Of the Divergence Theorem

I am minutes removed from submitting my final assignment of the semester. It's a good feeling, and now I can dedicate all my time and effort to a some projects and a couple finals. Unlike most semesters where I have a final in every single one of my classes, I don't have the stress of remembering formulas, theorems, and dates looming over my head. Instead I get to take my time making sure I'm satisfied with a project. It's a new thing for me (and likely won't happen in future semesters), but I'm enjoying it.

On this reading day, I'd like to take this blog post to write a few random thoughts I have:

• I enjoyed today's calc 3 homework on the Divergence Theorem much more than yesterday's on
  Stokes' Theorem. I'm more comfortable working with triple integrals for volumes than I am with flux integrals and oriented surfaces
• I have never been as excited about R programming as I have been the last few days when I've had hours to really dive into this volleyball project and learn a lot more about R's little tricks
• A quote I must agree with by my brother is, "Sometimes after a long day, seeing a few people get punched in the head is exactly what you want to see." 
• Here are the videos he was referring to:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3agHc02aPo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUIg27pvBrc
• Falling asleep to a thunderstorm is one of the most relaxing things of all time
• Steph Curry is still Steph Curry but the Warriors' bench is garbage
• Nothing beats a classic Bic 0.7 mechanical pencil
• Actually a good TA who is willing to help and knows the subject matter incredibly well beats the mechanical pencil. Shoutout to Adam Ott and Jacob Miller this semester for being those clutch TAs

It's been a fun exercise maintaining this weekly blog and entertaining all my readers (aka myself) by taking whatever is floating around in my head and slapping it down into actual words on a screen. I'd love to say I'll keep this blog up after the semester, but honestly it's probably very unlikely that actually happens. 

Signing out for the last time,

Log

Of Networking

I never really know what to write about on this blog, and this early afternoon was certainly no exception. I thought about writing about water monitors because this morning I saw a cool video of a massive one climbing shelves in a 7-Eleven in Thailand (see image). I also considered writing about our nearby planetary neighbor the moon (inspired by Kid Cudi's "Man On The Moon" album we're currently listening to). Today I guess I will embrace the business school culture and talk about the golden subject of networking. 

As one who feels like an imposter strolling through the Tanner as a stats major, I have always looked at the term "networking" with some level of contempt. My fellow stats major, blogger, and frisbee teammate and I have had several conversations (full of unfounded generalizations) about how the business school doesn't focus on hard skills but instead on building forced friendships they call "networking." These last couple months, however, I've had a change of heart, and have really learned the value of networking. More than anything I'm just grateful for people with more experience than me who are willing to share their knowledge, time, and advice.

The path of an accountant is very clearly defined: you get an internship at the big four, work there basically as a slave for several years hating your life, and slowly move up the ranks towards partner level or leave at some point to join or start a smaller firm. I guess you have two options: enjoy the thrilling life of an auditor or mix it up and go the tax route. Those are your only options. The path for a statistics major is much more broad and less-defined. You can go the actuary route, the data science route, the business intelligence route, the sports analytics route, the marketing analytics route, or some other random application you conceive. I love having all these options, but I'm getting to the point where I need to narrow down exactly how I will focus my last year of undergrad education, grad school education, and career path. 

There have been so many fascinating people I've learned from of various job types all with a similar background of data/statistics. All of them have provided me with a lot of insight about what my options are, what I'm most interested in, what skills would be useful to develop, and other people who would be useful to talk to. The people whose jobs most fascinate me are connections I never would have found without– yes, I'll say it– networking. My brother referred me to someone who used to be in his ward in San Francisco who currently works for the Cavs. That guy referred me to a guy who used to work at the Pistons and now works for another sports analytics industry. I told that guy I was probably more interested in the business/marketing side of the sports industry and he referred me to his brother-in-law who did marketing for the Wizards. That guy was very encouraging, insightful, optimistic, and willing to make lots of useful connections for me, including connecting me with a guy who does business analytics for the Arizona Coyotes and a guy at BYU who worked for the Utah Warriors rugby team.

Basically my point in this is that people are awesome, full of extremely useful knowledge, and willing to sacrifice a half hour of their precious time to talk to some random kid who is very distantly connected to them. I am grateful for the knowledge gained in the last few months from these 15-20 people who've been willing to talk to me. I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my stats background and know the tools to help me get to that position in the workplace. I hope I can be as willing and able to help students when I am further along in my career.

Of Fries, Revisited

A while ago we discussed together a stirring debate about french fry preferences and doubts about the validity of the public opinion. Today we revisit this theme. I'm not a big fan of Wendy's fries, and I had in my mind that McDonald's had absolutely fantastic fries. A couple weeks ago I had them and I regretfully admit that they were not nearly as good as I had remembered. Are they still better than Wendy's fries? Probably so. But it sparked the question of which restaurant truly has the best french fries. 

With it being March and thus having invested quite a bit of time in college basketball's March Madness (as good as the Christmas season, almost), I thought the best way to determine which restaurant truly has the best fries was to build a bracket and have people vote on the two choices on my Instagram story. I asked people for submissions of their favorite fry places and was hoping for enough to fill a classic 64 team bracket, but I didn't have enough so we went with 32 teams. Seeding was determined by how many people had submitted the particular (more submissions roughly equates to more popularity). 

Here are a couple hypotheses and notes about the structure of this endeavor:

• 
  The goal with this was to narrow down the field enough to go try maybe the top eight and decide for myself
• I predicted that Chick Fil A, McDonald's, and Wendy's would all be in the final game and win despite not actually being that good
• This is obviously a biased study as people see a name and associate it with having good fries
• To standardize this, I only included original fries (no Arby's curly fries or sweet potato fries from Cubby's, or Cajun fries from Five Guys, etc)
  

Much to my disappointment (although not to my surprise), the final was Wendy's and Chick Fil A. Chick Fil A won. A common consensus was that the elite 8 matchup of Five Guys and Red Robin should have been the actual championship. Now I have a much better idea of what restaurants to go to to try their fries. Attached is the completed bracket with the seeding and vote totals for all 2 of my readers if they happen to have interest in this.

On an unrelated note, the "A Rush of Blood to the Head" album by Coldplay is absolutely fantastic. So good,