A statistical approach to predicting my getting sick

During my recent trip to Iceland, I thought to myself how grateful I am that I haven't been sick, and that it's surprising because "it's about time I got sick again."  Days later, I randomly got sick (sore throat, constant 102 temp, coughing); I should be fine in 3 more days, though.  In the meantime, just for fun during the winter break, I decided to see if I can define some formalism for this supposed intuition.

Disclaimer: I know this is some rough, make-shift calculations, but given the nature of having so little data, and that the real, useful data is all immeasurable and not at my disposal, this is what you get :-)

I get a sore throat about 5 times each year -- which always lends me voiceless for about a week -- despite the fact that I:

• eat healthy
• workout regularly
• have good hygiene practices (shower at least once a day, brush teeth & floss twice a day, wash hands frequently, etc)
• have no known allergies or health issues (have seen several docs at MIT regarding this)

I've been tempted to just go to NYC and lick every bus pole and escalator handrail I can, in attempt to go ahead and get it over with by subjecting my body to every known bacteria and virus out there.

Obviously, there's a myriad of variables that can cause one to get sick:

• stress
• germs being spread from air, physical contact, etc
• weakened immune system (i.e., from over-training in the gym, stress, etc)

Clearly, these things are easily intertwined and impossible to accurately monitor and model.

However, in late 2007, I wanted to get to the bottom of it and was curious if there were any patterns in my getting sore throats.  So, for the past 5 years, I've quickly logged every time I get sick (a rating of the severity, how many days, and symptoms).

In the following picture, I plot every time I've gotten a sore throat, rounding to the closest week.

Looking at any patterns over time will only show possible correlations, not causes, I know.  Yet, the times I get sick are highly consistent from year to year:

• I pretty much always get sick on Jan 1
• I essentially never get sick from April 1 - July 31
• my sore throat always lasts exactly 6 or 7 days.
• I get sick roughly 5 times every year from August 1 - March 31.
• 100% of the times that I fly overseas, I either get sick while there or soon as I come back -- but it's not always sore throats.  Here, I'm only concerned with sore throats.

I will refer to August 1 - March 31 as the sick period/months, which spans 32 weeks.  For all calculations, we are only concerned with getting sick during the current sick period, and that each one is independent of the previous years'.

Again, since it's impossible to model the aforementioned variables that are the actual causes of getting sick, I figured why not play around with the time-series data and treat it as indications as to when I'll get sick.  So, here we are making the large assumption that all of the underlying sick-causes variables are consistent and uniformly distributed during the sick months, and that I get sick on average 5 times per sick period.  I think this is reasonably fair as a high-level approximation.

If we model my sickness as a Poisson distribution, we see that the probability of getting sick N number of times during a sick period is:

N	probability of getting sick N times
1	0.033689734995427
2	0.084224337488568
3	0.140373895814281
4	0.175467369767851
5	0.175467369767851
6	0.146222808139876
7	0.104444862957054
8	0.065278039348159
9	0.036265577415644
10	0.018132788707822

I like that distribution; it seems to fit my sickness history pretty well... although places a little too much weight on getting sick more than 5 times.

For each one of these possible outcomes (and including all N up to however many weeks we have left... not just N >= 10), there's a chance of getting sick next week, which is simply N/(# of weeks remaining).... again, assuming uniform distribution of everything, including the times I get sick within the sick period.

Further, if we wish to calculate the overall probability of getting sick next week (i.e., summed over each possible N), we simply combine these two things, and weight and normalize by the Poisson probabilities listed in the above table.

As a real life example, last week:

m = 13 (meaning 13 weeks left until March 31 aka end of 'sick period')

n = 2 (meaning I've been sick twice so far)

lambda = 5 (meaning on average I get sick 5 times each year)

Per the above equation, the probability of getting sick this week (which I did) was roughly 42.10%.

Further, if I did not get sick this week, the probability of getting sick the following week would be 45.43%

Further, not getting sick in the 2 upcoming weeks, but getting sick on the following would be 49.14%

Thus, the probability of NOT getting sick during the current week and upcoming 2 weeks was only 16%, which agrees with irking feeling I got: "sweet; I'm not sick... it's been a while though..." 

In the meantime, if anyone is down for my NYC-immunity-deplete-boost idea, let me know.  I'll let you go first as the guinea pig.

