I will soon end my time as a graduate student in the statistics department at Penn State. I plan to graduate with a PhD by the end of the upcoming summer. Even before I leave, I’m growing nostalgic about the time I’ve spent here.   Happy Valley is a great part of the world.

The impending ending has prompted some reflection in terms of personal growth on my part.

Academically, there is no doubt that grad school has been transformative. I arrived at the beach of learning as a bright-eyed scholastic neophyte, and venturing toe-deep into the water, immediately experienced a storm. Brilliant classmates, hard courses, unseasoned math skills. It added up to a personal nor’easter.

Given the inauspicious beginning, I probably had little confidence that I could see the program through for a PhD. My working strategy, anyway, was to get a Master’s degree and then reevaluate. When decision time came, I chose to ride the academic wave as far as it would take me and somehow the swell was large enough to sweep me past the major hazards: courses, qualifying exams, comprehensives.

Once I made it to the open sea, where it was not only acceptable but necessary to plumb the academic depths of a chosen research topic, things turned exhilarating. I found thesis advisors well-suited to my interests and aptitude, and at some point I wasn’t clinging to survival in the open sea on a dilapidated life-boat, but using the stiff winds to my advantage and sailing in a handsome schooner.

I found that I loved the research process because it allowed me to become immersed in a particular problem. I’d think about it during the day, then while I was walking to my car. I’d think about it in the shower, on the bus, and even when I was at home with my family (I fight that one). I’d think about it so much that I felt I actually might be able to contribute something to it that no one else had. Working like this on a few problems, and making some progress, has increased my confidence enormously.

I love research for the moments of insight, when I feel something click together in my mind.

God has surely been behind this stomach-turning ocean voyage. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17, NIV). All things work together for good to them that love God (Romans 8:28). “Good” for me has meant successfully navigating this program, and coming to enjoy it immensely.

I didn’t think too much of the uproar fomented by the conservative right excoriating President Obama for speaking to schoolchildren. But on the other hand, I have similar feelings about the left basically trumping up blanket charges of racism toward those that are protesting the administration’s policies.

No doubt there are some misguided souls who actually do have a beef with the president because he’s black. But to insinuate that the movement as a whole is racially-tinged is puzzling, unnecessary, and unhelpful.

This article by Robert Patterson argues that traditional marriage is the most economically productive family arrangement because of the sharp division of labor which exists between the man and woman: The man works mostly to be productive outside the home and the woman works almost exclusively within it.  This balances the need to produce economically for the good of the family unit with the need to propogate and nurture which will result in future production and economic advantage for the society. 

This in contrast to homosexual arrangements or even many heterosexual unions in which there is no such distinction. 

Makes sense to me, though this seems more theoretical than based upon empirical evidence.  Of course, this theory supports the Biblical ideal.

In the same article, the author cites some statistics about the state of the traditional family in Scandinavia, where, it seems, more than half of births are to unwed mothers.  If the above theory is true, then I would expect such countries to be poor, yet when I look at per capita GDP it seems as if most Scandinavian countries are in the top 10%.
 
It reminds me of another article I read sometime back which refers to the peacefulness and happiness of these Scandinavian countries.  This was unexpected because I have been programmed to view socialism as an unsustainable, unjust societal structure.  Perhaps a level of socialism can in fact produce a functioning, prosperous, and happy society.

To me, being responsible means doing what I’m supposed to do.  Keeping appointments, getting the oil changed regularly, paying bills on time, locking the door before we go to bed at night.

But what about when doing the responsible thing requires a relentlessness of the mind and a doggedness of the will?  In other words, what about when responsibility borders upon obsession?

I think I fairly often walk up to this line, and occasionally cross it.

A pet peeve of mine is when, in a public setting, Person A addresses a question to Person B and a nearby Person C attempts to provide an answer, preempting Person B’s right to reply.

Say someone is presenting their statistical research in a seminar and a hand goes up.  A member of the audience doesn’t understand something and asks a question about it.  But the questioner’s buddy sitting next to him thinks he knows the answer.  So while the presenter stands up front looking on and maybe even trying to answer, the buddy quietly (so no one else can hear) imparts his wisdom to the inquirer.

See the problem?  It puts the questioner in a difficult spot.  He asked the question of the speaker, yet if he looks to him for the answer he will be rudely ignoring his buddy who is speaking directly to him.

Another place this comes up is in a choir rehearsal.  Perhaps you ask a question of the director and the person sitting beside you might immediately know the answer because the director answered it 10 minutes before but you weren’t paying attention.  Same thing, pretty much.

