Chapman Kids Blog

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

Month: September 2013 Page 1 of 2

Swirl: An interactive learning environment for R

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On Monday, September 30, 2013

In Software, Technology

Day 770 of 1000

There is a post over at the Simply Statistics blog that talks about an interactive programming environment for the R statistical programming language called swirl.  I have decided to download this when I am back in my Hotel room tonight (I am working in Prescott, AZ this week) and report what I find.  It is amazing how important statistics has become in the work I do in machine vision.  The last four jobs (including this one) is loaded with it.  I just sent a set of data off to members of our team in Australia and China because we do not have anyone here yet who can handle it.  I suspect, I will be hiring a data science consultant to pick up some small projects, soon, but believe we will be hiring a fulltime data scientist within two or three years just to consume the data we produce in my group.  I need to start studying R and Weka to get enough knowledge to hire well.  I would like to learn SAS and JMP, too.  Kelly says JMP is not so expensive, so we might start with that.  Fortunately, I have some data scientist friends who are capable of helping me.

Invitation to write a community college course

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On Sunday, September 29, 2013

In Education

Day 769 of 1000

We love community colleges.  In spite of our dedication to getting our kids through Big State U and on into grad school, we believe that if there is going to be a long term future for mass public post secondary education, it will be centered around community colleges.  Some are fortunate to live within driving distance of a state four year college, but almost all of America is within a half hour drive of a first rate community college.  They do a great job right now at training people for jobs in auto repair, dental assisting, welding, electronic technician work, bookkeeping, and so many other great fields where people can make a great living.

They also are great in preparing people for entry into four year schools.  We believe that these four year schools will start to get more distributed.  When that happens, the community college will be great places to proctor sit-down exams, on-sight seminars, and a plethora of other activities associated with the delivery of distributed classes.  They currently work with Big State U to coordinate classes and even perform some research, but we see that collaboration getting bigger as pressure is added to drive cost out of higher education.

With that as a backdrop, you will understand when I was excited about an opportunity I have been given to write a two semester community college course in Machine Vision.  I will write the course plan, develop computer programs, and help do some “train the trainer” sessions to get the thing going.  I think it will take at least a year given my current schedule to have anything ready to go, but it is an exciting new opportunity that I believe I will enjoy thoroughly.  I will keep you posted.

GRE day in the Chapman household

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On Saturday, September 28, 2013

In Education

We hit another milestone today in the kids education.  They took a GRE practice test two weeks ago and are scheduled to take the real thing at 1:00 PM this afternoon.  It is hard to believe we have come this far in time and place from when we started homeschool with Kelly in the first grade in Oregon in 1999.  Now both the kids have to take the Graduate Record Exam (college entrance exam) so they can start applying to graduate schools next month.  We plan to celebrate, maybe at Chick-fil-A.

Mid-career Masters Degree: Getting started again after a pretty lousy start at community college

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On Saturday, September 28, 2013

In Education

Day 768 of 1000

This is the third in a series of posts about how a mid-career Masters degree changed my life. I admire people who do an after work and weekends Masters degree so they can pay the rent and support the family, but I did not do it that way. I bailed out of my job and dived in full time after having spent ten years in the workforce.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here.

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[Next post in series]

I have good friend named Troy who made one of the most bold mid-career moves I have ever seen.  He spent the better part of a decade in Christian ministry.  Before that, he went to a local community college up in Ohio.  His grades were not so hot because his heart was not really in it.  At around age 30 he left the ministry and needed a way to make a living.  He had done a pretty big water project during his time in the ministry that he really enjoyed so he thought he might take a stab at a degree in Construction Engineering Management (CEM).  He decided to move down to our part of the world, work for awhile to be a resident so he could get in-state tuition, and then go back to college.

About that time, our family met him at church and we struck up a friendship.  We went out to lunch after church quite a lot and we talked about his plan.  In our discussions, he explained he was most interested in the technical aspects of water and construction projects much more than their management.  I asked him why he did not think about trying a degree in Civil Engineering rather than CEM.  He said he liked that idea, but Civil Engineering is a much harder course of study (it truly is) and he did not know if he could handle some of the math and chemistry given his current responsibilities as he was planning to get married at the time.

