Becoming Aware of Statistics
When we married I was a young engineer just getting ready to go to law school. That was very interesting, but lasted only a few weeks - the law school, not the marriage. That is now in its 48th year. But that is another story of its own.
I had been a year out of college working as a Product Engineer in Western Electric, a part of Ma Bell, and although it was challenging and interesting, something else was pulling me away. It was the idea of patent law that attracted me, but I quickly saw that law itself was not my life goal. The study meant classes for up to 5 nights a week and for maybe 3 years while working on the job. And the type of study was a whole different world with scores of old cases to read and memorize. I was accustomed to struggling with a few mathematically dense pages to master, not 50 or 60 pages of narrative about a stolen horse in the 1700’s or procedures to file actions in court.
So I began a new quest to uncover my real passion without really knowing how to do this. In part that is what this story is all about.
I had drifted many times already, even though I was only in my very early 20’s. From my days in middle school I had dreamed of becoming a nuclear physicist. How crazy does that seem. Well in the 50’s for a math and science oriented kid that was not totally out of it. But I really had no clue what it was truly all about. I knew about atoms smashing atoms and going boom. Had gotten up at a very early hour to watch on TV the explosion of an atom bomb in Nevada. And actually got to go to RPI as a physics major. But in the end I finished as a mechanical engineer with the expectation I would continue in management or business. And that too is another story.
The new side tracks began with me sitting in the Newark Library and reading through the vast collection of technical magazines on the shelves. I got a sense of many different industries in rapid succession. Read an architectural magazine, followed by one dealing with restaurant supplies, and then road construction. And the more serious journals in mathematics, mechanical engineering, and newly emerging areas of computers.
I thought maybe I should head to the other extreme, tackle my interest in the fundamentals of math and start heading toward an academic bent. So I began to take some graduate math courses only to find them up in the clouds for me. You see, there is always some level at which virtually everyone reaches their wall. Their point that the concepts require a massive infusion of time and effort to begin to crack open the way to understanding.
Meanwhile, my wife Gail was a psychology major, something I had zero background in. As a science, and later, an engineering major, I took about one humanities course a semester and so the entire field consisting of social sciences was my black hole.
I recognized that it was clear she was not going to learn how an engineer thought. So, in some effort to find out what her world was all about, I began to tackle our shelves of books that covered the many topics of psychology. I read about Freud and Lewin, topics like motivation and personality.
And then magic hit me. A small book on statistics. It fascinated me, but she had an admission that it was far from being any favorite topic of hers. She lamented that the subject was the reason to avoid pursuing graduate work in the field.
But this spurred me on. There was then a book on Tests and Measurements, which all psych majors also struggled through, followed by an even more intriguing book called Differential Psychology.
As she explained, these topics were not the reason most of the students she knew embarked on a life of psychology. She would say they were all there trying to learn who they were - to get analysis - not to do research, especially if it involved math.
I had now shifted jobs and moved into one that did involve physical testing and running my own experiments as well as analyzing a collection of data from tests run in the past. And I had been at a loss for knowing how to deal with this, so the new world of statistics was a complete eye opener. Engineers did not learn about this stuff. - we calculated exactly what was going to happen. But maybe here was something that could help me make sense of these fascinating and important projects.
A school buddy of mine who was teaching HS math loaned me his statistics book, a cook-book that had a great set of recipes for doing statistical analyses with down to earth explanations. I pondered these and tried hard to put them to practice, and amassed a collection of questions along the way.
Most important, though, here was something that seemed to capture the span of my enjoyment. It involved the math I did come to love but also seemed to be inclined to deal with the real world that I was encountering and engaged a sense of building things.
And then I discovered that virtually in my backyard was a graduate program that would seem to be a dream come true. At Rutgers there was an Applied Statistics department consisting of some of the finest practical statisticians anywhere in the world. They were all working closely with engineers and scientists and dedicated to working with industry and research. They had been at Bell Labs and other major companies, had been involved as pioneers in launching the quality movement, and provided a potential for me that was exciting.
In addition to immediately being able to apply the studies to my job, the program helped me begin the transition to a life of teaching, although not at the level I had originally in mind. The next 35 years was spent in the world of community colleges. Although I aspired to reach the academic heights of a major university, the ticket, a PhD, eluded me. But ultimately it did not impede me from many real successes I did have and contributions I have been able to make in the world of quality and statistics.
Along the way I have tried to influence how we think about teaching and applying statistical thinking both in our everyday lives and in the realms of all types of business and industry.
Ever since getting my feet wet at writing a textbook some 40 years ago, my goal has always been to try to bring to life the idea that this dreaded subject of statistics is so fundamentally a part of us. Over the years I began to recognize and argue that it is actually something we unconsciously do all the time. I have come to believe it is the fundamental quantitative intelligence that we inherently have. But just as we can readily learn to speak a language such as English while have a major problem learning to read and write that subject, so it is with the quantitative world. We may innately have such an inherent sense, but very few become literate in the subject.
