SGA Grad School ficlet

[eve11]

Untitled Rodney-in-grad-school snippett written for troyswann (date unsure)





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"No wonder you’re having problems, your covariance matrix is obviously not positive
definite, and on top of that it's singular."

Blank stare.

"You have negative values on the diagonal. These are supposed to be variances."

Blink. "The sigmas, right?"

"Variances! Barring the ludicrous interpretation of negative spread, you still have the
expectation of x squared minus expectation of x, quantity squared! Convex function
applied to expectations! Jensen’s inequality! POSITIVE! What was your major again?"

"Um, physics?"

Rodney’s vision actually grayed a little on the edges. "No. No, sorry. We're done here."

After that, Professor Halpert just had him mark papers.
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