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

Month: June 2013

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab – Kelly’s first day on the job

Day 650 of 1000

Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I took the five hour drive up to Baltimore on Saturday.  We took her there so she could start her new job as a Statistical Intern at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL) in Laurel, Maryland.  She stays with our (new/old) friends Brian and Celia’s who have an awesome house close to both the airport and train station in Baltimore.  Christian drove Lorena up in the Accord while Kelly drove me up in the Fiesta.  We drove from Brian and Celia’s house to the JHU APL and back so Kelly would know where it is.  It is quite a good internship.  Kelly is a little apprehensive, but excited.  She is filling out paperwork and going through orientation this morning.

The funny and excellent deal about this job is that she got it ENTIRELY on her own.  Last fall, she went to the NCSU job fair, had a brienf talk with the people at the JHU APL booth, and gave her resume to them.  She did the same with a bunch of other companies, but got follow-up interviews with Target, Caterpillar, and JHU APL.  She had a horrible interview with Target, but received job offers from Cat and JHU APL.Two out of three is really pretty amazing.  This is her first serious job (well, babysitting might be considered pretty serious, too).  She got it completely on her own.  She made all the connections and got the job based on her resume and her performance at the interviews.  It is really very exciting.

We are very appreciative that Christian was willing to drive all the way back home from Baltimore to Raleigh for a sum total of ten hours in the drivers seat.  All good stuff.

What does a Statistician do?

Day 651 of 1000

When Kelly tells people she is a Statistics major, people often ask if it is possible to get a job with that degree.  Beside the tactlessness of the question we are amazed that people know so little about what is driving innovation in medicine, the internet, marketing, agriculture, sociology, psychology, and just about every other field imaginable.  Big money is invested to mine information from the mountains of data produced in clinical studies, internet commerce, engineering research, etc.  A deep knowledge of statistics is required to do this work.  Statisticians are in big demand.

What prompted this diatribe?  I have written about some of the demand for statistical knowledge in the past (see here and here), but another example showed up today in an article on ZDNet today.  Dell and Intel are building a “Big Data” innovation center in Singapore.  Who will man the center?  Statisticians!

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