It is interesting how you do your pet peeves, because I was once sitting in a choir and a fellow tenor asked a question whose answer was just so obvious to me.  So of course I jumped in and tried to answer the question.

In many academic positions, a prerequisite to success is the prolific procurement of funds from outside funding agencies.  In my view it’s a somewhat dreary business because it involves paperwork and inevitably diverts energy from actual research, instead requiring much effort expended in support of proposing research. But if you are in chemistry and your work requires expensive equipment, what can you do?

Statistics is not quite as dependent upon such funding as many science and engineering disciplines, because statistical research is relatively inexpensive to conduct.  However, pressure to bring in money still exists and if you are a young researcher, a successful grant proposal seems to be a definite feather in the tenure cap.

I currently exist in the academy, yet I am a student not an academic.  Still, I have been touched by this funding model since wouldn’t it be nice if I could quit working as a teaching or research assistant during my last year and get a pay raise to boot?

So this last spring I spent quite a bit of time customizing my curriculum vitae, writing this essay and that compressed dissertation proposal, tweaking an abstract here and filling out an application form there.  The complete results of my labors aren’t in, but while I’m not batting 1.000, it has paid off.

Here are the answers to the puzzle (scroll down to the last two pages):  Crossword answers

Our first post-birth weekend jaunt was to a seminar and retreat for college students put on by Faith Builders and I presented a crossword puzzle as part the “student potpourri”.  Its theme is conservative Anabaptists and since I am one, a little fun at their expense is appropriate I think.

Find it as a Microsoft Word document here (first page crossword puzzle and second page clues).

I’ll post the answers in a few days.

Born 3:13 p.m. on June 9, 2009.  Weighed 6 lbs. 7 oz., 20 inches long.

Minutes after delivery

Early family photo.

The Big XLS, after a hard day's work.

I really enjoy crafting words. Beyond this blog and Facebook status updates (believe it or not, I sometimes agonize over them), academic papers and my dissertation are my primary writing outlets.  To me, the tedious aspects of writing are the elements tangential to the act itself, like structuring the paper and formatting the document.  One of my favorite writing-related activities is to rewrite a passage, seeing how much more concise I can make it.  Not only does this channel my competitiveness in a productive way, it also allows me the freedom to write initial drafts thinking more about the ideas than how to express them.

Here are a couple of examples from a methodological paper about work I did at the Consulting Center with the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission.  Disregard the symbols; they are a byproduct of writing in LaTeX.  I make no claim that this is great writing, but I think you’ll have to admit that the rewrites are improvements over the originals.

Sample 1 Original (90 words):

What may seem as an arbitrary level of specificity for the computation of these elements (for instance, why calculate $g_{m}$ only for each mode, but $b_{jkl}$ for each combination of geostrata, month, and day type but not mode) is a consequence of our method of calculation which is intuitive but requires a lot of data.  In some cases, there was simply not enough data to estimate every combination and somewhat subjective decisions had to be made about which factors to consider.  A more satisfactory method would involve a model-based regression approach.

Sample 1 Rewrite (79 words):

What may seem an arbitrary level of specificity for the computation of these elements (for instance, why calculate $g_{m}$ only for each mode, but $b_{jkl}$ for each combination of geostrata, month, and day type but not mode) is a consequence of our estimation method which is intuitive but data-intensive.  In some cases, we lacked sufficient data and somewhat subjective decisions had to be made about which factors to consider.  A more satisfactory method would utilize a model-based regression approach.

Sample 2 Original (116 words):

As an illustrative example, suppose only 5\% of agent wait time throughout the day is spent during the 800 hour, while 10\% is spent during the 1000 hour.  In this case, if there was an equal amount of effort being expended during the two hours, twice as much would be captured in the 1000 hour because of the extra time interview agents were spending during that hour.  Thus, to standardize these interview effort quantities we would divide by 0.05 any effort obtained based on an interview during the 800 hour and by 0.10 any effort obtained during the 1000 hour.  Note that these new values have no units and are used simply to standardize the wait times to to be used to produce the distribution.

Sample 2 Rewrite (95 words):

For example, suppose only 5\% of agent wait time is spent during the 800 hour, while 10\% occurs from 1000-1100.  If an equal amount of angler effort was expended in each hour, twice as much would be captured in the 1000 hour because of the extra time agents spent conducting interviews during that hour.  Thus, to standardize these interview-elicited effort quantities we would divide by $0.05$ any interview-elicited effort obtained in an interview during the 800 hour and by $0.10$ any effort obtained during the 1000 hour.  Note that these standardized values are unitless and are used only to produce the distribution.