Re-Designing New Year Resolutions: No Deadlines, Only Startlines*

At the beginning of 2011, I made a huge spreadsheet of all of the goals I wanted to accomplish throughout the year, which spanned multiple categories: work/research, playing guitar, painting, photography, weight lifting, jogging, recreational reading, cooking, etc. I detailed concrete, quarterly 3-month goals for every single category. Yet, I still failed miserably.

As we all know, it's very easy to put things off. However, I thought that defining objective deadlines for all of my tasks would help keep me regimented. Sure, I was pretty disciplined in some of the categories, but in some categories I essentially did nothing at all. Why is this, and how did it happen?

The main reason is that other, more pressing matters took higher precedence throughout the year, allowing me to completely neglect some categories.

For example, if something at work starts to consume all of my attention, I often put off doing everything else. I feel this is true for most people. We are good at accomplishing deadlines within our career. Why is that? We need to mimic that for all of our deadlines. I believe most people are good at meeting career deadlines because:

1. we all work towards the deadline very often (~daily)
2. we take it seriously (we don't want to be jobless or homeless)
3. we are ideally passionate about the career work

All of these items help, but I believe the biggest one that separates goals of mine that were accomplished from those that were not is #1; when I look at my failed resolutions, the failed categories are ones that I never got momentum in -- the start was flaky at best.

There will always be some unforeseen task that comes up which I bump up to priority #1. And, if I have ~8 main categories that I'm trying to all work towards through the year, it will likely be the case that at least 3 of them will never be touched because of these unforeseen, pressing deadlines related to work/family/other goals. This leads me to think that setting deadlines is not necessarily ideal.

Sure, it's good to have objective marks signifying where you'd like to be, but even setting more regimented, smaller time-scaled deadlines isn't sufficient.

Personally, I always have some to-do list that I'm often working on. I got into this habit since I was just a little kid, my mom tells me. In recent years, my to-do list often spans a few days or a week. Even with this, I find myself often not getting around to at least 1-3 of say 10-15 items each time. Those items are typically not essential, so they sadly get pushed off and never done.

My point is, even a 5-day list of deadlines proves to be difficult enough to follow, so of course there's no way I/we can 100% fulfill a more grand, all-encompassing schedule of deadlines that span an entire year. List of deadlines, even if they are only span a week, will leave me short, as some items never get started.

So, let's not plot everything with respect to the end and the deadlines, even if they have intermediate deadlines. Rather, let's make startlines. Let's list the days on which we'll start things, and this takes highest priority over everything. In fact, when unforeseen pressing matters come up, let's then force these annoying deadlines to work around our pre-detailed startlines.

For example, say some art show is coming up, and I desperately want to edit, print, and mat a bunch of new photos that I had just taken a few days ago. In this very real example, I often put all other recreational activities behind in order to urgently get this done. Instead, I should keep in mind the big picture, relax my requirements for the photography art show (realizing that it's okay to not have the latest photos), and force myself to revolve my schedule around any previously schedule startlines. If I had previously listed that I will devote 2 hours to trying to learn to play guitar on Wednesday, and the pressing art show happened to be on Friday, well, I should still pick up the guitar on Wednesday.

I'm starting this approach for 2012. We'll see if it serves me well.

In short, let's try to list the actual days on which we'll start and do things, not far-away deadlines by which everything will magically be done.

Along the same lines, maybe I shouldn't think of any my goals in terms of long-term end results; maybe I should define my goals in terms of sheer investment.

To illustrate, well, I'll pick one of my goals which is highly quantifying, tempting to view in terms of long-term end results, and one that is amongst my least embarrassing (one which I haven't been too slack and delinquent): weight-lifting.

One of my weight-lifting goals concerns my body weight and my max 1-rep bench press. I currently weigh 147 lbs and my max bench press is 225 lb. My 2011 goal was to get back to my prime: weigh 156 lbs and bench press 240 lb. I would like to reach this in 2012, too. I know what it takes to get back to this condition (going hardcore on particular exercises, working out 5 times a week, proper nutrition, etc). So, instead of defining my success in terms of some boolean 1-point check of reaching the goal or not, I should make my goal to be the appropriate, necessary investment that's required to meet that goal.

Specifically, my goal should not be:

• By March 30: weigh 150 and bench 228.
• By June 30: weigh 152 and bench 235.
• By September 30: weigh 155 and bench 238.
• By December 30: weigh 156 and bench 240.

Instead, maybe it should be:

• In January, continue to go to the gym at least 3 times a week
• In February, increase to a consistent 4 times a week (17 times total).
• In March, increase to 20 times total.

