Day 8: The "real" first day?

I guess you could argue that today is the REAL first day of the program. The welcome and the orientation are over and this is where the real meat and potatoes of the program begin.

Thankfully my first class was at 10.15am which gave me just a wee bit more time to sleep in. I'm already sensing that sleep will be a precious commodity in the coming year.

Walking into your first class, you never know what quite to expect. I knew it was a stats class but I certainly didn't expect the professor to start off with a coin toss bet with actual money changing hands in class. I guess gambling is a great way to bring stats to life and to explain probability. Guessing that this hands on approach to learning is going to make these classes that little bit more interesting even if you choose to not get involved in the betting. (The rules are: 1. You don't have to bet if you don't feel comfortable winning/losing money 2. If you lose, you MUST pay up).

In another bet, she bet that out of the ~65 people in the room, at least 2 people would share the same birthday (ignoring the year). On paper, the rewards were actually pretty good with $200 won if there weren't 2 people with the same birthday but only $50 payout if there were. A couple of people were certainly tempted by the potential financial rewards but they ultimately ended up contributing to our class "champagne fund". ;)

Hint: Take a look at your Facebook, have you noticed that usually 2 or more of your friends share the same birthday?

Glad I managed to place out of Prices and Markets (Microeconomics). Feedback from the class is that it's very dry material. *phew* This really brings me back to the point about the exemption exams. I'm sure a lot of my peers could have placed out of it too but not many of them bothered to take the exemption exam and are now "stuck" in the class. Perhaps some of them are kicking themselves now. I'm probably just going to try to take the exemption exams for next period just for the heck of it again. Afterall I have nothing to lose.