I suggested that after he started a family, he would not have much chance to switch careers again, so he would probably be stuck doing whatever he studied after whatever degree he got.  I also suggested that fear of a hard course in math or chemistry was no reason to give up on a career that he thought he would truly love.  Fortunately, his fiancee, who had taken a hard course of study in college through graduate school was on exactly the same page, so I was just reenforcing something she had already said.  Both of us felt (independently–I had not met her yet), that if he got really stuck, it was possible to get an inexpensive, but really good tutor for whatever material caused him problems.

GaugeCam in the tidal marsh of the North Carolina coastWith the help of his wife, he decided to go for it.  His next big problem was to convince one of the top Civil Engineering schools in the country to admit him to their program.  That was precisely my problem when I wanted to go back to college before I met Dr. Johnson.  I did not think anyone would let me into a program of any quality, especially for an engineering degree.  Troy felt the same way.  Even though he had gotten stellar grades in high school, he really was not paying attention while he was at the community college many years before and had, like me, dug himself a pretty deep hole.  Still, because of my experience at UTEP, I encouraged Troy to go talk to whoever would listen to him about getting accepted into the program on a probationary status.  I encouraged him to use the fact of his long run in Christian ministry as an indicator of his repsonsibility.  Again, you have to use examples of what you have done right to move forward.  It worked.  He was admitted on a probationary status–the same as mine when I got admitted to UTEP.  He had to pass two very difficult, technical classes to remove the probationary status.  One of the classes was the math class he feared the most.

He got a tutor for the the class he thought he might not be able to handle on his own.  He received an A i both classes.  His success helped him realize he could do it on his own.  The tutors really were a help, but the help came in the form of a confidence boost as much as an academic boost.  He was admitted on a probationary status, passed the two courses they gave him and was a full time, matriculated student in Civil Engineering in short order.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude three years after he started.

Since graduating with his Bachelors degree, Troy has moved on to a PhD in engineering.  The image that accompanies this post is of Troy’s undergraduate research project called GaugeCam.com.  It was so successful, it has continued beyond his undergraduate effort and has been taken over by faculty and additional graduate student researchers.  So far there has been one refereed journal article, with a second almost ready for publication, and several more in the works.  It pays to make bold moves.

Ten years of homeschool socialization

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On Friday, September 27, 2013

In culture, Education, Family, Homeschool

I have written a good number of posts about the issue of “socialization” in homeschool over the years. Since the subject still comes up regularly, I thought it might be good to make an index of some of the more interesting posts on the subject. I will list the posts in reverse chronological order with a brief description because some of the titles are not very precise with respect to the content of the articles. I would like to state for the record that we know home schools, government schools, children, parents, and teachers vary. These posts are about our experience and observations.

Memorization, learning to read, and homeschool

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On Friday, September 27, 2013

In Education, Homeschool

Day 767 of 1000

The sound quality of this video is not so great, but it shows Kelly recite The Owl and the Pussycat when she was a little past four years old .  It was not too long after this that she learned how to read for herself.  We read this book to Kelly and Christian many, many times.  We did not know she had it memorized until she just recited it to us one day.  She received lots of accolades for this memorization, mostly from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older friends–other kids did not care so much.  This happened often enough, Christian wanted to get in on the action, so we worked with him on memorization, too.  We mostly memorized Bible verses, but there was some poetry and other things thrown in there, too.

The next thing that happened is Kelly started associating the words she had memorized with the appearance of the words in the books.  At about the same time, we bought a computer game program called Reader Rabbit.  Kelly loved to sit on my lap and play that game.  We did it, on a schedule, for about ten minutes per day.  Before we knew it she was reading.  At first, she only read aloud, but one day it dawned on her that she did not have to say the words to read the book and proclaimed that loudly to Lorena, “I am reading in my head!”  This all started with memorization.  We think it is a wonderful tool for the entire learning process, not just reading.

