effort. I had been told that after the second exam it was difficult for the committee to gain any information about me because I had no website. I have recently looked at other students of my adviser and haven`t found their websites. I didn`t know this at the time but, back then I started a website to be published near the test date. I also started a blog of my experience. They sites are: http://endofdayexperience.blogspot.com/ http://thestudent.fateback.com. They were published on April 9th, 2007. The sites were up before then but I had not told anyone about them until April 9th. They were not google-able until about that time either. I am working to get a link off of digg.com. I also plan on putting up the answers to the questions I remember from the 2007 exam.
In my website I have done every answer on every pre-test exam back to April 2003. In my blog I talk about my experience with each question. There are things in the blog like, how I emailed the authors of the books and papers on the testing portion of the reading list about Equivalence Term Testing. Equivalence Term Testing is a term that is difficult or near impossible to find. The authors of the literature on the reading lists think that this is a DePaul colloquialism. They have never heard of it. I eventually took the answer given to me by others obtained from a DePaul staffer. Another example is the question about Structured Analysis versus OO analysis from previous exams. The information is not in the reading list. The depth needed for the Structured Analysis question meant that I had to get a book written by Tom De Marco. The book is out of print from 1978. I had to get it from a guy in Canada off of the Amazon used books list. I was unable to answer the question before getting this book, the depth I needed could not be obtained by using the books on the reading list or any other books at my disposal. I have other examples of problems with the test written about in the blog.
My website and blog in some respects mirrors an experience with the test. The way that it mirrors it is the 2007 test has several questions not on the reading list, actually considerably more than the pre-tests. As I wrote before, "It was like taking a 14 century literature exam and getting Ian Fleming and Clive Barker, I would have at least done a littler better if you had chosen Neil Stephenson." That analogy is "right on" in its variance of era, genre, and expression of selectivity of vast knowledge. The expression of selectivity warrants another example. This example is not on the test. Lets say the question on the test asks what is the "Third Manifesto"? Are you clued into what to write about? If I ask you about the authors Christopher J. Date or Hugh Darwen are you clued into what to write about? If I told you that the authors book is widely regarded as the standard text on the subject and has sold over 700,000 copies do you know what to write about? If I told you that the authors worked with the father of an associated technology at IBM are you clued into what to write about? If the section on the test is Object Oriented Programming are you clued into what to write about? If I ask you about Object-relational Impedance Mismatch are you clued into what to write about? You get the idea. I am not clued in by those early questions but maybe you are, especially if the questions were not on the reading list. These questions were not on the reading list, including the last question. I and the test writers can ask a question in a way or make it obscure enough that it cannot be answered. The question could be on or off the reading list. If it is on the reading list there is a better chance that the student will be clued into what is being ask. That extra piece of information makes the test more appropriate because the knowledge breadth is finite. In the 2007 exam things like AOP, the Open Closed Principal and Fragile Base Class, as well as others were clearly not on the reading list. The questions either came from another decade and/or the books on the reading list were exceptionally rudimentary to cover those topics in the needed depth. This was echoed in emails and other sentiments from people that I know that took the 2007 exam.
My website and blog in some respects don`t mirror the exam in some way. The way that the site is different than the 2007 exam was that tests from at least 2003 up through 2006 were very consistent. The exams were asking similar questions with similar answers over consistent specific narrow parts of topics. Most questions have come from the reading list provided in 2002. I have been collecting test since the beginning of my masters degree at DePaul. I have the pre-tests that go back from the present to 2003 and farther and the change to have consistent tests is very apparent with consistency of the tests in 2003 to September of 2006. I, and others I have talked with, did not expect the in-consistency of the 2007 exam. The consistencies we expected because of the pre-tests were not there. The topics and depth of topics that we were prepared to be tested over were not what we were tested over. One of my friends left after the first 20 minutes of the exam. He was at least prepared for some portion of the exam but was not asked those questions. The exam was so different with data that was either so new or obscure that I can see his frustration. With his concentration in Software Management, I would not have expected the breadth he would have needed for the 2007 Software Engineering exam.
