Recently, I participated in an email interview about what being a Statistics major entailed, how I got interested in the field and the future of Statistics. I figured this might be of interest to those that are contemplating majoring in Statistics, or considering a career in Data Science.

Q1: Why did you decide to pursue a major in statistics in college?

A: “When I was a kid, I really enjoyed looking at graphs, plots and maps. My parents and I could not make of what was behind the interest. At the same time, I was also heavily interested in education. My mother was a teacher and the first set of statistics I ever encountered were standardized test scores. I strived to understand what the scores attempted to say about me, and why such scores and tests are so trustworthy. When the stakes increased with the AP and SAT exams, I began reading articles published by the Educational Testing Service and learned a ton about how these tests are constructed to minimize bias, and how scores are comparable across forms. It fascinated me how much science goes into these tests, but in the end of the day they are still just […]

To all of my readers and followers, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a very joyous and safe Happy New Year! I will be spending the holidays coding on my new Motorola Droid X (goodbye AT&T!).

This is not really news. A few months ago, news broke that Facebook recorded each user’s clicks and profile views in a database. Of course, I am not at all surprised. I would be more surprised if they didn’t store every single click.

By now, most people have some sense as to how Facebook’s recommendation system works. It typically performs what one of my professors called “completing the triangle.” If users and are friends, and users and are friends, Facebook may hypothesize that and should also be friends. Of course, Facebook’s algorithm is not that naive. Consider a slightly more realistic example in the graph below. I must provide a picture, otherwise I will end up using “recursive language” (i.e. “friends of a friend of a friend that’s friends with…”). The red lines represent existing friendships. This graph consists of two triangles, one containing one man and the two women, and another containing one woman and the two men. Facebook would most likely conclude that the two people with spiky hair should be friends, denoted by the green dashed line.

On Facebook, I am a member of several different network clusters, as most people are. Some include high […]

In 2007, I was introduced to Twitter via the written qualifying exam towards my Ph.D.. At first, I did not know what to do with it. After a good year or so (maybe even sooner) passed, I began to follow some very interesting people that share the same interests as me. It has transformed my academic experience. It is great to run across tweets promoting conferences and newly released papers in my field. One of my favorite parts about Twitter, aside from interacting with tweeps, is the ability for me to quickly post a status update on what I am doing and I can even refer to it later. I consider it a platform for collaboration because I see what others are doing via tweets as well as linked blogs, whether it is a Twitter user, or some offline user. I quickly realized that 140 characters were not enough to solidify my thoughts and participate in the community. Thus, I decided to start this blog so I can share cool things I have found in my research/work with others anywhere on the web and communicate in more than 140 characters.

Here are some things that I am very interested in […]