self-introduction, joe corneli

[Joe Corneli]

Hi, I'm the facilitator for this course, but I'm very much looking
forward
to the chance to participate as a peer learner as well.

I have a B.A. in mathematics and some graduate-level mathematics
experience. I've also done some private teaching and tutoring, but I'm
not the "teacher" for this course -- hopefully everyone here will have
a chance to teach something (and learn lots).

I want to use more math in my work, and I'm specifically interested in
learning about the mathematics of data mining. In the long run I want
to apply this to build an interactive online mathematics exercise
website
that adapts to individual learners, making problems easier or harder
depending on how successful people have been so far. (Kind of like
a very long GRE, for those who know about how that exam works...
hopefully it doesn't sound too dreadful!)

That idea inspired me to want to run this course, as a sort of "low-
tech"
or "no-tech" simulation of the system I eventually want to build.
That
said, I am currently collaborating on building some related tools for
communicating mathematics online, and I hope to have those ready
for you to try out during the course.

To start with I plan to look at JAGS (Just Another Gibbs Sampler),
http://www-fis.iarc.fr/~martyn/software/jags/ and at "Statistical
Learning
Theory" by Vladimir Vapnik. I expect that one or both will turn out
to
be too hard for me at first :). I like to learn by referring to lots
of
different related resources and piecing things together that way; I
also am glad to have an application in mind...

I'm happy to answer questions about math, but I'm especially
interested
in figuring out good strategies for finding answers yourself. Hence
DIY
Math :).