cmool's blog

The polls have closed, and the votes have been (electronically) counted.  We had two excellent sets of candidates run this year!  The presidents-elect of the Statistics Department graduate students are:

John Lewis & Grant Schneider

Congratulations, John and Grant!  Your term will begin with the start of the first semester in June, and will last through the 2012-2013 school year.  We are excited to see what you have in store for the graduate students and the department!

The following are candidates for the 2012-2013 Co-Presidents of the Statistics Department Graduate Students:

• Staci White & Mark Risser
• John Lewis & Grant Schneider

You can find their campaign platforms below. Information about voting will be emailed to graduate students before the online elections held May 3-4, 2012. Good luck to all the candidates!

Staci White & Mark Risser

Dear students,

Over the past year, we have been impressed by the dedication and leadership former co-presidents Katie Thompson and Erin Leatherman have brought to the position. Together, we hope to continue the initiatives started over the past year while also introducing our own new ideas to continue building community across the student body, faculty, and alumni.

Specifically, as co-presidents, we plan to

1. Maintain the online “blog” format of CMOOL, keeping it as a regular feature to advertise and archive student activities for both current and prospective students. Ideally, this will involve collaboration with Tom Marker and the Communications Committee to reach the broadest audience possible (through both the department webpage and Facebook site).
2. Organize weekly activities according to student interest, including
   • social events, such as Friday Happy Hour gatherings, and
   • athletic events, such as soccer, basketball, or volleyball,
3.  Continue the tradition of creating an annual department t-shirt, selecting the design from a department-wide contest.
4. Each semester, organize the following:
   • One non-statistical departmental gathering outside the regular school day, such as an athletic event (collegiate or professional), a cultural activity (music, theater, or film downtown or in the Wexner Center), or a nature activity (skiing in the winter, hiking in the fall/spring).
   • One department potluck, highlighting the broad culinary skills of our students, faculty, and staff, to be held during the week.
5.  Strive to make ourselves available for student input, both on what we’re doing and what we’re not doing. This will involve weekly or bi-weekly “office hours”, either in person or online via web conferencing (video and/or chat).
6. Begin organizing graduate student colloquia to give the students in our department a chance to see what our senior graduate students are researching. This would provide an opportunity to learn what others are working on, and it is a great way for newer graduate students to see what great things are being done by their senior peers.

Here, at the advent of our third year at Ohio State, we look forward to sharing our organizational and leadership skills with the department as co-presidents. Thank you for your consideration,

Staci and Mark

 John Lewis & Grant Schneider

In a time of uncertainty and angst, due to upcoming qualifiers, the semester conversion, parking privatization, and a plethora of other pertinent issues, the Statistics Department student body needs bold and experienced leadership, which can best be provided by a party with a combined 11 years at The Ohio State University and 8 years of graduate school.  Below are several categories we believe are vital to you as a Statistics graduate student in the upcoming academic year. A vote for Lewis and Schneider is an investment in your future! 

1. CMOOL
   • Continue to publish great issues as established by our predecessors.
   • Continue to have students write personal profiles.
   • Resurrect the dearly missed ‘Ask the Presidents’ section established by Presidents Sonksen and Katsfuβ.
2. T-shirts
   • Everyone loves T-shirts. The T-shirt design contest will be continued.
3. Departmental Gatherings
   • We will continue to help organize wonderful departmental gatherings like Presidents Leatherman and Thompson including but not limited to:
     • Ice cream socials
     • Attending sporting events
     • Playing Kickball
   • We will always be open to suggestions about these activities.
4. Parties
   • Everyone loves parties.
   • Tailgates are fun.
   • Qualifier parties will continue, most definitely.
   • The Happy Hour Fridays, which we established our first year here, will be hosted more frequently as we will not be burdened with the extreme demands of a third year schedule like some other people…
5. And, of course, uphold the values and integrity set by previous administrations.