Similarly, I could define specific workout goals in terms of the necessary investment. For example, "do chest & back workouts 2 times a week." As long as I do this, who cares if I EXACTLY meet some particular bench press weight goal such as benching 240 lbs or not? If I follow this investment schedule, I know I'll be close to my desired results. If I'm a few pounds under or over, so be it. I should be happy with my amount of effort and how much time I dedicate to this hobby that I love and enjoy. That's the most important thing.

Along the same lines, I shouldn't make it a goal to "learn how to play a guitar song by February 1," but "spend 2 hours per week learning to play guitar." You get the idea.

I like this approach. Any thoughts?

* Yea, Startlines sounds cheesy, but I had to call it something.

the beautiful mess of inexactness and unaccountability

(note: if you're short on time, just read the bold parts)

the computer scientist and mathematician in me often cause me to think about how to make commonplace situations the most efficient and beneficial for everyone. for example, situations such as:

• boarding an airplane -- how to board everyone the quickest w/ minimum hassle
• waiting in lines at a store
• boston's subway -- how to decide how many subway trains to have, where to place them, and how often to run
• placement of products within department stores like target

these types of things naturally cross my mind as i encounter them. yet, lately, i've come to not only accept the fact that the world at large is a massive NP-complete, inexact, sub-optimal system, but that it's often best this way.

for example, while at mike's pastries recently (my favorites there are the chocolate covered ricotta cannoli and german chocolate brownie!), i was thinking about how horribly disorganized that place is: basically, there's one line that forms outside, but once inside the store, there are no lines. you merely force your way up to any of the surrounding glass counters and compete for the attention of a nearby cashier. oh, and they only accept cash.

i've been to mike's pasties tons of times, yet it's always exciting and enjoyable -- even if it does have a huge touristy vibe. while thinking about how long this place has been famous, and how well their system works for them, it then hit me: the seemingly horrible time-inefficiency of their system actually isn't too bad. moreover, their inefficiency actually benefits them and is a vital part of their success! see, the chaotic nature of their store helps facilitate the exciting vibe of being there. if the lines were streamlined and branched off smoothly to cashiers, then the place would be typical. it wouldn't be as fun. this chaotic fun helps make the whole experience better, and probably even influences our perception of how good the food tastes.

lesson learned: what may be seem like an objective benefit to people may not actually be what's best; sometimes the sub-optimal solution is incidentally optimal.

as for unaccountability, lately i've witnessed two tragic events:

• a man die by plummeting down a gigantic waterfall (see recent post)
• a police raid; unseen to me, police shot a man 10-12 times. the victim merely had a water gun.

the waterfall incident went almost unnoticed. i saw the man fall, and the ~4 nearby people heard my screams and participated in the search. minutes later, hikers entering the trail had no idea what had just happened. it was only the next morning that officials found the victim's body. the incident only received a few sentences on local news sites, and the news was wrongly report too -- for they stated that he had fallen into the river. i would have thought that the park would have been encouraged to post more warnings about the dangers of going beyond the railings, and would have possibly constructed a plague dedication to the victim. nope. it was merely wrongly reported and probably only listed as a park statistic at best.

it baffled me how easily such an important thing like one's life can fail to garner proper action. i realize everyone's short on time, and that there are only a limited amount of resources for everything. yet, i'm constantly amazed and constantly realizing how limited these things actually are, and what's realistic to expect. this isn't some depressing message; it's just my coming to understand the inexactness and imperfections that occur in the world -- that not everything's ideal. of course.

as for the police raid incident, my friend brian and i witnessed ~20 cop cars come to one's home. the police constructed battering rams, kevlar shields, and gigantic guns as they prepared to invade this peron's house. we didn't really know what we were witnessing. days later, i looked online and found essentially no information reported. like the waterfall death, it was merely a 3-sentence blurb stating nothing beyond what we already knew. days later, i looked online again and found a slightly more detailed story: the victim apparently only possessed a water gun, and police supposedly didn't provide the man a chance to cooperate; police merely came in and used him as target practice. victim had 20 holes in him, mostly from gun shots.

what's the consequence? i don't know. i assume the victim's family will try to take to court some of the police, or maybe some policeman might be fired, but i don't know. it's just crazy to think of how large a mistake can be made without proper consequence/punishment/justice -- both justice in the form of police being punished and justice with respect to the story getting recognition in the news. i'm sure it's impossible for this to happen ideally. there are way too many people in the world, and there's no way every death can receive news coverage for everyone who cares. people die all the time, and the world is constantly fighting for everyone's attention. our attention is very very valuable and expensive, apparent by ubiquitous ads and just the nature of our very fast-paced lifestyles.

