Week 5
Good morning! I was feeling inspired by Bhavitha’s latest posts, so I decided in this post I’d answer a couple questions from the blog prompts and ideas list that Dr. Wilke gave us.
In what ways did your classwork at BASIS prepare you for the experience of your internship?
I think I’ve only really been utilizing more of the classwork from recent years. I think first and foremost, AP Statistics knowledge has been invaluable for me to understand what I’ve been reading. I definitely am still Googling and watching videos on new terms, but I have that foundational information laid out which helps me read the papers more easily. I know what an r-squared value is, I can understand roughly how the statistical analysis occurs.
The other class that surprisingly really helped me out was Capstone Applied Math with Mr. Madler. The class did not have a super rigid curriculum, and at the time, I remember many of the concepts going over my head (like the mechanics of machine learning, I sort of understand it but I also sort of don’t). But now, when I see those terms mentioned or I’m reading about a model, I can relate it back to what we were learning in class.
How has this experience impacted your thinking about future education/career choices?
In the past couple years, especially as the impacts of climate change are worsening (like even hearing first-hand stories from my family friends in California who’ve lost their homes in recent fires), I’ve become more interested in pursuing that as a career choice. So this project has sort of helped me better understand one way in which research into environmentalism as a whole might occur. I’m actually seeing how they collect data, analyze it, and prepare reports that can tell where funds most aptly should be directed. So now I’m much more seriously considering going down that path at university.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Until next week,
Valerie
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