We believe this little event was what put us on the road to active participation in the education of our children and eventually to homeschool.  The kids memorized longer and longer passages throughout their homeschool education.  One of the key goals we meet toward the end was the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 in the Bible.  I had told them they could get their drivers license they completed this memorization.  I never really held them to that, but both of them were able to quote it all.

Now that the kids are in college, we feel somewhat of a void.  We get great joy out of seeing other people teach their kids to memorize and read.  What we did not know at the time is that practiced memorization gives kids a “super-power” through college and even on into their work life.

Update:  One of our homeschool friends left a comment.  I went over to her website and found they have big time trumped us with an entire alphabet of memorized, little kid poetry.  Pretty awesome.  Check it out here.  Click on the individual letters to access the videos of the poetry.

Are homeshool children too sheltered?

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On Thursday, September 26, 2013

In Education, Homeschool

The article my cousin Trisha sent me yesterday made me think again about how thankful I am our children were not subjected to government school.  The article is a nice one about some really positive things that happened at a public high school in Utah.  Still, these kinds of feel good stories are the exception, not the rule.  We remain grateful to the Albany Public School system in Oregon for providing our children with such a horrific educational experience that we were motivated to pull them out and homeschool them.  In thinking and reading about this I ran into a great blog post on the whole homeschool socialization thing.

Early in our journey of homeschooling a friend pointed out to me that if your child does not know Spanish, you do not put her in a large group of other people who do not know Spanish and expect them to learn Spanish from each other. Yet we say that children need to learn ‘socialization’ from each other- we stick children into a peer group of immature individuals who admittedly are not socialized and not skilled in the graces of getting along with one another and say they are there to learn those skills from each other. We’ve been doing this so long that the results of this seem normal and healthy to us as a culture- while they may be ‘normal,’ I want something better for my family and do not consider the typical age based model of social interaction and its results to be the standard I am aiming for.

The author of this blog post really nails it.  This was our experience, too.  Even though we do not believe our kids are any brighter than the bulk of kids that go to “Big State U”, they have had a great social and academic experience there and are scheduled to graduate with STEM degrees this spring.  This has given me cause to reflect on exactly what is described in this blog post.  We believe the powerful socialization aspects of our children’s homeschool experience uniquely prepared them for entry to into college at an early age and the ability to perform well after they got there.

When the kids transfered from the local community college to the local Big State U, they were saddened to see their fellow incoming freshmen herded into dorm settings, orientations, and entry level classes where they were patronized and treated like children for another year.  This special treatment was provided to them to give them a more gentle opportunity to transition from government school to the real, “real world” of college.  Of course, whether college is the real, “real world” is debatable, but many if not most of them did not make it. 

There are remedial classes, tutors, study sessions, and a plethora of other mechanisms to help students overcome the abysmal education they received at the hands of their unionized, government school teachers .  These kids are not different from any other kids around the world.  They are bright.  The did well enough on the SAT/ACT to get accepted into Big State U, so it is certainly not the case that they have defective minds.  Really, they seem to be smart enough and are provided with sufficient help to thrive, but they do not.

Our kids feel the reason many students fail or embrace diminished opportunity is because they can not handle the social aspects of the real world.  Or it could be that they are at college for the college social experience rather than an education.  So after all the special help afforded to them because they are neither socially nor academically prepared, they either drop out of their STEM degrees to pursue Communications, English, Sociology, or Psychology degrees that do not lead to good jobs or they just drop out.

I have talked to the kids about this a lot.  We really do not think our children are brighter than other kids at Big State U.  They have to study very hard and it is not easy for them.  What is different about their preparation than that of their government school peers?  They honestly believe the powerful socialization experience they received during homeschool gave them an advantage.  Like other homeschoolers, they did sports, music, art, church, and a bunch of other stuff out of the house.  There were large and small group activities and activities with people of different ages, ethnicities, and languages.  They were not confined to a single room with a fixed group of same-age kids guided by one or two adult supervisors in a truly artificial social setting year after year after year.  They traveled more because they were not subject to government school schedules and budgets.

