Did You Ever Have a Third Symphony?

I recently attended the Annual PAASE Meeting and Symposium (APAMS) hosted by the Philippine American Academy of Science and Engineering (PAASE) president, Dr. Joel Cuello. It was held at the magnificently designed eco friendly ENR 2 Building of the University of Arizona this past weekend, April 6-7, 2018. Below are pictures of some of the highlights of the meeting.

The scientific lectures on Day 2 were pretty heady and not in my field. What I was able to remember were some quotes that the speakers deftly inserted in their slides for us to chuckle on or just plainly enjoy their witticism. My favorites are:

"Shapes have meanings and meanings have shapes", given by a statistician, Paul Ignacio.

"Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models. Bengaluru.". This was quoted by another statistician, Dr. Edsel Pena.

During this meeting, the one that I found thought provoking was not a quote but a metaphor used by longtime PAASE member, physicist, Dr. Amador Muriel. He gave a lecture on something hard to understand but still enjoyable to listen to due to his sense of humor and wit and his flair for the dramatics.

In one of the slides of his presentation at the meeting, he had in parenthesis "Brahms third symphony" as a reminder. He then elaborated on its use as a metaphor for the work he was lecturing on as his Third Symphony.

Brahms wrote his First and Second Symphonies in rapid succession with the third being finished six years later. During the gap, he composed other compositions. Some have considered the Third as the "most perfect" of the three symphonies.

The published paper Dr. Muriel presented was written by him much later after several years working on other theories to prove. It is the third of a series of papers on related topics with the first two papers being published in quick succession.

According to Dr. Muriel, going back to writing this third paper of the series came rather easily for him. It felt like he had all the information and ideas  somewhere within his brain during the interim. One of his colleagues even said it was the best of the three papers and compared the situation to Brahm's writing of his Third Symphony.

I started wracking my brains of a Third Symphony in my life. The closest application of the metaphor that I could think of is a bit of a stretch. It is my having two daughters four years apart as my first two symphonies and then thirty or so years later, not what you are thinking, I indirectly created my third symphony. Not another daughter but a granddaughter through my daughter.  I think this application should count.

Come to think of it. I could not think of a more direct metaphor since my third symphony is still yet to come. Perhaps when it does come what the first two are in the first place will surface in my mind. I find it exciting to think that just like in Brahms and Dr. Muriel's cases something that could be considered the best is yet to come.

Did you ever have a third symphony in your life? What was it? What were the first two?