A Vacation…but with Classes (Entry 1 of 2)
140 sounds like it is going to be pretty cool. My class was combined with Stats 88. We are going to be assigned to teams where the 140 students will basically lead the 88 students through statistical research. We are going to be assigned one of five projects which were provided to us by real clients!
- Tuna Project…again Hell no am I gonna work on the tuna project again! When I took Stats 88 I had to work on this project and it was more boring than watching the grass grow. I did not put it as one of my three choices, but I am thinking Rob and Vivian might assign me to it since I know the most about it. :-/
- Alcohol Effects Study for the Ashe Center. This is basically survey data analysis which can be interesting. It is my second choice.
- Sony Pictures Non-Box Office Revenue Projection. The goal is to do some data mining (my proposed specialization) to determine how grossing certain plot lines are compared to other types of plot lines. Requires a film buff, which I definitely am not. Next…
- Jewish Family Counseling Survey. Goal is to analyze data taken from three surveys conducted before, during, and after couples therapy treatment. Another survey data problem, but kind of boring because the sample is only n=100. It is my third choice.
- LAUSD “LA’s Best” Program Evaluation. This is my NUMBER ONE choice with stars and big letters! LA’s Best is an afterschool tutoring and development program for disadvantaged students that live in high crime, low income areas. The program’s attendance has been dropping over the past few years and LAUSD wants to know why.
- First, the data is all messed up and scattered, so we must use our friend Perl to write a robot or web scraper to get the data for us.
- Also this project requires heavy knowledge of statistics because the errors in the study are correlated! So the project requires a multilevel regression analysis. Vivian said she feels sorry for whoever gets stuck with this one…STICK IT WITH ME!
120A is, well, boring. I guess that comes as no surprise since I already took 120B and got an A. But I like Rob’s teaching style. It is also pretty funny that I already know Chris, the TA for my class. The two of them are going to make for an interesting quarter. Today we talked about hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. It’s like 11th grade all over again. And here I am, chillin’ with the toddlers.
Stats 130B is also boring. Vivian is an entertaining lecturer, but the class is 3 hours long, and being lectured about how to use computer software is neither challenging to my digestion, nor fun. I wish I could have taken it independent study or something. Oh well. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
It shouldn’t be too hard of a quarter, and I have deserved this break. Unfortunately, the way my classes work out, leaves me with a lot of free time. I guess I won’t be quitting Sunset for a while… 