When they were fourteen, they took classes at the community college with Iraq War vets using the GI bill to go to college, housewives trying to finish a degrees in nursing or accounting, dual-enrolled students from the local government schools, other homeschool students, people working menial jobs trying to improve their lot in life of a wide range of ages, recent high school graduates who did not have good enough grades to get into college, and retired people taking a class just because they were interested to learn something new.  That is the real world.

That is why their sheltered homeschool experience was more “real-world” than anything that happened in the government schools.  It is why they were better prepared for what they would face at Big State U.  It is also why I cringe whenever I see young mothers send their children off to pre-schools and kindergartens.  It is the first step in road that provides serious social and academic roadblocks for their children.

An encouraging government school story

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On Thursday, September 26, 2013

In Education

Day 766 of 1000

My cousin Trisha sent me a very encouraging story from Utah about government high school football.  There is a second article about it here.  I need to disclaim that while I am a product of the government school system and played four years of high school football, I am neither a fan of government school nor publicly funded high school sports.  Both seem to do a lot of damage to the youth of America, but that is a post for another day.  This is a story about a coach who disbanded his football team and was supported by the parents for doing it.  Here are the basics, but the whole article is worth a read:

So when Matt Labrum, head football coach at Union High School in Roosevelt, Utah, suspended his entire team — all 80 of them — last week, can you guess what was coming next from parents of those suddenly former players?

If you figure Labrum got his head handed to him as he heard call after call for his immediate dismissal, you’d be incorrect.

Believe it or not, Labrum says he’s received no ill will from moms and dads for his radical disciplinary move — and that has everything to do with the off-field problems that fueled the total team suspension (e.g., bad attitudes toward teachers, skipping classes, failing grades, and a serious allegation of cyberbullying) and his desire to correct  them.

So Labrum told the players to turn in their jerseys — if they wanted to wear them again, they’d each have to earn the right to do so by jumping through an arduous series of hoops, including extensive community service…

An event like this happened in our high school, but it was not followed up with an effort by the coach to help any of the players get their act together.  I was one of only two seniors on the team who did not get kicked off.  I was one of the privileged kids who made all the teams and got to play, but I still have a sour taste in my mouth for the predominately horrible public school sports envirnonment at a time when kids do not know how to read nor do math when they graduate.  Still, this is very impressive.  The coaches have rolled up their sleeves and are working with the players on something that actually might build a little character and academic achievement.

Mid-career Masters Degree: Can you get an Engineering Masters degree with a Bachelors degree in Business?

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On Wednesday, September 25, 2013

In Education

This is the second in a series of posts about how a mid-career Masters degree changed my life. I admire people who do an after work and weekends Masters degree so they can pay the rent and support the family, but I did not do it that way. I bailed out of my job and dived in full time after having spent ten years in the workforce.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here.

[Previous post in series]
[Next post in series]

The title of this post in the series was a big impediment to me.  I believed it was not possible to go on to a Masters degree in engineering after earning a Bachelors degree in Business Administration.  I was wrong.  I should have understood this because I actually worked with a lady who went on to a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering after earning a Bachelors degree in English.  She had to take a ton of what Dr. Johnson called leveling classes math and science class during a probationary period, but it took her less time and effort to do that than start over from scratch on a Bachelors degree in Engineering.  I have a friend who had no degree at all and made a dramatic shift from Christian ministry through a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering, then on to a PhD in Biological and Agricultural Engineering.  I will tell his story in a second post.

“Use what you have and start now” is the advice I would give anyone with a Bachelors degree and wants to get a Masters degree at just about any point in their career.  What do I mean by that?  I have worked and talked with a lot of people in this situation. I believe that almost everyone underestimates their preparedness for moving on to the next academic level.  In my case, it took a series of conversations with Dr. Johnson to convince both that I could handle the academic load and that I was in a place to make a unique contribution to his program that would make my life at UTEP more interesting and rewarding.  He was right about it all.

So the issue is to identify those things that make you desirable to a Masters degree program and present them to the right person in the school you want to attend.  In the end, it is about people–you and them.  I wish someone would have told me this sooner, but maybe I would not have had such a good story to tell any sooner.  At any rate, I had no idea how to go about this until Dr. Johnson and I started talking.  Here is a list of things we used to get me in the program.  It is not long, but it was enough.

