Bivariate Distributions

Posted Fri Apr 16, 2010 in Engineering

I had trouble sleeping last night. Maybe it was because of a strange bed, maybe because of the nighttime city noises, or maybe it was just the noise in my head. I don’t know. I woke about 0300 thinking about things, rolled over, and finally went back to sleep.

I work for real about 0530–0600, rose, noticed Wife sleeping peacefully, and made coffee in the in-room machine. The coffee smelled OK, so I figured it would be OK if the water was decent. It was.

I puttered around clearing my head and preparing for the day. Each of us showered and packed our things for the next bit. We walked to the office for some breakfast. They had some eggs and sausage, which was decent enough. A little cereal helped as well.

We drove to my friend’s office and I got settled in to take care of email and other contact duties for the day. Although I’m not in the office, I am not off-duty. There was email and a phone call to handle, so I did. I can deal with the remainder of things next week when I return to the office.

My friend gathered us up and we drove the short distance to Davis, California. It’s a college town — in California. What more can I see? There were plenty of fruits, flakes, and nuts in attendance. I was amused.

We grabbed a sandwich from a neat little deli and sat outside munching. It was good — the munching, the talk, and the air. With the bit of food, we walked to the Hydrologic Engineering Center, arriving about 15-minutes early.

I immediately began the set up so I would be ready to start on time. My POC, Beth, retrieved the IT person because of the standing orders “do not disconnect the projector from the computer.” When he arrived, he asked “do you have your dongle — I see you do.¹“ I tried not to laugh, mostly managing to hide the giggle.

It took only a few minutes to get things working and I brought up the presentation. The technician remarked, “That’s a nice presenter display!” when he saw the Keynote presenter’s screen on the computer and the display on the screen.

“It’s good to work with, especially because I don’t have to always look over my shoulder to see my points or graphs and I can see the next slide up.” It’s true that I think Keynote is a better tool than Powerpoint. I work hard to keep my presentations simple and clean.

The director introduced me and we got started. The initial part of my talk was recycled from a number of other presentations, so I know that material pretty well. It only took about 20 minutes to work through it. The second part of the material was more challenging, both to present and to understand. I actually put some mathematics on the panel, because I thought there would be some who could understand it and might want to see the work. I should also make a PDF of my talk to share with the group attending.

I found a few holes in my slides. There was a lot of material to present and some of it needs some additional graphical support. Before I do this talk again, I’ll add some slides to demonstrate the bivariate probability integral transform and how it applies to the assessment of fit using copula technology. I’m still thinking about how to use the BPIT with the standard distributions. I think there is a solution there, but I’m not certain what it is — yet. I hope to figure it out.

The second part of the talk took about an hour. Then my POC, Beth, had a number of questions for me as she worked through some of the material. We went back through my slides and talked about what I’d learned. I think I’m cutting edge on some of this material, at least for the moment. I need to get a paper put together and in publication soon, before the material becomes stale. It’s worthy of publication.

There remains a lot yet to do. The problem isn’t completely solved and there is an entirely different line of investigation to pursue. I know what it is. The question is whether I can find someone to fund it.

Now we’re at a Comfort Suites in Marysville, California. I lived here with my parents for a year about 40-years ago. In the morning, I think we’ll drive around town a little (early) before we head east. I think we’ll drive northeast along SH 20 toward Grass Valley, then turn more northerly along SH 49 on our way home through the mountains. It should be a pretty day and a pretty drive. I’m looking forward to it.

¹ Some MacBook Pros have a DVI output; some have a special connector. Mine has a DVI output, but a carry a DVI->VGA adapter (dongle) just in case.