it's just weird to first-hand witness a life perish, possibly illegally, and for there to be so little accountability. oh yea, i was supposed to talk about accountability. basically, it's alarming, and for the same reasons that i've already said. there's so much going on, and there'll never be enough resources (time, energy, care, money, etc) that can properly do justice to everything. that's impossible and too expensive.

i don't mean for this entry to read as a depressing message. it's merely a reminder and a lesson that our world is imperfect, and that it takes a lot of very special effort, time, and care to make something the way you want it... and that for everything you do see, it's often the product of a lot of care and deliberation. thus, we shouldn't take things for granted. from streets being cleaned to newspapers being delivered, it takes a lot to get something done.

basically, we live in a beautiful mess. we should remember this and be more grateful for the things that do work.

my car gets more character, and by character i mean ghetto

(note: if you are viewing this in facebook, the 4 images may not appear. click refresh until they do, or visit the original source: http://omggetthis.blogspot.com)

i've never placed much stock in any car i've had. my old '88 honda accord was quite amazingly ghetto/enjoyable though. it had a leaking sunroof which would sometimes pour in tons of rain after driving it for the 1st time after a big rain. sometimes it wouldn't. it was always a surprise. it had other quirks too, of which i'll spare you.

my current car is a '99 nissan altima, and we've been building a relationship for 3 years now. here it is, street-parked next to my boston apartment (this is 1 of 2 times in months that i havent had to parallel park):

most notable are our following adventures: (1) 50 hours of fall foliage driving; (2) driving from boston to atlanta and back, while almost dying in a multi-hour snow storm w/ no windshield wipers -- forcing me to drive on highway w/ head out the window; (3) car broken into twice...

and now, the latest addition:

the trunk release broke many months ago. my trunk key has never worked. so, i've had no access to the trunk for months. i fiddled around w/ it and learned how the trunk works.

if you slide this metal piece towards the right, the trunk will open.

i tied string around the sharp metal, while adding padding to prevent the string from unraveling.

i ran the string along the base of the trunk, bended it through a loop, then ran it through the back seats towards the front of the car. now, if you pull the string towards the front of the car, the trunk will open.

here i am in the driver's seat, turned towards the back.

it's nothing complicated; i just think it's kind of a funny system.

permanently deaf in left ear -- the final update and full report

many of you have already heard the news that i'm permanently deaf in my left ear (most likely from weight lifting), but it seems many have not, for i'm asked daily from unaware friends. aside from 2 facebook statuses, this is my first update about it weeks. this will be my final report concerning this whole ear situation. this post is ridiculously long, but it's the end of the book. i won't bring any more attention to it. it aims to answer every question i've been asked. anyone who makes it through the whole post gets a cookie.

i really appreciate everyone's offered help, condolences, prayers, and inquiries during this ordeal.

the table of contents:

• (a) succinctly inform friends of my latest status/summary
• (b) share my thoughts about 'handicap'
• (c) complain about health insurance
• (d) epilogue:
• (d1) current day-to-day
• (d2) summary of all doctor visits, procedures, and diagnoses

---

(a) latest status/summary:

surgery went fine. ear still bleeding due to the surgery, but not too much pain or nausea. i'm fine :-)

• saw 6 mit/harvard doctors:
• condition: sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL)
• affects ~5 out of 100,000 people per year; average age: 43 - 53 yrs old
• roughly less than 2% chance of regaining hearing
• sorted likelihood of causes: weight lifting, virus, unknown other
• had 4 injections into ear drum over 2 week span
• had surgery to help w/ balance (lifted up ear drum, went behind it to patch skin onto oval/round window tears). general anesthesia is amaaazing.
• hearing tests:
• right ear has perfect hearing at 0 decibels.
• left ear can feel ear drum moving before i hear 80 decibel noises.
• when words play at the maximum volume, left ear hears them as forks scratching together at best. it's painful before i hear sounds.
• constant ringing/ocean noise may take 6 months to many years before i'm unaware of it

(b) sharing my thoughts about 'handicap'

permanence?

this experience has forced me to think about the concept of handicap and the idea of permanence, neither of which i've ever been able to fully imagine with any realness. combined together, now that's especially hard to pre-imagine. it might take me a while to fully grasp permanence, as nothing in my life has ever been permanent before. my choice of college, where to live, what career to pursue, etc. all of these choices can be as temporary as one wants.