I have been successful in finding my passion and following it in spite of many ups and downs. I have not always been able to accomplish all I would have liked to, and here I am hoping to share my adventures as well as continue my journey.
I had been a year out of college working as a Product Engineer in Western Electric, a part of Ma Bell, and although it was challenging and interesting, something else was pulling me away. It was the idea of patent law that attracted me, but I quickly saw that law itself was not my life goal. The study meant classes for up to 5 nights a week and for maybe 3 years while working on the job. And the type of study was a whole different world with scores of old cases to read and memorize. I was accustomed to struggling with a few mathematically dense pages to master, not 50 or 60 pages of narrative about a stolen horse in the 1700’s or procedures to file actions in court.
So I began a new quest to uncover my real passion without really knowing how to do this. In part that is what this story is all about.
I had drifted many times already, even though I was only in my very early 20’s. From my days in middle school I had dreamed of becoming a nuclear physicist. How crazy does that seem. Well in the 50’s for a math and science oriented kid that was not totally out of it. But I really had no clue what it was truly all about. I knew about atoms smashing atoms and going boom. Had gotten up at a very early hour to watch on TV the explosion of an atom bomb in Nevada. And actually got to go to RPI as a physics major. But in the end I finished as a mechanical engineer with the expectation I would continue in management or business. And that too is another story.
The new side tracks began with me sitting in the Newark Library and reading through the vast collection of technical magazines on the shelves. I got a sense of many different industries in rapid succession. Read an architectural magazine, followed by one dealing with restaurant supplies, and then road construction. And the more serious journals in mathematics, mechanical engineering, and newly emerging areas of computers.
I thought maybe I should head to the other extreme, tackle my interest in the fundamentals of math and start heading toward an academic bent. So I began to take some graduate math courses only to find them up in the clouds for me. You see, there is always some level at which virtually everyone reaches their wall. Their point that the concepts require a massive infusion of time and effort to begin to crack open the way to understanding.
Meanwhile, my wife Gail was a psychology major, something I had zero background in. As a science, and later, an engineering major, I took about one humanities course a semester and so the entire field consisting of social sciences was my black hole.
I recognized that it was clear she was not going to learn how an engineer thought. So, in some effort to find out what her world was all about, I began to tackle our shelves of books that covered the many topics of psychology. I read about Freud and Lewin, topics like motivation and personality.
And then magic hit me. A small book on statistics. It fascinated me, but she had an admission that it was far from being any favorite topic of hers. She lamented that the subject was the reason to avoid pursuing graduate work in the field.
But this spurred me on. There was then a book on Tests and Measurements, which all psych majors also struggled through, followed by an even more intriguing book called Differential Psychology.
As she explained, these topics were not the reason most of the students she knew embarked on a life of psychology. She would say they were all there trying to learn who they were - to get analysis - not to do research, especially if it involved math.
I had now shifted jobs and moved into one that did involve physical testing and running my own experiments as well as analyzing a collection of data from tests run in the past. And I had been at a loss for knowing how to deal with this, so the new world of statistics was a complete eye opener. Engineers did not learn about this stuff. - we calculated exactly what was going to happen. But maybe here was something that could help me make sense of these fascinating and important projects.
A school buddy of mine who was teaching HS math loaned me his statistics book, a cook-book that had a great set of recipes for doing statistical analyses with down to earth explanations. I pondered these and tried hard to put them to practice, and amassed a collection of questions along the way.
Most important, though, here was something that seemed to capture the span of my enjoyment. It involved the math I did come to love but also seemed to be inclined to deal with the real world that I was encountering and engaged a sense of building things.
And then I discovered that virtually in my backyard was a graduate program that would seem to be a dream come true. At Rutgers there was an Applied Statistics department consisting of some of the finest practical statisticians anywhere in the world. They were all working closely with engineers and scientists and dedicated to working with industry and research. They had been at Bell Labs and other major companies, had been involved as pioneers in launching the quality movement, and provided a potential for me that was exciting.
In addition to immediately being able to apply the studies to my job, the program helped me begin the transition to a life of teaching, although not at the level I had originally in mind. The next 35 years was spent in the world of community colleges. Although I aspired to reach the academic heights of a major university, the ticket, a PhD, eluded me. But ultimately it did not impede me from many real successes I did have and contributions I have been able to make in the world of quality and statistics.
Along the way I have tried to influence how we think about teaching and applying statistical thinking both in our everyday lives and in the realms of all types of business and industry.
Ever since getting my feet wet at writing a textbook some 40 years ago, my goal has always been to try to bring to life the idea that this dreaded subject of statistics is so fundamentally a part of us. Over the years I began to recognize and argue that it is actually something we unconsciously do all the time. I have come to believe it is the fundamental quantitative intelligence that we inherently have. But just as we can readily learn to speak a language such as English while have a major problem learning to read and write that subject, so it is with the quantitative world. We may innately have such an inherent sense, but very few become literate in the subject.
I have been successful in finding my passion and following it in spite of many ups and downs. I have not always been able to accomplish all I would have liked to, and here I am hoping to share my adventures as well as continue my journey.