A Weekend in New York City

Which places will on you must-go list if you gonna spend a weekend in New York City. I recently had a wonderful and productive weekend in New York. Hope it can inspire you a little bit.

Day One ( Arrived around 11am)
1. Romantic Tea place- full of petty bourgeoisie.

Podunk    East Village

We walked along the Broadway ave, had a small detour in the M&M store in Time Square, then headed to this tea room. Here is A good article about podunk.

 

     $15-20 per serving.
     Those things are so delicious. Maybe just because of the atmosphere making me feel so elegant. :P

2. Hotel- The Jane's Hotel

When I travel, I don't usually spend inordinate amount of money on lodging. Friend told me about The Jane's hotel, which offers a good price relative to it's good location. It locates in the West Village, by the harbor. You can see Jersey city in the other side.

According to its website, the hotel is " Originally built as a hotel for sailors with cabin-like rooms".  No wonder it feels like living in a boat. My room has a bunk, so it can fit two people. Personally, I love about they use a drift bottle to contain water. 

 

$99 for a single room with the bunk. Warning: The room is incredibly tiny.

3. MET   If you are a student, you can only donate one dollar to get in the MET. However, please remember to donate more money (at least higher than the ticket price), when you got a job, or when you are rich. Always feel breathtaking by those lovely paintings.

4. Dinner- Snack

We hold a high expectation when we headed this place. Friend told us it has the most traditional and delicious greek food. Well, to me, it doesn't feel so special. The price is kind of too high compared to the quality. It's a tiny place, can only fit in 10 people. I admit the atmosphere is perfect, with those candle lights.  Maybe I just didn't order the right food. All in all, it's not a surprise.

We planed to go to the rodeo bar that night. However, we were so tired, so we just picked the traven in the corner of Jane street. It turned out to be a good choice too.

See what I did.

Day Two:

Haha, Guess what, we get up at 10:30am.

5.Washington Square, surrounded by NYU.

6. Central Park 

We headed uptown again, just for the central park. A park surround by high buildings. It's an escape from the hubbub of the city. People jog, read, talk and love there. 

7. MOMA 

I have to see the starry night, I have to see the waterlily, So I went to MOMA. I don't quite get the essence of morden arts. Some of them seems so easy and silly to me. However I do appreciate those masterpieces. When I got home that night, I had a science fiction dream about the end of world, which I suppose mostly induced by MOMA.

After spending one and a half hour in MOMA, we almost reach the time of leaving New York city. Walking along 6 ave and 5 ave, we passed by rockefeller center and arrived in the Bus termination.

What a wonderful adventure!

Well, I even got the chance shopping at a nice store called  Darling, which has a amazing taste of cloth. Oh...I think those stores should pay me for promoting them so hardly. 

Amazing Logarithm

Log-linearizing is a most common way to deal with data in economic study, perhaps in any data analysis. In my first macroeconomic and econometric class this semester, I encountered this widely used way of data transformation.
Common Reasons for taking log of the data:
1. Primary reason is to smooth the data, so as to show the patterns.
In real life, the data we collected, especially large sample of data from a big pool, have huge difference of their magnitudes.  Once we take log of the data, without changing the properties of the data, it helps us to spread the points more uniformly in the graph.

Let me illustrate with a simple sample of world per capita GDP, which exists big gap between different years. As we can see from the following two graphs, the data spreads more smoothly in the second graph. Without taking the log of the GDP, graph 1 clearly ignores the changes between 1000 and 1800.

 Figure 1: World per Capita GDP

Figure 2: Log of World per Capita GDP

2.Good properties

	Divided by 10	Original Data	Multiplied by 10
Data	0.1*A	A	10A
Log of Data	LogA-1	LogA	LogA+1

	Divided by 10	Original Data	Multiplied by 10
Change of Data	0.1	1	10
Change of Log Data	-1	0	1

Above tables show again the effect of smoothing data when you take log of the data. 

"The most important feature of the logarithm, which makes it so useful in analyzing data, is that, relatively, it moves big values closer together while it moves small values farther apart. This is seen in the picture to the left, where the original values are on the upper scale and their common logarithms are on the lower scale. In the log scale, small values that were close in the original scale (say, 1 and 10) are now the same distance apart as large values that were farther apart in the original scale (say, 10 and 100). " Source: http://www.jerrydallal.com/LHSP/logs.htm

(Thanks to Gerard E. Dallal)

Concluded from Gerard E. Dallal's Study, a logarithmic transformation will help us to make the original data with more appealing properties, such as symmetric, homoscedasticity and linearity. In one word, logarithm makes life simpler and easier.

3. Doesn't necessarily need to be linear. But performs very well for growth rate ( any functions with exponential or power ). For example, Cobb-douglas production function. Yt=(1+g)t*(1+)t*yt. After log transformation, you can easily see the linear relationship between log Y and time.


Some visual impression of logarithms:
-Logarithm in real life:
Logarithmic spiral

-----------------------------------------------
Hope I can understand logarithm and data transformation deeper in the end of this semester.
Stay tuned.

Snow Storm Dessert- Delicious Walnut Pie and Italian Style Potato

Holiday will end next Tuesday. I like special occasions because every incident is a pause of the routine life. We slow down the pace to relish the moment, to appreciate the normal but wonderful nature. After those pauses, we are back into routine life with a peaceful and grateful mind. 