  • I had taken the math and most of the science I needed in an Associate and Bachelors degree
  • I spent ten years working in manufacturing facilities selling equipment and technology to solve essentially Industrial Engineering problems
  • I was an experienced C programmer
  • I had written technical articles in trade journals on the use of robots and vision systems in industry

In the end, we were able to set up a program that required me to take 4-5 leveling classes (Operations Research, Statistical Quality Control, and several others).  Dr. Johnson started a new laboratory we called the Machine Vision Applications Laboratory.  He got me a scholarship and found me a way to help him move technology into local (and eventually international) industry.  After that, it was easy to make the decision to move to UTEP.  My buddy, Curt and I drove down to Texas at the end of 1988.

So, first, figure out what you have and how to use it to get into the program you want.  I will tell a story in the next post of a good friend who did a mid-career change that is fairly breathtaking.  He thought he was starting from zero, but found a way to work his way into a truly amazing academic career that started from almost nothing and is about to end with a world class PhD.

Life at 58 years old

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On Wednesday, September 25, 2013

In Christianity, Family

Day 765 of 1000

Dad in 1988Yesterday was my birthday.  I turned 58.  For some reason, I had more time to reflect on life this year than in years past.  Lorena and Kelly dug through a bunch of old photos and found one from almost exactly 25 years ago and put it up on Lorena’s Facebook account.  I think the picture might have gotten me into a reflective mood.  My father-in-law says that, for boys, the blood does not really start getting to their brain until they are about 25.  I think it was just about when this picture was taken that the blood started to get to my brain.  I was 32 or 33.  My buddy Curt in Tigard said it very well in a comment that went with the picture on Facebook.

He said, “Ken – those were the good old days; when we weren’t good and we weren’t old.”

Well said.  Those were the days when we knew what was right, but struggled mightily to do it.  It gave us joy to do what was right, but there were lots of temptations.  I awakened to the fact that this life and death struggle between right and following my own path would not end until I died, but it was worth it.  The temptations were still the temptations, but they were not worth it.  It was really quite a slow and gradual awakening for me and I started later than most.  It all started to occur at about the time I started my Masters degree.  After my Masters degree, I got married, we had two kids, and went through a pretty rough patch of career challenges.

By the grace of God, literally, these life circumstances kept me considering the difference between what was right and taking my own path.  I knew I was a different person when I walked into one of our church’s Gospel meetings in a new town when I was a little over 40 years old. I saw an old friend from my high school days who also knew what was right, but struggled with the implementation.  It dawned on me that we were both in the right place, trying to do the right thing.  I was filled with an overwhelming joy knowing that it was way more important to me now to do the right thing than to do what I wanted.  It was true for my friend, too. I actually wept.

Life is much better at age 58 than it was at age 33.  I do not think it does any good to say stuff like, “if I knew then what I know now, things would have been different.”  I did not know that stuff then, but I was on the path to learning it.  That is a good thing.  I cannot say there was not joy in my life back in those days.  There was.  Still I got hurt because of my own wantonness and other people did, too.  It could be said that my wantonness was not as bad as that of many others, but really, that is bogus.  It is also true that my wantonness was worse than that of many others.  Those are all things to regret and try to make amends, but they are also important to put behind you and not let it have control of your life.

I guess the upshot is that I am really glad to be 58 years old.  Life has never been better.  There is still temptation, but the benefits of not taking my own path are right in front of me and impossible to deny.  I can hardly wait for 59.

Mid-career Masters Degree: Introduction

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On Tuesday, September 24, 2013

In Education

Day 764 of 1000

This is the first in a series of posts about how a mid-career Masters degree changed my life. I admire people who do an after work and weekends Masters degree so they can pay the rent and support the family, but I did not do it that way. I bailed out of my job and dived in full time after having spent ten years in the workforce.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here.

