My vacation was wonderful. I had no idea how good it would feel to be away from work and research. It was full on fun and frolic and I definitely recommend taking a break from commitments, expectations, routines etc. I was surprised that I didn’t think about my research topic at all, but instead statistics popped up a few times.
One situation occurred on the third day of my vacation, when I dragged myself to the gym for a short workout. I used the shuffle on my IPOD while on an elliptical machine, it had a cool attachment that displayed the song titles on a small screen. After my cardio, I detached my IPOD and went to do some weights. I engaged shuffle again. What amazed me was “Word Up”, a great song by Cameo, which I had heard during my cardio was the third song that I heard while doing weights. What is the chance of hearing the same song, within 15 minutes, in two separate shuffles of a play-list of 500 songs? As I though about this question my brain immediately responded that I could actually calculate the probability of this occurring because I had recently read about this in my statistics text. I couldn’t remember the formula, but was fairly certain that it would be easy to calculate. So I guess this means that some of the statistics that I am reading is actually “sticking” -woohoo!
Today I spent a few hours reading through thoughts I have documented over the past few months summarizing the existing literature on my research topic and where I might make contribution. I then generated some new ideas on potential gaps and methodology and went to the library to do do some preliminary investigation. I printed several academic papers and checked-out 8 books. Lots of reading to do! It was fun and stimulating getting back into it. Think the vacation was just what I needed and a good boost to get through the heavy lifting from now until Christmas.