Probably Probabble

One thing I’m doing while I’m not quite in school is studying probability. To be more specific, I am learning “the mathematics of probability [and] the many possible applications of this subject” by reading and exercising with Sheldon Ross’s A First Course in Probability, 6th ed. By “exercising with,” I mean attempting the examples, as well as the problems, exercises, and self-tests listed at the end of each chapter. At least… so far.

Chapter 1 is about “Combinatorial Analysis,” a subject I took a class or two on in college. It was mostly review, but for a number of reasons, it took me quite some time to finish. So, after spending several months, off-and-on, reading and exercising with the first chapter, I’ve just started reading chapter 2, on the “Axioms of Probability.” I’ve just started reading it; haven’t even really warmed up yet. But despite my lack of direct exposure to this material, I’ve been having a thought… a premature, unsubstantiated thought:

Probability theory is about experiments, possible outcomes, and events that have and have not occurred. This is obviously why it’s rhetorical. This is why so many rhetoricians have done said so many times that rhetoric is so probabilistic. But probability is math, dam-nit. And, more importantly… maybe… probability is… maybe… Deluzean.

What I am doing?

I’m currently on break from grad school. But I’m not spring break or winter break. This break is longer. It will last at least a year. At least. It is marriage break. Or maybe life break. I am not in school right now because of marriage, because of life.

In a sense, this is the first time in my life I have not really been in school or headed to school. I am still teaching at schools, though. So I am still in school in that way. At least, I’m becoming less and less in school.

Once in a while I have ideas, even when I’m not in school. (When I’m less in school. When I’m not so in school.) For a while at the beginning of this semester… (See: “semester”: that means I’m still in school. Or in school-time.) At the beginning of this semester, I was driving very long distances several times a week to go teach at different schools. Often, usually in the nervous adrenaline rush I get after teaching, I would have ideas. Some of these ideas were about teaching. Some were about writing: teaching writing or writing as a thing… an activity, I guess I mean… maybe an institution…? Some of these ideas were about other things. This is my attempt to have ideas and keep them somewhere.

This is not a post title

I have a blog now. I just got it. Just now.