The difference is significant

We have some very good friends who have two daughters.  One is less than two months from graduating from high school; the other is less than a week from graduating from college.  As we have gotten to know the parents, we have also had the privilege of getting to know the young women they have raised.  We have employed the kids as cat sitters, we have written letters of recommendation, we have been asked to pray in tough situations.  We have attended volleyball games and art competitions and birthday parties and Easter dinners.  And soon, graduation ceremonies. 

The older daughter (Jo) has been working on a ginormous senior project to complete her undergraduate degree.  As is typical of her, she had a vision that went beyond the scope the university was accustomed to.  So, lots of meetings and discussions and patience and delays filled Jo’s life before the project was finally approved.  Her project was a sociological one that ended up including both in-depth one-on-one interviews and an 18-question Internet survey.  Somewhere in passing, I mentioned to Jo that my career of long ago was in that field, that field of data collection and analysis.  And if she needed any help, just let me know.

And so a few weeks ago, following a late-night email plea for help, I was digging into the dust-bunnied corners of an upstairs closet in search of user-friendly definitions of various bivariate and multivariate analyses.  I pulled out users’ manuals -- copyright 1998 -- for a powerful statistical software program that I used to live and breathe and curse at for all its niggly technicalities.  It was with shock and horror that I learned it is still in use…and with a Student Edition no less.

An afternoon Spring Break data analysis pow-wow followed, during which I was pleased to remember big concepts like “factor” and “regression” and enjoyed Jo’s laughter when I got excited about pulling words like “stepwise” and “Eigen value” and “adjusted r-square” from brain cells that had long ago accepted early retirement.  Jo’s interest in and passion for her project was of the qualitative, societal impact, seeking to understand marginalized cultures nature of things.  But her output…the Big Paper that is due in just a few days…is to boil that passion down to numbers and statistics and trends.  I love math but it can sure be a kill-joy sometimes.

The Big Paper has been coming to me in 4-8 page chunks.  I am honored to have been asked to review and comment.  Jo warned me she has no clue how to use commas; I warned her I love the proper use of semi-colons.  She is a very bright young woman who catches onto concepts quickly.  She is a good writer despite her dearth of commas.  Her paper has been fascinating to read, both for its content as well as the opportunity for me to look in my rear-view mirror for a spell.  A look back 23 years to when I was writing Big Papers.  A look back 13 years to when I was analyzing survey data.  A look back 3 years to when Jo was just my friends’ kid instead of my friend.