Dear Dason, first thank you for your kind contributions to the overall statistical knowledge of many people through this forum.
Second, I wish to know you more in person, for example could you plz attach a photo of you (I am bulleting my questions for easy referencing)
View attachment 2594
That's a picture of Kelley and I on our wedding day. She gave me permission to upload that one.
I am currently 25.
Yes! To my lovely bride Kelley. April 9, 2012 was the special day. We were originally planning on a July wedding but had to move it earlier due to some health issues we weren't sure if her dad would make it to July (he's doing fine now though so no worries!).
3. As someone with brilliant ideas, have you taken an IQ test? If so, could you please tell us what was your score? and the name of the test?
I might have taken an IQ test when I was younger but I don't remember. I don't particularly care for IQ tests though so I probably won't ever take one unless I'm required to for some strange reason.
4. What is your main interest (of course after dismantling those bots called raptors)?
Are we talking about main interest in general or statistically? I'll assume we're talking about in general and leave statistics out of it for the time being. If you meant statistically I'll be more than happy to answer that as well if you ask it later.
My main interest is in spending time with Kelley and Brutus (our beagle).
5. OK what is your second main interest?
but seriously, and what is the third?
I enjoy coding in R for fun. I'm not talking about coding up stats stuff necessarily (although I do that too sometimes). For example I've made a minesweeper clone in R. I really need to rewrite the internals of that with respect to the GUI to make it faster though. I'm also working collaboratively with trinker (it's hard to think of me working with a raptor right?) on an R package that deals with managing other packages and tasks related to that.
I guess my third main interest would be reading. Lately I've been reading some of the books in the Ender's Game series.
6. Putting so much time in here, how you find a way through your real life duties and tasks?
Staying up late the night before I have to present results or turn homework in. Works like a charm
7. As an American guy, why didn't you find soccer boring?!
Because soccer is awesome. I don't know how to answer this question? I've been playing soccer most of my life. I haven't been able to play quite as much as I would like to lately but I recently joined the city's soccer club so I've been getting some in. In middle school I played year round on various different teams but the best team during that time was the 3v3 team I was on. We were in the "recreation" league because honestly the competitive league was wayyyy too good for us but we ended up winning the U-13 national championships! In high school I played year round as well although our school team never did make it to the state tournament finals sadly. Winter was fun because we got to play indoor which is a lot different. The team I was on for that was kind of horrible but sometimes that's better too because you don't take it quite as serious so we just had lots of fun. In the spring I was a manager for the women's soccer team. Initially my friends make fun of me for that but once they realized I got to hang out with the girls soccer team all the time their attitudes changed quickly
So I guess I just can't see how anybody finds soccer boring.
8. How did you end up studying your current field? Do you love it as your first choice, or given any other opportunity would you seek studying in other fields?
That's an interesting question. When I started as an undergrad I initially was going for mathematics education to be a high school math teacher. I think I would have enjoyed that if I stuck with it. However, sometime during my 2nd year I realized that I really really really liked math and didn't think I would be satisfied with just an undergraduate degree in math. So I dropped the education part of my major and was a full math major. I needed to pick up something else though so I decided to get a stats major as well. After taking more stats courses I realized that I really enjoyed statistics as well. It was a hard choice for me to decide between math and stats in terms of which I would go onto grad school for. Ultimately I decided stats because I liked the applied portion of the field. I know there is applied math but I really like working with data and statistics definitely has that portion going for it. My first course on regression is probably what hooked me initially (I actually hated my first stats course but I took regression after that and finally saw the beauty in stats). I was REALLY hooked when I took the mathematical statistics sequence of courses. Another reason I think I went with stats is just that I like stats people more than I like math people. I'm not saying anything bad against math people - just that I enjoy hanging out with stats people more. Of course once I decided that I would go for stats I also had to decide between biostats and general stats. I went with general stats because I didn't want to pidgeonhole myself into always doing biostats stuff if I didn't enjoy that as much. Of course I'm currently working on gene expression stuff so I'm kind of in that field anyways but I like that I'm getting a "Statistics" degree instead of a "biostatistics" degree.
I would say that statistics is definitely my first choice given the opportunity there are A LOT of other things I wouldn't mind studying more. Mathematics being one of them (of course). But I also did a minor in Computer Science during my undergrad and I really enjoyed that. I think I would have enjoyed going on to study that as well. Physics is clearly awesome as well and even though I didn't take too much physics I think I would have enjoyed it.
10. How does it feel to be one of the Number 1s (if not "the" Number 1 [which I think can define you])? Are you proud of your positive reputation here? Do you enjoy helping and communicating with people who might never know in person? Does it have a good impact on your real-world life too?
I don't really care about being "Number 1" as you put it. To be honest the only reason I was excited about getting to level 100 here was to find out what happens when somebody does actually reach level 100. If it was possible I wouldn't mind getting rid of the experience system and maybe even not displaying post count. It's a nice indicator of who is active in the community - but to be honest those of us that are active already know who else is active without needing a post count. If I have to describe how it feels... I would say it feels like I probably spend too much time here :s
I guess I'm proud of a positive reputation - if you say I have that. I'd like to think that I don't cause too much trouble and I help out and I'm proud of helping - but I wouldn't say the post count makes me proud. I do enjoy helping people even though I don't think I'll ever meet them in person. I don't see why that should matter too much. I did consulting for a year for the department and I helped out a lot of people during that too. But I'll probably never see them again either. I'm not sure helping out here has a big impact on my "real-world" life other than I spend quite a bit of time here. Reading other people's responses to threads and seeing how they would go about solving certain problems definitely has had an impact on me. It's changed the way I view some problems. I particularly enjoy when people argue with me over what I propose as a solution (noetsi I'm looking at you) because it really makes me think about what I've proposed and whether I actually think it's the best way to approach the problem at hand.
11. To which extent do you consider yourself successful? To which extent are you satisfied with your current position and successes? I mean generally, excluding the short-term fluctuations.
I'm married to the woman I love and I'm currently being paid to go to school. Sounds pretty great to me! Success! I am quite satisfied with the way things are going right now. Grad school is great but to be honest I can't wait to get an actual job...