The white world covered by the shining snow is like a wonder world in fairytale. Of course only in a short moment, the next day is like a disaster. 

Today's Chefish life menu:

1. Walnut Pie

2. Italian Style Potato

3. Date and White Fungus Soup

I learned those two of the dishes from internet. Thanks to Wangxiaoxing and Wenyi.

Here are the reference:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_54a625bf01017lz6.html

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5919b50e01017qqa.html

1. Walnut Pie

Preparation: 

Ready Crust from supermarket (Or Flour 250g, Suger 70g, Butter 125g, One Egg)

Walnut 200g, Rasin 50g, Sugar 120g, Honey 30g, Butter 10g, Water 40g

Procedure: 

i) Smear mixed egg on the ready crust, put in the oven. 350.F, for 5 mins.

ii) Mix sugar, honey and water, melt with low heat until the color turning brown with bubbles.

iii) Add walnut, rasin and chopped butter. mix with the sugar until the color turning dark brown.

iv)Fill the crust. Wait for cooling down.

Pictures from Wangxiaoxing's blog:

2. Italian Style Potato

Preparation:

Potatoes, 2 yolk, Cilantro 10g, Whiter pepper(3g) , Salt (15g) Butter(25g). If the mashed potato can't form a ball, then we might need some flour and step 9 in the picture. 

Procedure: follow the pictures below, they pretty must manifest the procedure clear.

Potato cakes in the pan

Snow

Five Days in Sin City－Part II Grand Canyon

What happend in Vegas stays in Vegas. The most thrilling journey is the trip to Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon. 9 hours of punishment to my ass is still worth. Hoover Dam once known as Boulder Dam, named after the city Boulder, is the first goad of development of  Las Vegas. During the Great Depression, the construction of Hoover Dam attracted thousands of unemployed from every corner of the States. People moved their home here with the hope of a sustainable life. Hoover Dam operated by Six Companies then was a huge project unprecedented in history. I watched the documentary film of Hoover Dam in the bus. I remembered the name Frank Crowe and the nickname Hurry Up. :)

Pacific Time Zone.
Some facts about time zones in the States:
There are six time zones in the States. From east to west, they are Eastern Time, Central  Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time, Alaskan Time, and Hawaii-Aleutian Time.
(U.S. native readers please don't laugh, I know it's common sense to you.:))

 Hoover Dam

     Friendship 

Grand Canyon National Park was the destination of the adventure that day. We arrived around 4-5pm, so I was so lucky to catch the beautiful sunset shots of Grand Canyon. I felt so trivial in front of Nature.

望岳 （杜甫）

岱宗夫如何，齐鲁青未了。 

造化钟神秀，阴阳割昏晓。 

荡胸生层云，决眦入归鸟。 

会当凌绝顶，一览众山小。 

A VIEW OF TAISHAN
Du Fu

What shall I say of the Great Peak? -- 
The ancient dukedoms are everywhere green, 
Inspired and stirred by the breath of creation, 
With the Twin Forces balancing day and night. 
...I bare my breast toward opening clouds, 
I strain my sight after birds flying home. 
When shall I reach the top and hold 
All mountains in a single glance?

Good Bye, Las Vegas!!

Five Days in Sin City－Part I

I spent my winter break in Las Vegas with my high school mates. Graduated from high school seven years ago, I felt like back to the old days in those 5 days. Reunion is always one of the amazing things can make time go back and make you rethink life in a different perspective. 

Back in high school, I didn't know all of them. But we really had a wonderful time together in Vegas. We all rooted from a same city, and now scattered in every corners of the world. It's a mixed feeling.

I started our trip by walking on the Strip with Helen the first night. 

 Stratosphere Tower- our headquarter

 Circus Circus

 Magnificent Encore 

 We took a lot of photos with this young lady

Our group expands with more classmates arrived. While waiting for them, we basically just enjoyed the sin city by committing sins, such as having buffet everyday. 

Recommendation from Bill Gates

BillGates Bill Gates 

A new Hans Rosling video from the BBC which is well worth the four minutes to watch - http://bit.ly/gVlLe7

Personally, I am very interested in the part of splitting china into different provinces. (3min40s) The wealth gap is indeed a big problem now in China. Also the way Hans demonstrates the change of lifespan and income is straight forward and clear with the help of computer technology. Again, Amazed by one of the greatest inventor in history- Computer!

Extension: 1.  No More Boring Data

2. Gapminder.org
Including all the interesting growth data  you might need in studying develpment.

Scout Factory Stores- New Balance

I decided to put exercising on my 2011 plan list. So buying a running shoes comes on my agenda. With the help of a friendly volunteer and google, I found a New Balance factory store 10mins walking distance from my apartment. So I made my purchase today.

Interestingly, I never went along that part of North Beacon street before. I don't know whether because it's monday morning or not, I am the only one waking on the street all the way there. There are many storage stores along the way.

When I arrived the life street,  an amusing sign showed up.

"Life STinks."

Do you get it? I should have brought my camera or at least my cell phone today, like someone said as bloggers, it's our responsibility to make camera surgically attached to the body. Maybe next time when I need another new training item, I will take a photo of that. Though I believe Life STunning!

Here is a shot of my lovely brand new pink running shoes.

--------------------Another shopping day at NB factory store-----------------------------

Prepare for the winter hiking these sunday, I went to the NB store again. This time I had my phone with me. So you can see the Life STinks photo below.

My Shopping show off again. (Great Deal again)