okay, my situation isn't temporary. sure, it sucks that i can't fully hear and enjoy music like i used to, that loud social environments like restaurants are difficult and exacerbate the ear ringing, and that having conversations with people on my left is hard. but, i can't change that now, so

let's focus on the rest and try to measure what it really means.

what is a handicap?

i believe a handicap can be described as an impair of one's ability within a given domain. for example, think of golf. golf defines a label "handicap" to portray one's weakness/inability. it's not to say that the golfer can't play at all. he can. it's just a metric to suggest how difficult it is for the golfer, given his current skills.

the golfer gets better, his handicap lowers. a handicap is adjustable and is strictly defined by the actual difficulties encountered at the given task. once the golfer becomes perfect, his encountered difficulties approach 0, and he essentially has no handicap.

let's abstract the concept of handicap, while keeping its definition constant.

try to think of something that initially gave you difficulties, something at which you weren't initially great. for me, i started playing baseball when i was 7. initially, i wasn't good at fielding grounders. one could define this as a handicap; my inexperience with baseball was a handicap. but

over the years, i got good. by trial and error, i worked at the objective and i learned.

okay, that example still concerns a sport, so the analogy is clear. but i'm asserting that the definition still holds across all domains, whether is be painting, communicating, reading, or anything else; there's a gradient to assess one's inability/handicap in anything, and it -- either directly or indirectly -- can be improved over time.

well,

what about when people are placed into slightly more seemingly difficult, uncontrollable situations that yield handicaps? for example, what if one looks at one's genes or the family environment in which one is raised. that's a slightly less controllable thing, right?

my parents are amazing, and they did a great job of raising me. my eco-social environment/neighborhood could be viewed as limiting though. i was raised in a lower-middle income area. although i don't live in GA anymore, my parents still do. same place, and it's still home to me, ever since i was 4. that place has a lot of charm to it. it means the world to me, so this is not a diss. but, the neighborhood has some little childish gangs present, graffiti on the fences of several of the suburban houses on the street corners, and education is far from promoted.

for example, growing up, i didn't know what college was. i personally didn't know a single person who had gone; nobody amongst my parents, neighbors, extended family, friends of family, etc had gone. i love my uncles and aunts, and it's sad that many of them are essentially illiterate. some quit school in 3rd grade. the point is, talk of college didn't exist. when i was in 11th grade, i would often hear fellow students talking about college as if it's the default, next step... so i figured i should go. it seemed important.

i was never inundated with information or advice regarding education. i wasn't a great high school student either, merely an A/B student who barely graduated in the top 30% of my class. i didn't really have any lifelines for the college admission process. it's not my parent's fault, i mean, that whole domain was new to them too. i distinctly remember having 2 resources for applying to colleges:

• bought the princeton list of colleges from barnes and noble. looked through every page to find out which schools to apply to.
• heard of my high school's valedictorian getting rejected from some school named MIT but into harvard (i knew of
  harvard, but MIT was vaguely familiar to me.) this served as the upper-bound for my concept of education.

so, one could say i was pretty unprepared and that i had somewhat of a handicap compared to other kids who were entering post-high-school education. i realize many kids had it worse, yet many were better prepared than i, as they were

experienced with SAT prep classes, tutors, writing help, and advice from adults.

this seeming handicap was one where i could do little to affect my starting point, but i did everything i could to minimize and overcome any obstacles to get to where i wanted. honestly, i never viewed my lack of college preparation as any handicap or anything; i had what i had, and it was merely time to play the game with the cards at hand.

i never felt like i was at a disadvantage amongst my college peers. upon starting college, i quickly realized everyone came from different walks of life, was filled with different preparations, and was equipped with different intelligences. this was obvious. i knew it would do me little good to concern myself with what AP classes so-and-so took in high school. it didn't matter. getting wrapped up with others' handicaps or lack thereof would be completely silly, and it would do me no good towards doing well on my upcoming chemistry test. i focused on the positive, didn't worry about the stuff i couldn't control, and i did everything i could to help me reach my dreams via the pursuit of education.

so what's my point? my point is that our seeming handicaps are only handicaps if we let them be. i assert that our biggest handicaps are merely our self-imposed ones, ones that are merely the consequence of our lack of pro-activity towards actualizing what we want. it's way too easy to not do something. it's the default to not act. and it's this lack of actions, proactive measures, planning, and exploring that creates handicaps.

