Here is a photo that Ron took on July 5, 2020, the day before the last day.

It was a beautiful morning and the photo was the view of kayaks through the deck.

On that day, Ron talked over the phone with Steve Butler and Persi Diaconis about their work in progress concerning certain random walks on Zp. Ron pointed out that the behavior was very different for p 1 (mod 4) versus p 3 (mod 4) and he suggested various ways to get computational data.

Later in the day Ron exchanged email with Sam Spiro about their joint paper (with Persi and others on card guessing) which is near completion. He wrote email to Judith Ng including the photo of kayaks and a photo of his wife Fan in the kitchen looking back at him through the Google Nest Cam.

On the wall in Ron's office, he hung a poster of squares arranged in 90 lines each consisting of 52 little squares. Later on he modified it so it contains 100 lines. (He sometimes joked that his grandma lived to 99 and then hit by a truck.) The rule is to fill one square each week. Thus, one can see how many squares are left and how finite and precious life is. He only used 84 lines but every square was gloriously filled.

Here are some recent links about Ron: