Franiwack: 04/01/2005

Health & Medical News - Where are all our number crunchers? - 07/12/2004: "Where are all our number crunchers?
Nicole Manktelow
ABC Science Online
Tuesday, 7 December 2004

All this data and no-one to analyse it (Image: iStockphoto)
A shortage of statisticians could delay future health and drug research, a leading Australian researcher warns.

Dr David Mitchell, research leader at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, says biological research is generating data that could help fight diseases such as breast cancer or leukaemia.

But he says there are too few qualified people who can spot the hidden clues.

'This sort of data is going to get enormous, but the number of people able to deal with it is tiny,' says Mitchell, a molecular biologist supervising a group of statisticians.

The Statistical Society of Australia is also worried about the shortage of qualified statisticians and is inviting the public to comment as part of a review.

Details of the review are available on the society's website, with submissions closing on 14 January 2005.

There is also a shortage of students studying statistics, Mitchell says, with most science graduates studying biology rather than mathematics.

'In 2003 enrolments, there were about 3000 PhD students, about half of which are in biological science,' Mitchell says.

'That's not really surprising considering there's a wealth of discovery in there; it's the hot area.

'But there were only 186 [postgraduate] students in mathematical sciences and not all of those will be statisticians.'

Will the shortage delay research?
Statistical analysis can unlock complicated data, like data from genes on a microarray, a microchip or other sub"

blah

I'm about to get started on a really huge interesting cancer research project. I'm just in awe at how lucky I am to be able to be here in Berkeley and work on such important things...very very lucky, my advisor is the best!

Anyways, this has been making me really tired lately... I spend so much time reading papers and trying to understand the technology, no time to do homework and just relaxing a bit...
In addition, to make my day today even more great, there's lightning and heavy rain!!!

Oh dang, between that last sentence and this one, the rain dramatically increased! How am I supposed to get home? =( I could live in my office, like I've been doing lately. But no worries, life is still great in general. I'm surrounded by smart, interesting and friendly peeps all the time!

I registered for classes for fall:

Stat 241A : Machine Learning
MCB 140 : General Genetics
Greek 1 : Beginner's course in Greek

and I'll be TAing, hopefully upper division stats, and I'll be continuing research. Oh boy, my schedule ain't looking so good. We'll see.

Mildred, the church gossip and self-appointed arbiter of the church's
morals, kept sticking her nose in the other members' private lives.
Church members were
unappreciative of her activities, but feared her enough to maintain
their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of
being an alcoholic after she saw his pickup truck parked in front of
the town's only bar
one afternoon.

She commented to George and others that everyone seeing it there would
know what he was doing.

George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just walked
away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny; he said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of
Mildred's house... and left it there all night!

sld;kfjsd;lfkj

Susan, Sussi and Christine visited Berkeley today.

Terry's group

Terry's Group April 13 2005
http://webdisk.berkeley.edu/~francestong/terrygroup/index.html

feeling down...

very down...

downer...

=(

i want to escape this for a day...

oh...what to do? what to do? just let it be? already let it be for over a year now...
too logical, when to not have life be logical? think good thoughts...

Conversation with a friend in the department steered to an interesting topic:

At what age do guys with steady girlfriends get anxious to have kids?
Does it depend on whether his friends his age already have them?
What kind of pressure does this put on the girlfriend who might be still too young to have any?
If so, shouldn't it be okay for him to wait until she is ready? Guys usually don't have as big of a problem having kids at an older age, do they?
Because once a couple has kids, it's hard for them to regain the sort of freedom they had before kids, can't travel as much, can't move as much, etc. Shouldn't they have some fun as single people before starting a family?
And what really is the right age for a gal in a phd program to have kids anyways? During? That's really tough. After? How to find and keep academic job? Plus if both are in academia, it'll be harder to get jobs at the same school or in a location where there are many schools that'll increase the chance they both get jobs close by.
Anyhoo, I think at least for my friend (22), her boyfriend (27) should definitely wait until she is ready. 27 is still very young, what's the rush? Does he need more meaning in his life at this point already?
I don't figure I'll have any kids before I turn 30 and that's even a big maybe, considering my lack of dating. (No one wants meeee!) =) Perhaps it's a good thing that I didn't have a boyfriend that influenced my choice of graduate school and maybe (sadly) it'll be a good thing I won't have a boyfriend that will influence my choice of postdoc or assistant professorship... who knows, cuz you know that if I ever did love someone that much and he loved me back, I'd probably do anything for him.

Everything happens for a good reason.

My mentor from MentorNet is the coolest and now I really realize that the work we both are interested in is almost the same! And she's teleconferenced with my advisor before! She's such a great role model. She's got a great job, husband and kids and manages to balance it all. She tells me to stand up for myself, to network, to be proud of my work, etc. Glad I got hooked up with her 3 years ago.

I visited the Scharffenberger chocolate factory on Saturday. It's actually quite close (less than 5 miles from my apartment) but I didn't know about its existence until Nicolas had told me about it. I got a tour and everything, but el chocolate es muy expensivo!!! I got a sampler bag of different kinds of chocolate and a huge bar of 99% dark chocolate. This 99% is about as DARK as you can get it. It only contains trace amounts of sugar. I got it because I've never seen such a high level sold before in stores, so I bought it figuring that I'd have to use it in baking or melt it and add sugar to it. But apparently not!! I'm so good, I can totally eat it on its own. It's bitter but I really like it. This is the healthy stuff that everyone tells you to eat dark chocolate but most kinds of dark chocolate out there still contains way too much sugar. This 9.7 oz bar set me back $11 so I don't think I can be eating this regularly. =)