if we choose to be a victim to something, then sure, we will be, but that doesn't have to be the case. even in situations where it seems like something is physically impossible or out of our control, it doesn't have to be. for example, have you ever seen paralympians compete at the olympics? people who are physically "disabled" can run, swim, and outperform non-disabled humans beyond belief. what then is their handicap? in what way are they handicapped? it takes them longer to get dressed? enjoying a stroll through town is slightly more tedious? but what grand effect does that really amount to? not much at all. not only are they able to experience the full spectrum of worldly experiences, but they are able to exercise their so-called disabled limbs in a way to reach elevated states of experiences and elation far beyond what the average non-paralyzed humans will ever experience. imagine how good it feels for them to sprint, train for thousands of hours, compete, and win. a non-paralyzed couch potato will never know those feelings.

clearly it's not what you have, but what you choose to do with it. clearly there are always other routes, directions, and means to allow one to experience and reach whatever he wants.

in the grand scheme of things, my so-called handicap is nothing. sure, as i mentioned, it limits some social interactions and forces me to seek alternatives at times, such as positioning myself to the left to whomever i'm talking. the constant ringing is really annoying at times, and my balance system is not yet 100%. but that's it. if i think about the happiest moments or eras of my life, needing dual hearing was completely unnecessary for those moments to ensue. i still have every other physical and mental faculty in good shape. i have vision, perfect hearing in my right ear, smell, taste, and touch. i am well-equipped, and there's no reason for me to let my left-ear deafness negatively affect me in any way. anything to the contrary would be nothing short of silly and a sad, unnecessary sacrifice of potential.

(c) health insurance:

this post is becoming long enough, and i don't want to get started on how horrible the whole insurance bureaucracy along the way has been. basically, this ear experience has shown me a glimpse as to how horribly inefficient, moronic, and destructive healthcare is in america.

in one example, my primary care doctor (PCP) wrote a referral for me to see an MIT ENT specialist. earliest appointment was 3 weeks away. so, PCP also wrote me a referral to see a sooner Harvard MEEI ENT specialist, which the health insurance is refusing to pay for. this is ridiculous because my situation was time sensitive -- could not wait 3 weeks to see the MIT person -- and even when i did see the MIT person 3 weeks later, they immediately said

they have no clue about my case and that i did the right thing by seeing an MEEI ENT specialist earlier. so, despite all of the doctors' requests and confirmation of my doing the right thing, the silly insurance group is saying, 'nah, you should have done things in this orderly fashion... even though it makes no sense and is against what the doctors recommended.' haha, so messed up.

(d) epilogue:

(d1) day-to-day:

basically, it's like wearing noise-cancelling headphones only on 1 ear, while having to hear the vuvuzelas of the world cup... just the soccer game never ends. sometimes the vuvuzelas are distractingly loud, other times you can tune them out for about 10 minutes.

how deaf is deaf?

i've had two full-scope audiogram tests (aka hearing tests). my right is exceptionally good -- well above average. right ear can detect audio at 0 decibals, pretty much across the full, typical frequency range. my left ear can only begin to hear noises at 80-90 db, and when it does, it's distorted. this falls within the most severe category of hearing loss, called "profound" hearing loss. also, i'm not even testable on the word recognition test because when i finally do hear words at 90 db (instead of the normal 30 db volume), i don't hear words. instead, the words sound like forks scratching together. because the issues lie within the inner ear, or somewhere even before then, things like hearing aids and surgery cannot restore hearing.

ringing:

so, in short, i haven't had hearing in my left ear since june 4. the most annoying part is not only being able to hear nothing out of the left ear, but the constant loud ringing/ocean noise that is generated within the left's inner ear. every once in a while, a bus or subway train or something will make a noise loud enough for my left ear to relay the fork-scratching-together sound. that's not too much fun. in fact, i can feel my eardrum moving before i can hear anything. it's very weird. i'm getting better at blocking out the constant ringing, though. doctors say it may never go away, but that some people can get used to it after 1-20 years. i've found that when i'm thinking hard about something, i'm completely unaware of it. haha, so maybe this will encourage me to think deeply more often.

balance:

my balance is getting better, too, as i can do a quick walk and not really get jarred or dizzy. only turning the head in certain ways does it. well, sometimes i forget and i turn around quickly to look behind me. i almost fall over then, lol.

(d2) quick summary of everything that went down:

• june 3 - worked out hard in gym at night. ears got clogged, later ringing.
• june 4 @ 5am - woke up w/ "extreme vertigo"; vomited 30+ times. no hearing in left ear. went to harvard's MGH ER. stayed 36 hours.

doctor #1, diagnoses: probable labrynthitis, 100% chance of regaining hearing in a few days (wrong).