[Next post in series]

Carroll Johnson, Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering, UTEPThe guy in the photo is Dr. Carroll Johnson, my thesis advisor from my Masters degree at the University of Texas at El Paso.  I would like to take credit for figuring out that it would be a good move to get a Masters degree, but the truth is that it happened for a lot of little reasons and at least two big reasons.  I like to think God had has hand in it.  The first reason that I decided to go back to school was that my company, Intelledex, got bought by a much bigger company and wanted me to move from Corvallis to Portland, Oregon.  I was really a small town boy so that did not set well with me, so I started looking around.

The second reason was the big guy in the picture.  He is everything an Industrial Engineering professor should be and even more than that, he was (and is) Texas personified–bigger than life.  If I were to write a series of posts on Dr. Johnson, I would never finish.  Maybe that is why I am writing about a mid-career Masters degree–I hope to finish the series before I die.

I first met Carroll when Intelledex sold him a vision system.  A vision system is a computer with a camera hooked up to it that does things like measure and count things, guide robots, and other stuff that is very useful to Industrial Engineers in factories.  About the time he needed a second vision system, Intelledex was in the process of being bought.  I told Carroll what was going on and he asked me whether I had ever thought about getting a Masters degree.  I told him I had, but I wanted to do something in engineering.  My undergraduate degree was in Business Administration so I did not think it was  possible to do anything in engineering.  He disabused me of that notion and we started a series of communications that culminated in me quitting my job at Intelledex and heading to Texas.

This series is about how all this took place.  I will keep an index of the posts on this page and update it as I go along.  At this writing, I am not sure how many posts it will take, but I am pretty sure it will be more than five.

Just finished reading the Old Testament

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On Monday, September 23, 2013

In Christianity

Day 763 of 1000

I am about half way through a plan to read through the Old Testament three times and the New Testament nine times.  After that, I plan to follow one my buddy, Jon’s plans.  I like my current plan, but there are a bunch of other plans I would like to follow including:

  • A read through the whole Bible in one year (sometime before I die)
  • A read through the Bible chronologically
  • A fairly large list of topical studies (I do that a little anyway)
  • A read through the Bible while keeping a map book of where stuff occurred

The Old Testament is great, but for some reason it seemed pretty dark this time.  Starting into the New Testament from that viewpoint has helped me realize a little better, the greatness of the Gospel, the good news.  The times and attitudes of our day here in America and around the world do not seem so different in many ways than the Roman world of Jesus day.  I am looking forward to moving into three reads in a row through the New Testament and the hope that is uniquely found therein.

More homeschooling statistics

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On Sunday, September 22, 2013

In General

Day 762 of 1000

Homeschool statisticsMy buddy Andrew, sadly, no longer a Raleigh resident, forwarded this to me. Click on the graphic to see the full size version at the source. I still am regularly amazed at how well homeschools perform socially and academically.  I should quit being so amazed, but I like it.  Thanks, Andrew!

The ultimate bachelor picnic/potluck contribution

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On Saturday, September 21, 2013

In General

Day 761 of 1000

Statement of Purpose with an elevator speech

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On Friday, September 20, 2013

In General

Day 760 of 1000

Christian is required to take a technical writing class as a requirement for his math degree.  I thought this was going to be a throw away class, but it is turning into something good.  First, they made him write a resume.  That is not such a big deal, but it is important to do it well.  His second assignment was to write a Statement of Purpose of the kind required by almost all universities as part of the application process for a graduate degree.  I thought that was great.

Even more excellent is the requirement for an “Elevator Speech,” a 45 second description of why he should be accepted to graduate school.  What a great idea.  He has to give the speech today, but I think that is a good thing for him to practice and polish a lot before he gets to any more graduate school interview.  Most people who travel a lot for work give elevator speeches about their work whether they know it or not.  Some of them are monumentally bad.  I have honed mine over the years through necessity, but I am confident it could use some practice and polish.  I am looking forward to working on this with both Kelly and Christian.

A liberal rag makes the case against government high school sports?

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On Thursday, September 19, 2013

In Education, Politics

This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time.  It is nuts that we pay for high school sports.  PE is one thing, but as the article says, “The United States routinely spends more tax dollars per high-school athlete than per high-school math student—unlike most countries worldwide.”  I don’t really care how other countries worldwide are funding sports vs. school because it does not seem like they are so hot either.  Nevertheless, I say let the parents and sports boosters pay for the kids to play.

