"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

San Pedro Garza Garcia

Tag: University of Washington

Riding to Seattle on the train

Kelly and Dad UW November 2015
Lorena and I drove up to Vancouver, Washington after work on Friday to catch a train to Seattle. The train ride was wonderful. It was the first time I was able to go up there, but I hope it will not be the last. Kelly was at a party so we took an Uber ride to her apartment from the train station. That was my first Uber ride. I am never going to take another taxi if I can at all avoid it. It was just unbelievably efficient and convenient. I had no sympathy for the taxi systems in the big cities before Uber. I have less sympathy now.

We got up early, walked to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant by Kelly’s apartment and had an amazing breakfast. There were a ton of great little restaurants all over the place. We promised Kelly and ourselves we would make our way back up there a lot more often to try out more of them. After breakfast, Kelly and I went to the coffee shop where she does a lot of her studying. I worked and she studied while Lorena ran out and did errands. I got nostalgic for our study at the Hill and Hunt libraries back in Raleigh when the kids were at North Carolina State.

Both the kids are going through a lot of pain in their programs right now. When they set out to do something hard with their schooling ten years ago or so, we knew there would be some rough patches and they are both in what can only be described as a grind. Christian just finished his Quals and has to deliver his first conference paper at an Information Theory conference in Asilomar, California next week. Kelly has her first year paper due in January and her Quals in July. She has some very intense Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant duties on top of it all.

This point of their PhD degree work is nothing more than a horrible grind. They barely have time to sleep because it is just one deadline after another and I think it can be a little daunting and discouraging. They will be at the halfway point soon, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. One of the things I have to remind them is that the point of all this work is to give them the skills and credentials to get a good job. That is all. It is not necessary to even stay in the field they studied. When this is done, they have something real they can use to get a good job, but it should not define their life. Too many people get their degree and think it somehow entitles them to unwarranted and unrealistic levels of respect and success. It does not. Life is just getting started when school ends.

Betty Blonde #415 – 02/7/2010
Betty Blonde #415
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Be wary of Biology professors at University of Washington if the rest of them are anything like this guy

Commie professor alert!* I just sent Kelly (UW graduate student) a note that said, “http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/09/david-barash-speaking-with-authority-on-what-he-knows-next-to-nothing-about/ — Don’t take Biology at UW. You might get that guy.”

She wrote back and said, and I quote exactly, “ha ha i won’t” with precisely that punctuation and capitalization.

I fear for the reputation of the graduate schools at UW. While there is a certain amount of hipness associated with IM’ing people with little regard for grammatical convention, I do not get why people like the good Biology professor do not realize how foolish they look (and actually are) in making outdated, absurd, discredited philosophical, historical, and theological statements outside their area of expertise. Tom Gilson over at ThinkingChristian explains in painstaking detail (see the linked article) why this is so ridiculous. It seems like it has reached epidemic levels amongst atheists credentialed in one area (Biology, Physics, Zoology) and an abysmal lack of knowledge and training in the areas on which they are opining (Philosophy, History, Theology). Here is a snippet, but I recommend you read the whole thing. And while you are out it check out the blog; there is always something interesting going on there, too.

In his Talk, [David Barash] also says,

Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering…. The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

He does not say, “I have observed and reflected on animal pain and death as a biologist, so therefore I am qualified theologically to pronounce every explanation for the goodness of God to be inadequate.”

*Just kidding. I WISH that guy was at UW or ASU. I would have a ton more interesting material if he was. On the other hand, Lawrence Krauss of ASU got his hat handed to him in debate with William Lane Craig at NCSU for much the same reason that David Barash has clowned himself, so maybe there is hope for good material at the kids’ new schools.

Kelly’s apartment in Seattle

Kelly's apartment in Seattle
Kelly is now settled into her apartment in Seattle.  She loves it and is making new friends.

Betty Blonde #140 – 01/28/2009
Betty Blonde #140
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Freshman year in college

Kelly and Christian--first day of class their Freshman year of collegeThis is a picture of Kelly and Christian with their new backpacks on their first day of college in August of 2010. I am going to post pictures of them at the start of each year for their for years of college.  Now Kelly and Christian both have apartments in their respective new towns as they start their PhD’s. They have both been able to find good apartments. Kelly is about 30 minutes by bus from her office at University of Washington.  Christian hit the lottery and found an apartment about a block from the light rail that will take him to within a block of his office at Arizona State University.  He should be able to get from his apartment door to his office in about 15 minutes.