• june 8 - saw primary care doctor (PCP).

doctor #2, diagnoses: don't know, could be from weight lifting or viral. not too concerned about hearing. you should see an ENT specialist at MIT. (earliest appointment in 3 weeks).

• june 10 - MRI test. results good. no brain tumors.
• june 11 - started 10-day prescription of prednisone, to fight any possible viral damage.
• june 15 - went to Harvard's Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary's ER (aka MEEI ER).

doctor #3, diagnoses: don't know, no way to tell. see a follow-up expert, Dr. Rauch, here in a few weeks. 0% chance of regaining hearing.

• june 20 - went to MEEI ENT doctor.

doctor #4, diagnosis: probably from weight lifting. 5-10% chance of regaining hearing?

• june 22 - went to the general MIT ENT.

doctor #5, diagnosis: no idea. less than 5% chance of regaining hearing

• june 25 - went to MEEI's expert Dr. Rauch. ear injection #1, high hopes of it doing any good.

doctor #6, diagnosis: maybe weight lifting, maybe viral, some chance that it's something more random. less than 5% chance of regaining hearing.

• june 29 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear injection #2
• july 2 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear injection #3
• july 6 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. final ear injection #4
• july 7, my birthday - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear surgery, to patch any possible tears in my oval and round window. shouldn't have any effect on hearing.

in summary, the 2 most popular suspected causes are:

• (1) weight lifting:

if this is the cause, well, 1 or more of the following 3 things could have gone wrong:

(1) perilymph fistula (aka, tear in the oval and/or round window);

(2) tear in the membrane that has distinct sodium and potassium channels;

(3) blod clot

the body tries to repair itself if any of these happen, but there are no guarantees. further, when damage is done to the hair cells from the corti, then there's no going back. permanent damage is done. only (1) perilymph fistula has a surgical option, and that option can't really bring back hearing. rather, it patches any possible tears to prevent further hair cell damage and balance issues. there's no way to know if any of these 3 things occurred. well, at best you can observe if (1) perilymph fistula occurred by doing exploratory surgery. the others are not observable by any tools.

• (2) viral infection:

if this is the cause, the canonical, default treatment is prednisone to kill the virus, keep alive any semi-dead corti hair cells, and to alleviate inflammation. it only helps roughly 20% of people, but it's been the default treatment since a semi-good paper was published in 1980. alternatively, some docs give a different type of corticosteroid directly through the ear drum. same purpose, roughly same efficacy rate, but without the possibly crazy side-effects of prednisone entering the bloodstream.

i had both treatments. first prednisone, then later 4 ear injections.

regardless of if it's from weight lifting or a virus, it's likely that the damage is irreversible. nonetheless, i opted for the most pro-active steps and have done everything possible: i did both the surgery and the injections, in hopes of preventing any further damage to hair cells.

the end. if you made it all the way through, congrats. if you are later interested in hearing any possible updates or talking w/ me about any of this, that's fine. i'm open to that. i just meant that this writing is the last publicly broadcasted spiel that i'll write about it, and that i won't bring attention to it or whine about it anymore.

student loans: my trick on how to pay them off faster

regarding my loans, i saved roughly $250 within a 12-month span. you can too.

short version:

i wrote a little java program that uses simulated annealing to find the near-optimal solution of how to distribute your monthly loan payment amongst your various loans every month, while minimizing the amount of accrued interest.

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

long version:

if you have many loans which total a lot of money, you may be waisting 100s of dollars merely by incorrectly paying the wrong amounts towards each loan. the point of this writing is to help you save money.

obviously, one can save/waste a lot of money depending on when and how much they pay off their loans. this isn't about that. say you have 6 loans and $1,000 you wish to pay towards them. this writing is about how to apply your $1,000 towards the 6 individual loans in the best possible way so that you aren't wasting money. interest is a killer. below, i mention my approaches towards minimizing the interest, and i provide my actual student loans as an example:

upon graduating from ucla last year, my student loans totaled roughly $78,000. it's been 13 months since i've graduated, and i've gotten them down to $27,000. here are my 6 outstanding loans:

loan name, balance, APR, minimum monthly payment

-------------------------

sallie mae 1, $13472.75, 2.58%, $201.03

sallie mae 2, $1544.54, 7.25%, $214.74

sallie mae 3, $5032.22, 6.8%, $221.29

doe 1, $521.06, 8.5%, $52.61

doe 2, $2378.14, 6.8%, $59.50

ecsi, $4495.36, 5.0%, $60.46

for the rest of this article, let's be consistent and say that i pay $2,000 each month.