String theory – For my Applied Math friends

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On Thursday, September 19, 2013

In Science

You know who you are! And you know why this “applies” to you.*

*There is some controversy between interested parties about whether String Theory is science or not (Is it testable?), but there is absolutely no controversy about whether or not the math involved is elegant and interesting.

Two conversations on BIG stuff and maybe a third

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On Thursday, September 19, 2013

In General

Day 759 of 1000

The first conversation was a brief email conversation with a talented friend who recently bailed out of a long term lucrative career to go back to school for a technical masters degree.  It was a bold move, it paid off, and it was a joy to watch.  He did it, not to make more money, because he was good in that regard.  He did it to learn new stuff so he could contribute more to society.  Nothing every comes out perfect nor even like it was planned, but bold moves are a good thing.  It seems like if they are done unselfishly, they pay off even more.  If you go back to school to learn stuff you want to know because you can contribute more to society or enter the ministry to save souls or move to a poor foreign country to be a help–those are the things that gratify.  Now my friend is thinking of doing it again.  I like it.

That conversation inspired me to call Kelly.  We had a great talk about what she will do when she finishes her Bachelors degree in Statistics.  She loves Statistics.  She has a good enough resume now that she should be able to get a job without too much trouble after she graduates.  That might be the thing to do, but it might be time for a Masters or PhD.  It might be time to work for a year, then take a trip to someplace new or take a job out of the country.  It might be time to learn a new language.  Whatever she does, since she is getting to a place where she can pay her own way, it needs to be about something much bigger and more important than the money.

I really need to have that same conversation with Christian.  He is in the same place as Kelly, but has decided he wants to go on to a PhD in Electrical Engineering.  That is a pretty bold move in and of itself, but after that there can be more.  I think of people like William Lane Craig with Doctors degrees in Philosophy and Theology and William Dembski has a couple of PhD’s (mathematics and philosophy) and four Masters (statistics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology) from big name schools.  I do not think either of them pursued their graduate studies for the purpose of earning a living, but to pursue big ideas and contribute to society.

As I approach age 60, I am in the beginning of the start-up of a company that makes medical instruments for developing companies.  It was a pretty scary thing to quit my job in North Carolina to do this, but it is very invigorating.  If things work out, I will be here for another four or five years.  Maybe there is time in this life for one or two more bold moves after that.

Statistics Unconference

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On Wednesday, September 18, 2013

In Software, Work

This is something for Kelly.  Is this cool or what.  A live stream, Statistics Unconference with excellent presenters from JHU, University of Washington, and R-Studio.  It is about the future of Statistics and statistical tools.

Boys are not well served in government school

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On Wednesday, September 18, 2013

In culture, Education, Homeschool

Day 758 of 1000

There is an article by a self-described feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers, on how government schools serve boys (as opposed to girls) very poorly.  This is a fairly hot topic amongst homeschoolers.  I recently discussed this with Eric, a fellow homeschool parent with boys of school age.  We probably have different ideas about how boys should be raised and encourged in their masculinity, but we agree whole-heartedly that it necessary to raise and educate them differently from girls.  It is interesting that there is such a strong argument from a feminist worldview for allowing boys to be boys and avoid shoving girls toward career paths they might now want to follow.  Typical of her answers is the following:

Q: They would see this as a result of gendered socialization: of boys and girls being pushed down different paths. I assume that you see it as indicative of different preferences?

A: Yes. Of course gender identity is both biological and cultural. But we have had three generations of feminism encouraging children to enter different fields. And very little has changed. If you look at college majors, boys are still engineers and girls go into the helping professions. Many children will defy the stereotypes of their sex, but the majority seems to embody them. I think that’s a reality.

Sommers talks about faulty research and claims about research that do neither withstand scrutiny nor support the idea that girls should be raised, educated, mentored, and encouraged in the same way as boys.  I liked the article a lot.  It confirms my belief that we were saved from a lot of things by homeschooling that we never even considered.

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