The time has come to elect the next Co-Presidents of the Statistics Department Graduate Students. These students work as a team to be a liaison between the department faculty and staff and graduate students. A typical list of responsibilities includes:
- Assigning students to a few committees (science fair, communications, graduate information day, etc.)
- Maintaining the CMOOL Blog
- Running the poll to decide the department faculty award and staff award
- Running the election for the next Co-Presidents
- Anything else that you want to do (selling t-shirts, holding department gatherings, etc.)
 
You also get to:
- Claim the title "Co-President of the Statistics Department Graduate Students"
- List this position on your CV
- Have your name engraved on a plaque.
 
Traditionally 2 people run as a pair, but if you would like to run and do not have a running-mate let us know.  We’ll try to connect anyone whom this concerns.
 
While we enjoyed our time as Co-Presidents, we are choosing not to run again in order to have more time to focus on our research.  We appreciate the support and involvement of the student body this year, and look forward to seeing what the new candidates have in store for next year!
 
If you are interested in running, please send Katie a message indicating this.  Please also include the name of your running-mate and a list of what you intend to do as president (i.e. your campaign platform).  Previous platform examples can be found in old CMOOLs.  The deadline for applying to run is Friday, April 27.  Campaigning may start on Friday, April 27 and will come to a close with the elections, which will be held Thursday and Friday, May 3 and 4.  If you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them.

In an unprecedented (or at least as long as we can remember) feat, a statistics team has won an OSU intramural championship!  Our co-ed basketball team Big Ole Giggly Boys (BOGB) won the Winter quarter A league basketball championship.  The team included third-years Grant Schneider, Rob Ashmead, and Casey Davis, second-year Brittney Bailey, first-year Corey Gelbaugh, and a Dentistry-borrowed Lindsay Stutzman.  When asked about their accomplishment, Schneider replied, “The real turning point in our season was when Rob turned to the team with a fire in his eyes as red as the beard on his face and gave an inspirational speech ending with 'Be an outlier today!' He was immediately benched for a half as punishment for this comment.”  You may click here to see the tourney scores.  Congrats BOGB, and thanks for breaking our intramural losing streak!

We would like to invite you and your families to join us on Saturday, March 31st at 6PM to watch the NCAA Basketball "Final Four" games.  Check your inbox for details.

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate π Day with us!  Stay tuned for the next activity!

To make up for all the days of dismissing π as a mere constant of integration, we will join quantitative scientists around the world in celebrating this irrational beast on its very own day!  On (you guessed it) Wednesday, March 14 at 1:59PM, take a break from finals week, and grab some pie which will be provided in CH 212.  For other π Day related things, check out this site!

Battelle has been running a bi-weekly seminar on a broad range of topics that include (but are not limited to) machine learning, image analysis, and data analysis methods.  While to date they have been doing this internally, they would like to broaden their scope to get a sense of what others are doing.  In particular, they are looking to bring in graduate students (or faculty) from OSU to give a short 15-30 minute presentation on data analysis techniques they may be researching.  In return, students could meet some of the people in Battelle’s department, get some experience giving presentations in front of strangers, and expand their options at graduation.  If you are interested in or have questions about this opportunity, please contact Jared Schuetter (a 2010 PhD graduate from our department) at SCHUETTERJ [at] battelle [dot] org.

After nearly two weeks of fierce competition, we have a winner!  Congratulations to tournament champion Matilde Sánchez-Peña (first-year) and first-runner up Jon Bradley (fourth-year)!  Highlights of the tournament included both Co-Presidents being knocked out immediately, a student eliminating her advisor, hot chocolate and cookies for the spectators, and the awarding of THE department certificate to the champion.  Thanks to all the participants for an enjoyable and entertaining event!

Everyone is invited to cheer on the Rock-Paper-Scissors finalists as they battle to the finish!  The last few rounds will take place tomorrow (Tuesday, February 28) at 3:30p in CH 217.  If the finale itself is not a large enough draw, we will also have cookies and hot chocolate.  Hope to see you there!