Stochastic Background

The optimization course that I'm taking is not as rigorous as it could be. It's geared toward application, and O.R. (Operations Research) is a huge field to be dissected in a single, undergraduate course. So you hit the high points and pay no attention to the theory propping these methods up.

That's fine. It is what it is.

The last week or two, we've moved to a new area of O.R., which is stochastic (probabalistic) modeling. I'm taking a whole class on this from the Stats department next term, and our prof is trying to squeeze a little bit in at the very end of this quarter. Of course, a prerequisite for the Stats Stochastic course in a class that I'm taking now (Mathematical Statistics) that probability-wise and theory-wise goes way beyond anything most of my classmates have seen. I, on the other hand, am interested by this stuff and have more background in probability. But people don't have the background and they're getting lost.

I was going to try to say something profound about my feelings on this, but nothing's coming. Something about motives and pride, though.