Statistically Significant

This is Part 2 of a three-week series about the trip I took a couple of weeks ago. Part 1 covered my visit to the UC Berkeley Statistics department, and ended on Tuesday with me being picked up by a mysterious station wagon. That’s where the action resumes…

The station wagon was being driven by none other than Lindsey, my first cousin once removed! (She’s my father’s cousin, and for convenience, I’ll be referring to her as Aunt Lindsey.) And convenient it was. I was scheduled to visit the UW Madison Statistics department on Thursday, and rather than fly back to Boston only to fly west again to Madison a day later, Aunt Lindsey offered to pick me up on Tuesday afternoon, let me hang out in Santa Rosa on Wednesday, and then drive me to the airport on Thursday morning. Amazing.

As we left Berkeley, we had the idea of visiting my father’s old bay-front house at 2210 Mar East. He lived there for a couple of years when he was a kid, including the summer that three individuals successfully escaped from Alcatraz. If you look at the Google Map image, you’ll notice that 2210 Mar East is about the closest thing to Alcatraz in the bay area. Crazy. Anyway, we found the house easily and, after noticing that it was totally empty inside, walked around it and checked it out. Sure enough, there was Alcatraz straight ahead and San Francisco off to the right. Maybe some of those stories that Daddy Ackerman tells are true after all…

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The next order of business was dinner in San Francisco with Lindsey and her daughters / my (technically second) cousins Hannah and Hilary. We met Hilary first, and the three of us drove into the city. (My first time on the Golden Gate bridge!) We had a little bit of time to kill before we were meeting with Hannah at the Fog City Diner, so we braved the streets of San Francisco and the winding roads up Twin Peaks. The view from the top was spectacular!

It was pretty chilly on top of Twin Peaks, so we piled back into the car and cruised over to the diner, where we met up with Hilary and her boyfriend, Dietrich. Because they all live on the West Coast (as opposed to my mom’s side of the family, which are strictly East Coast), I haven’t spent too much time with Lindsey and the girls. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them, and dinner was pretty delicious too. Hilary works as a Crossfit instructor, which is amazing, but unfortunately I didn’t get to do a workout with her. That’s probably for the best, actually; she probably would have ripped me in half. I didn’t take any pictures at dinner, either, which is a bummer, but I was pretty tired at this point. So off to Santa Rosa we went.

I was half asleep for the drive up, and I only vaguely remember collapsing into bed. When I awoke, though, it was an absolutely gorgeous Northern California day, and the girls had a gorgeous Northern California itinerary planned out for me. Hilary and I started the day by driving out to Bodega Head. Along the way, we stopped at a local coffee and produce place, where we ran into Tom Waits. (Technically, Hilary ran into Tom Waits. I had never heard of him. But she’s since played songs for me and sent me Youtube videos.) And when we got to the beach, we were greeted with some spectacular coastal views. We went for a little 20-minute hike along a coastal trail, and I took some pictures along the way:

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After returning to Santa Rosa and eating some lunch, Lindsey and I set out on a wine-tasting trip to Sonoma County. We stopped at a couple of local vineyards, chatted with locals, and enjoyed some free samples. We ended up getting a bottle of red from the Armida winery, which we took home and enjoyed over a delicious home-cooked meal. I sadly didn’t bring my camera with me on this trip, but I had my cellphone and Lindsey took a couple of pictures of me at Armida:

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After only one full day in paradise, it was time to pack up and get ready for the final leg of my Spring Break adventure: visiting the University of Wisconsin – Madison Statistics department. Tune in next week for the scoop and to find out which graduate school I decided to attend!

This is Part 1 of a three-part installment of last week’s adventure to Berkeley, Santa Rosa, and Madison.

The adventure started in San Francisco. After touching down, I hopped onto BART for a lengthy but mostly above-ground train ride around the bay to Downtown Berkeley. Emerging from the train station after a long day of traveling without much food, I stumbled into the first restaurant I found: a casual little corner joint that served burgers, fries, and shakes made using natural, high-quality ingredients. I scarfed down a cheeseburger (no bun) and made a mental note to myself about the place in case I needed something quick and easy during the next couple of days. This note was quickly erased: during the 20-minute walk to my hotel, I passed approximately 23987231 casual little corner joints that served burgers, fries, and shakes made using natural, high-quality ingredients. They’re everywhere! Still, it was a nice walk over. Berkeley is a pretty town, with lots of bikers, sunlight, and greenery:

I found my hotel, which was cutely college-themed: the room service request form looked like a Scantron sheet, the shower curtain had SAT vocab words on it, and the local directory was in the style of a three-ring binder. And in my brief survey of the room, I picked up the price sheet for food and saw that, in addition to the $9 Reeses Cups and $15 mini bar options, there were $275 bong-inspired lamps. Welcome to Berkeley.

I dropped off my bags and embarked on a walking tour of the campus. After the urban sprawl of Boston University, anything coherent feels good, but the UC Berkeley campus is gorgeous. I don’t know enough about architecture to comment on what I saw, but I could totally spend the next few years here. It didn’t hurt that the campus was being bathed in my first California sunset, either. Check it out:

Monday was a busy day of welcomes, information sessions, meals with students/professors, social events, etc. I got a nice jump on the day by waking up at 4AM Berkeley time. After getting some breakfast at a local diner a few hours later, I still had some time to kill, so I started walking east and stumbled across this trail leading up to the top of a hill. 10 minutes of walking/jogging later, I was greeted with a slightly gray/foggy but still nice view of the bay.

Anyway, back to the welcomes. It was a long day, full of interesting and relevant information. A few points:

• The other ~10 prospective students were all cool, interesting people. When we went around the table at our first introductory meeting, there were some common themes that emerged in peoples’ interests: music, boardgames, and outdoor activities. This is my kind of crowd.
• I had been very worried that the current graduate students (and prospectives) would be math robots. While I’m sure that everyone I met was great at math, they were all smart, well-spoken, social people. They even did things other than statistics sometimes! Again, outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, climbing, and running seemed popular. And eating.
• The program seems well thought out, and seems to take about 5 years. The first year is spent doing mostly coursework with some seminars and group meetings thrown in there to get you thinking about research topics. The second year is more coursework with some electives and your first teaching/assisting/research opportunities. After passing the oral qualifying exam in year 2-3, it’s onto research.
• As the day progressed, I kept asking myself, “Wait, they’re going to pay me to come here and study/research with these people? I get to actually work on these projects?” It seemed almost too good to be true. I felt totally at home with these people, and could really see myself fitting well into the department.

Tuesday was a short day, with four 30-minute interviews with faculty members. I met with Professors Nielsen, Wainwright, Song, and van der Laan, and had interesting conversations with all of them about their research, opportunities for getting involved, and the Berkeley Statistics PhD experience. Though the short windows weren’t really enough time to get into deep conversations, I think there would be no shortage of brilliant people doing interesting, relevant research projects at Berkeley.

And then, almost as quickly as it had started, my Berkeley adventure came to an end. Thankfully, there was a station wagon waiting to whisk me off to my next adventure… coming next week!