Enough about my website and study, during 2006 I spent time strategizing about the program. I needed a way to continue progress. I have now been doing research at my current job of doing embedded device development and Push-To-Talk protocols for nearly 3 years. That information is in my website too. I thought that with all of the trouble with DePaul and my situation that in the end I may need to change advisers. {TheStudent`s Adviser} may be wounded in this process of petitioning. Also, I thought that my current job may bring resources to a networking dissertation. I worked hard to make contact in the networking program. I had work contacts that had people that worked for them at Bell Labs and now working for DePaul. Through {Work Contact} a former Bell Labs/Lucent executive manager and {Second Work Contact} a former Bell Labs/Lucent engineer`s wife I met {Networking Professor}. {Work Contact} thought I was perfect for the PhD and thought {Networking Professor} would be a good match. {Second Work Contact} didn`t know {Networking Professor} personally but gave reference to my work ethics and professional research. I contacted {Networking Professor} in networking but he could not work with me until I had passed the third exam. With this experience I decided to not make my problems known when working through future directions and just to plow ahead. I learned enough to know that to pursue this option was going to be difficult. I was told that I was not allowed to switch tests to the networking exam. I was told that I must take the Software Engineering exam for the third time. I decided this would just be an option if other options didn`t work out. This side track took three to four months of diligent talking to people and followup.
With my original work with {TheStudent`s Adviser} I had done 8 months or so of work on MDD/Financial Models/Formal Methods direction. I am very much still interested in doing this. For me to do this I will need to take some more classes in Financial Engineering. {TheStudent`s Adviser} never really was excited about this. I am not sure he ever really understood it. He kept trying to link it back to {formal methods programming language name} project. It looks like {formal methods programming language name} is dead. The website has not been updated since 2003/2004. His students do not have websites of there own that show there current work on the project. Maybe he will be more interested now.
After the networking side trip, for me to plow ahead, my plan was to make contacts inside quantitative analysis and begin there. Having worked in an investment bank in Foreign Exchange and Historical Data I know something about this area. When I saw that ISP 121 was in need of lecturers I jumped at the chance. I had repeated false starts in getting into teaching a section. I did make contact with {Quantitative Analysis Professor}. He may be a useful contact in the future, I thought. I saw in the hallway one day while waiting for something a post of a group doing quantitative finance with a contact {Quantitative Finance Professor}. I thought, now this is the contact that I want. Later, while doing a sample lecture for ISP 121 I met Dr. {Quantitative Finance Professor}. I am glad I made the attempt at ISP 121. The pain of preparing for multiple sample lectures paid off. I have since sent email to {Quantitative Finance Professor} asking to see him when I have finished my exam. I think that this is really where I want to be. Math and Formal Methods really turn my crank. To put these disciplines together for a dissertation in Software Engineering will be the right place for me to finish. I think working with {TheStudent`s Adviser} and {Quantitative Finance Professor} could possibly work.
The R Language is the foundation for starting my research. Adding formal methods to it is the simplest macro idea. The idea is that financial modelers want to devise strategies for trading. Be careful here the word model is used two ways. There is a model that describes the software system and a model that describes a trading scenario. We are talking about a model of a software system implemented in an augmented `R` to describe a model of a trading scenario. The models would be fashioned together in a single unit. This is my new definition of model. The reason for pursuing this augmented `R` angle for dissertation is financial modelers need a framework for specifying, developing and verifying systems in a systematic rather than ad hoc way. They need a formal basis for precisely expressing consistency and completeness, specification and correctness. They would like to realize a financial mathematical model without the necessity of running a system to determine the systems behavior. The ability to specify behavioral and structural properties without the need for a running system cannot be stressed enough. Financial Modelers want to compare multiple models against each other without needing running systems. They want to reuse their models across different environments such as a spreadsheet for pricing and a real-time system for settlement. Financial modelers want to be assured that the models in different environments behave the same and be able to prove it with some mathematical rigor if needed. With formal methods, Model Driven Development, model checkers and theorem provers these things can be done. By using formal methods a mathematical foundation in set theory can be applied to the R language for reasoning about system level concerns. The R language already uses set theory for developing financial models. My ideas pertain to the augmentation of the R language to include formalisms to apply rigor to the properties of the system and not just properties of the data.
My intent is not to write my dissertation proposal right here. My intent is to talk about what I have been thinking about and doing over the last year preparing for my dissertation. I have many books on the subject of `R`. Over the years I have been working through the language for a complete understanding. But, the distraction of the test this last year has been enough to consume a great deal of my time. I am a part time student. I have been studying and preparing a website since September of 2006. Three to Four hours a day since September have been spent preparing for a test that didn`t even have the information that I studied. I have a great deal of breadth and depth that I cannot even show. Even though I have positive feelings about the exam, once again the exam failed to test my knowledge. This was my complaint on previous exams. The time spent away from the real work reminds me of a story called "The Big Brag" by Dr. Seuss. Lets get to the real work. I have done this work over the last year because I believe that it is valuable to continue in the program. T.S. Elliott once wrote, "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." I hope I have provided the information you require for assessment of my progress.
{TheStudent}