The instructor for this class is me (Don Percival). I am the proud possessor of:

• an e-mail address, namely, dbp@apl.washington.edu. I check my mail fairly frequently, so this is the best way of getting in touch with me.
• an office, which is in Room 458, Henderson Hall -- this is where the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is located. I don't have regularly scheduled office hours, but feel free to contact me for an appointment. It is important to check with me before coming over because I am frequently away from my office. To get to my office, go to the elevator that you see upon entering Henderson Hall (just to the right of the receptionist's desk). Go to the fourth floor, turn left when you get out of the elevator, walk about five steps past some mailboxes, and then turn left again down a short hallway - my office (458) is another five steps away (it is the first one in that hallway).
• a phone, which lives in my office and rings if you dial 543-1368. If I am not around to answer the phone (or if I am busy fending off an aluminum siding salesperson), I have voice mail, which works on days when I can remember all the buttons that need to be pushed in order to retrieve the mail (translation: please use e-mail if at all possible!!!). If you have reason to believe that I should be somewhere at APL but a phone call fails to rouse me, you can call the APL operator at 543-1300 and ask him/her to have me paged.
• a spiffy mailbox in the Department of Statistics, which I visit only every once in a while, so please don't put anything there that you want me to get quickly (e.g., a homework assignment) without checking with me first.
• a Web page, which lives somewhere OUT THERE. From this page, you can learn many quaint facts about my existence, but why bother? If you are momentarily maxed out on spectral analysis and statistics (an admittedly highly unlikely occurrence!) and have a bit of extra time on your hand, I recommend you spend it either reading
  • `Remembrance of Things Past' by Marcel Proust (sometimes called `In Search of Lost Time' in a misguided effort to obtain a more `accurate' translation of the French title, which in fact actually came from a translation from English to French of a line from a poem by Shakespeare!);
  • `Blood Meridian,' `All the Pretty Horses,' `The Crossing' and `Cities of the Plain' (the last three known collectively as the `Border Trilogy') by Cormac McCarthy, or `The Road', his 2006 vision of a post-apocalyptic world;
  • `The Magus' by John Fowles;
  • `White-Jacket,' `Moby-Dick' and `Bartleby, the Scrivener' by Herman Melville; or
  • any number of books by Joyce Carol Oates (in particular, `We Were the Mulvaneys') or Rosamund Smith (her nom de plume when writing mysteries with psychopathic twists);
  listening to
  • Bach's `Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites' (as recorded by Yo-Yo Ma, Mstislav Rostropovich or Janos Starker) and `Violin Sonatas and Partitas' (as recorded by Itzhak Perlman, or Hilary Hahn);
  • Mozart's `Requiem,' `Don Giovanni' and `The Magic Flute';
  • Beethoven's `Symphony Number 7' and `Violin Sonatas' (as recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter); or
  • Schostakowitsch's `String Quartet Number 8' (as recorded by the Brodsky Quartet);
  or, if you are still in quest of entertainment, watching
  • `2001: A Space Odyssey' directed by Stanley Kubrick;
  • `Thelma and Louise' directed by Ridley Scott;
  • `The Seventh Seal' directed by Ingmar Bergman;
  • `All the Pretty Horses' directed by Billy Bob Thornton (a surprisingly well done adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel);
  • `Mulholland Drive' directed by David Lynch (after 10+ viewings, I think I have figured out what Lynch is basically up to, but there are numerous details for which I would love an explanation (e.g., why does the aunt momentarily reappear and look around her apartment just after Betty disappears and prior to Diane's emergence from the dream?));
  • `Young Frankenstein' directed by Mel Brooks; or
  • `Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail' directed by ... hmmm ... I don't think the term `directed' really applies here (the Historian made an attempt, but wasn't particularly successful)!