Let me start off by making a "Note to Self" -Do not reuse pots if they are not washed even if they look clean and hygienic. My gastrointestinal discomfort due to my cooking (yeah, my cooking) kept up most of the night before. Surprisingly, I was able wake up feeling fully rested for System Optimization class. I was able to focus much better today than I did last week. System Optimization is a 3 hour-long lectureand can be intensive at times but I have discovered that the best way to learn and understand the material is to pay attention at class. The professor, David Simchi-Levi is not only well-known in the field of supply chain and planning, but a very engaging lecturer. The professor enjoys asking students questions during the class. One can tell who the smarter ones are since they are often the ones who would answer the most difficult questions promptly and accurately. I am just an average Joe but John, Matt, Matti, Steve, and Uday are in a different class of their own.

Today's ERBA recitation, which I am somewhat ambivalent to, was a disaster. There were connection problems with the long-distance students and every student had a different question for the TA that he needs to answer within an hour. Needless to say, we didn't cover a lot of material in the class today. But to the TA defense, it was tough for him since the level of math background in the class is IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) multifarious. Some students complained that the class is a cakewalk while a few are simply buried in the rigorous statistics requirements of the class. To be honest, I did struggled a little with ERBA but once I understand the concepts, which thanks to a large part to Spiros for explaining, it isn't bad at all. A lot of people mentioned that there's very little use of ERBA in their profession. I respectfully disagree, I think as an engineer we need to have a good understanding of statistics and probability. While ERBA is not purely a statistics class, I find that the review useful and who knows we may learn a few tools or techniques that may help us in our job in the future.

We had a lecture on Intellectual Property by a guest lecturer who worked at the MIT Technology Licensing Office (TLO) at today's Product Design & Development class. He mentioned that in his 10 years of work at MIT TLO, he has seen about 45,000 inventions, which about half of these inventions were filed for patents. Only 5 inventions didn't get patented. The moral of the story is that if you have a great idea, file for a patent; the chances of getting a patent grant is greater than you think.

2/15/2005 2:48:33 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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