idea #1 - naive approach based on distribution of annual interest:

this is what i had been doing the whole time. when i had to start paying back my school loans, i didn't give it much thought as to how i would determine how much to spend towards each. i just quickly thought, 'i'll just pay some amount that is proportional to how damaging the interest is.' i now regret not thinking about it more.

the amount i was paying towards each loan was merely determined by its contribution towards my total annual interest across all loans:

loan i's payment := $2,000 * (loan i's yearly interest / total yearly interest across all loans)

idea #2 - brainstorming + linear/non-linear programming:

after filing my taxes, i noticed i paid a lot towards loan interest this past year. so, while brushing my teeth in the morning, i thought to myself that my current method (idea #1) is probably much worse than what i imagined. how can i find the optimal solution? first thing that popped into my mind was to search the solution space by using a genetic algorithm, but by the time i finished brushing my teeth, i had convinced myself that the sheer thought of such was complete overkill, laughable, and non-optimal, and clearly not the best approach.

throughout the day, i thought about other approaches:

linear/non-linear programming:

the idea of using linear programming came to mind. the format would be:

minimize C^T * x || sum(x) = b, where

• C is a vector of known coefficients that represent the interest for each loan
• x is a vector we are solving for, which represents how much to spend on each loan
• b represents how much we are willing to spend in a given month (i.e., $2,000)

in other words, we want an equation for our total interest across a given time period (1 month), and we want to minimize it. but unfortunately, we can't really form a linear equation for it. for example, the interest for one loan would be:

loan i's interest = (loan_i's_original_balance - how_much_to_pay_towards_loan_i) * (1 + APR/365.25)^30

we are minimizing the sum of this value across all loans.

that exponent makes it non-linear. moreover, i'm not sure how to solve it using non-linear programming either, as we no longer have a clean coefficient. we don't have an Ax = b; we have f(x) = b

maybe there's some way to use the simplex algorithm for this, but i wasn't interested in finding out. seems messy.

idea #3 - simulated annealing:

well, when all else fails, use simulated annealing, right? haha. simulated annealing is a pretty simple, common AI approach that seeks to find an optimal solution within a large search space.

i implemented it in a little java program.

basically, it:

• initially assigns random payment amounts towards each loan, while meeting the constraints of the minimum and maximum payment for each loan.
• it then calculates the total monthly interest across all loans.
• then, for however many epochs i care to run my algorithm, it will:
  
  
  
  • randomly decide to increase or decrease a to-be-selected loan,
  • then the loan it chooses to adjust is probabilistically chosen, based on each loan's contribution towards the total amount of interest across all loans.
  • the amount that it perturbs the loans is randomly chosen, too.
  • if the new payment amounts yield a lower interest, let's save these payments as the current state and continue
  • if the new payment amounts yield a higher interest, let's probabilistically save these payments as the current state and continue (this is to help avoid local minimums)
  • saves the best payment distribution that we encounter

the only tricky part was ensuring that the perturbing of the payment amounts still satisfied all of the constraints across every loan. a lot of error-checking tedium.

the program will display how much to pay towards each loan for every month, and it'll produce a summary that tells you how much you paid total, and how much went towards interest.

you can also experiment with choosing different monthly payment amounts and see how much it affects your lifetime interest amount. for example, my program showed me that:

• paying $2k/mo will take 13 months; i'll accrue ~$500 of interest.

OR

• paying only $1k/mo will take 26 months; i'll accrue ~$1,000 of interest

so, if i take a bullet of paying a measly extra $500 in lifetime interest, i'll gain the

freedom of having $1k extra of non-loan money each month for the next 26 months! it's definitely worth it.

solution:

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

future work:

my current solution attempts to minimize the accrued interest, but it only does so over each upcoming month. basically, it works in a month-to-month basis until all loans are gone, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal, global solution, since it's not looking at the bigger picture across the lifetime of all the loans. the optimal solution would need to apply random amounts to all loans across every month of its lifetime, then make shifts both (1) between the various loans and (2) from month-to-month. this would give it a global picture to search within.

i suspect the improvement would be relatively negligible. in my case, i'm guessing that it would save me no more than $20. so, i don't plan to add this improvement. it's not worth it, but yea, i recognize it as an area of improvement.

ideas?

if anyone has any ideas for a faster or more optimal solution, please let me know. i'm curious to hear suggestions.