They are both in the process of furnishing their apartments and having a great time. I cannot wait to visit both of them in their new digs.

Betty Blonde #135 – 01/21/2009
Betty Blonde #135
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Trying to figure out what school to go attend

Day 941 of 1000

The National Academy of Sciences has a research ranking report for Universities.  You can download the report here. It seems to be pretty rigorous in the way it looks at different schools and provides a ton of information.  It is profoundly better than the almost worthless US News rankings.  Christian is still trying to decide where to go, so we have extracted some information from the report relevant to his decision.  I pasted the stuff we put together below.  The big take-aways are that Duke is WAY overrated as and Electrical Engineering school and we had no idea that Arizona State was so high (above schools like Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Ohio State, Case Western Reserve, Johns Hopkins, Washington and Texas A&M, on par with schools like Penn State, UCSD, UTexas and Michigan).  It was a very interesting exercise

Here are our notes:

I downloaded the official report from which PhD.org rankings are derived.  There are two ways they rank in a VERY rigorous way.  Everyone believes this is the best.  Here are descriptions of the rankings and the rankings themselves.  ASU is VERY high in both rankings:  I put the rankings of some very big name schools along with those for ASU.  ASU is high in the most important rankings, but also high in the peer evaluation rankings (you have to scroll down to see that).  One thing I noticed that the peer evaluations say Duke is right up at the top while the REAL measures say they stink.  ASU kills them.  ASU is also WAY above Texas A&M, NCSU, and Washington in the same range as UT, UCSD, and Penn State on all the measures.  Those are amazing rankings and pretty surprising in how high ASU is ranked.

R Ranking (based on the actual quality of the professors at the school — this is the most important one because it is based on actually work performed rather than people’s ideas about what is good)

========
R Rankings (for regression-based rankings) depend on the weights calculated from faculty ratings of a sample of programs in their field. These ratings were related, through a multiple regression and principal components analysis, to the 20 characteristics that the committee had determined to be factors of program quality. The resulting weights were then applied to data corresponding to those characteristics for each of the programs in the field.

5th percentile
==========
University of Texas is ranked 13
UCSD is ranked 14
Arizona State is ranked 15
Penn State is ranked 16
Texas A&M is ranked 22
Washington is ranked 31
CSU is ranked 47
Duke is ranked 4800

95th percentile
===========
University of Texas is ranked 12
UCSD is ranked 14
Penn State is ranked 15
Arizona State is ranked 16
Texas A&M is ranked 20
Washington is ranked 28
NCSU is ranked 42
Duke is ranked 43

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBIA
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
TEXAS A & M UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
YALE UNIVERSITY
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
RICE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
BROWN UNIVERSITY
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
DUKE UNIVERSITY
NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

S Ranking (based on how professors ranked schools other than their own so it is OK, but not as good, because it is about what people think of a school, not actual measures)
========
S Rankings (for survey-based rankings) are based on how faculty weighted—or assigned importance to—20 characteristics that the study committee determined to be factors contributing to program quality. The weights of characteristics vary by field based on faculty survey responses in each of those fields. Programs in a field rank higher if they demonstrate strength in the characteristics carrying greater weights.

5th percentile
===========
Duke is ranked 17
Arizona State is ranked 20
Penn State is ranked 21
UCSD is ranked 22
University of Texas is ranked 45
Washington is ranked 50
Texas A&M is ranked 57
NCSU is ranked 82

95th percentile
===========
Duke is ranked 17
Penn State is ranked 20
Arizona State is ranked 21
UCSD is ranked 24
Washington is ranked 37
University of Texas is ranked 45
Texas A&M is ranked 51
NCSU is ranked 78

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
YALE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
DUKE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-RIVERSIDE
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
BROWN UNIVERSITY
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
RICE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS
RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Betty Blonde #91 – 11/20/2008
Betty Blonde #91
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Kelly is accepted for PhD at University of Washington

Marketing Strategy!
Kelly is accepted at University of Washington for a PhD in Marketing Strategy

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén