The latest issue (12/5/09) of Science News introduced me to the acronym “STEM,” which stands for science, technology, engineering and math.  (I presume that statisticians fall under the last field.)  They published an alarming graph* showing that less than half of all STEM grads remain in their field beyond three years.

“Highly qualified students may be choosing a non-STEM job because these other occupations are higher paying, offer better career prospects such as advancement, employment stability, and/or prestige…”

— B. Lindsay Lowell, Hal Salzman, Hamutal Bernstein, with Everett Henderson

Stat-Ease specializes in design of experiments (DOE) for industrial research.  Therefore, the more who stay with STEM the better, so far as I’m concerned.   However, I plead guilty to going for the money by pursuing a master’s degree in business administration.  This led to me being promoted out of my chemical engineering job in R&D to a position as product manager.  My business partner Pat Whitcomb went for a master’s in chemical engineering, thus sticking with STEM.  He and I enjoy ribbing each other about our diverging paths, but it turned out to be very synergistic having these complementary mindsets (technical versus business).  I figure that in high-tech companies like ours, it can’t hurt to have managers with a STEM degree, at least undergraduate, thus it may not be worth trying to stem this tide.

*See Figure 4 from this October 2009 report on three generations of students by researchers (quoted above) from Georgetown, Rutgers and The Urban Institute.

PS. The STEM Education Coalition co-chaired by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the National Science Teachers Association works to maintain the USA’s edge in technology – primarily via K-12 education..  The American Statistical Association (ASA) is a participating organization along with dozens of others in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

A colleague in our field of experimental design told me today that he will be making a big career change by moving out of industrial research to teaching high-school science.  He may think twice about this after seeing this thread from TheScientist Community that educators’ caution is killing science fun.  Actually, being a bit squeamish about blood and guts, I like the idea of dissecting a jellybean rather than a frog.  That’s sweet!

The blog stemmed from this TimesOnline article detailing how School lab health and safety rules ‘could stop future scientists’ .  I like their picture of students in a high school chemistry lab who are clearly thrilled by their production of a huge flame-ball.  That seems very educational!  Unfortunately, this sort of thing, such as making volcanoes, can no longer be tolerated.  That’s a pity, I think.

On a brighter note, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, an independent charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science, report that kids are keen to do more experiments, according to this SchoolGate blog.

“When things are taught without true experimentation, students don’t understand it. And that needs to change. Children can do science at school, but they don’t necessarily learn what a real scientist is – planning an experiment, needing to repeat things, having a clear hypothesis and testing it.”

— Baroness Susan Greenfield. Director of the Royal Institution

I enjoyed many fun and educational experiments in my school career, back when the teacher ruled supreme.  All of them impressed on us the importance of being safe and we learned first-hand how to handle hazardous chemicals and biological materials.  My favorite in-class experiment, which I doubt would be allowed nowadays, was a fermentation reaction that my team of high-school honors students ran as our final project for senior biology class.  The alcoholic product, albeit not of vintage quality, served very well, we judged.  I do not exactly recall the consequences, but they must not have been too bad, because the teacher gave us a pass.

Some years ago my wife was diagnosed with high blood pressure (hypertension). This necessitated regular measurements with an instrument called a sphygmomanometer, which took me a long while to master for spelling and pronunciation. Being a chemical engineer helped – we used manometers to track barometric pressure. The hard part is the “sphygmo” – a Greek word meaning to throb or pulse. However, it works nicely for blood pressure!

Blood pressure measurements via the mercury gravity sphygmomanometer are still considered to be “gold standard.” Nevertheless, electronic devices are far easier to use and affordable for home use. To help my wife keep track of blood pressure, I bought one made by Panasonic. This came in handy when I developed heart problems of my own – chronicled in my article “How DOE Saved My Life and Made it Worth Living” in the June 2008, Stat-Teaser.

This week’s CRNtech brought news of a Digital Blood Pressure Check via an inexpensive (less than $100) device that connects via USB to a PC for capturing results. This data can then be uploaded to Microsoft’s HeathVault. From there you can enable care givers to watch for statistical trends.

My guess is that by repeated measurements over time, facilitated by this do-it-yourself system, medical professionals would get a far more precise assessment of hypertension. This may be the answer to Blood Pressure Variability: The Challenge of Variation – an issue recognized in this recent publication of the American Journal of Hypertension (2008, 21 3–4).

“It is therefore practically impossible for a clinician to know whether he is changing a drug or dose in response to chance variation in blood pressure or true changes in the underlying mean blood pressure.”
— Tom P Marshall, Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham

The latest National Geographic Science column on Mind Games shows a jar of jelly beans (presumably provided by the Easter bunny) and it offers a formula for estimating the number:

1. Count the jars radius (r) in beans. (This is hard to see due to the angle of the picture, but let’s say r equals 5.)
2. Estimate the height (h) in beans. (I can count this fairly easily from the photo – h equals 35.)
3. The volume (V) in beans is: V = 3 h r^2, where the constant 3 is a round-off on the circular constant pi. (So I estimate the beans in the National Geographic jar number 3x35x5^2, or 3x35x25 – the product of which is 2,625.)

The scientific, calculated estimate I made (2,625) for the count of jelly beans came a lot closer than my initial guess of ten thousand: The answer is 4,466. Going to all this effort might be worth it if you come across a bean-counting contest with a prize worth taxing your math skills.

Meanwhile, two professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia, one a mathematician (John Adam) and the other a physicist (Lawrence Weinstein), have teamed up to provide a primer on Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin. As the publisher Princeton University Press says: “The ability to estimate is an important skill in daily life.”

As the father of five, I frequently was asked to help with math problems. First I’d ask that the student (my kid) work out a bottom-line number. Then I’d suggest they do a “reality check” by estimating the answer to at least the order of magnitude. That often sent them back to the beginning of the problem due to their first answer being so obviously wrong. The way facts and figures get thrown around the airwaves and internet nowadays it’s more important than ever to do reality checks.

I’ll bet this new book will be very helpful to equip reality checkers with the tools they need to achieve more accuracy. I learned about Guesstimation from its review in the March 31st New York Times. The Times article provides an interesting test of estimating ability: How many times does the American teenager say “like”? I heard this much more from my three daughters than my two sons, thus I hypothesize that there’s a gender bias. I’d hear this so word so over-used –- at least, like, once per sentence –- that I’d start counting them aloud, thus creating a great deal of aggravation for my teenager. I suppose the work “like” might come out ten times a minute and one hundred times per conversation. So I’m going to say a thousand “likes” per day could be in the realm of possibility. However, some teenagers are not afflicted by this word termite. My guess is ten thousand “likes” per year per teenager. To learn the answer, take this eight-question test of your estimation abilities.

Recently the Wall Street Journal reported that a Study Questions Evidence Behind Heart Therapies — specifically by this alarming statistic: “Just 11% of more than 2,700 recommendations approved by cardiologists for treating heart patients are supported by high-quality scientific testing.” It seems that the vast majority of prescribed treatments remain unratified by multiple randomized clinical trials – the highest level of evidence according to guidelines issued jointly by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

I am caught up in this personally due to having had one heart attack some years ago. Ever since then I’ve been working hard to avoid a second one. My daily aspirin is strongly supported by scientific study, but it’s not very sure that I should be keeping on with the platelet inhibitor Clodiprogel (Plavix™, Bristol-Meyers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals) prescribed after getting my clogged artery stented. I have to credit my cardiologist though – he is utterly impartial on the Clodiprogel – I cannot get any signal – pro or con. What can he say? As pointed out in this related article by US News & World Report no clinical trials exist beyond about one year (even that time is a bit vague!) of the heart surgery.

So as not to let all this cause me too much stress (possibly bad for the heart, but not strongly supported by solid scientific study) I picked up on this promising therapy – waltzing as a form of cardio-exercise. Evidently this works as well as trudging the treadmill and the dancing leads to a better quality of life as measured by the Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire.* I note that the subjects were selected at random – that’s good, but “the study was not blinded, neither to the investigators nor to the patients.” Obviously it would not do to waltz blindly along, no matter how blissful that might be – until one hits the wall!

*I’d be skeptical if this weren’t based on Minnesota standards, that is, bitter cold, biting insects and so forth. 😉

Tonight the NCAA filled out their 65-team* bracket for their annual Division I basketball championship. The quality of basketball will no doubt be better than ever, at least since 1995 when Kevin Garnett broke barriers by jumping directly from high school to the Minnesota Timberwolves. That really provides no excuse though for what Larry Wright, and adjunct professor of statistics at Columbia, says is a “mind boggling” lack of improvement in the rate at which college players make free throws. In this article by the New York Times, John Branch reports that in 1965 NCAA teams shot 69 percent. This year they cashed in from the 15 foot charity stripe at a rate of only 68.8 percent.

Some athletic endeavors leap ahead due to an innovation in technique, such as the Fosbury Flop in high jumping or skating on cross country skis. I wonder why more players don’t throw up free throws underhanded like Rick Barry did as depicted by this NBA website on The Art of the Free Throw. His 90 percent rate set the NBA bar when he retired.

I saw an interesting shooting variation at the halftime of a Timberwolves game a few weeks ago. They gave a fan one shot from half court to win a million dollars. The contestant was an older fellow who seemingly had no chance throw a basketball that far. However, he succeeded on distance by flinging it backward over his head, an approach used by this more accurate fan who won a car by sinking the 47-foot shot shown here.

It would be interesting to experiment with an accomplished basketball player to see how their shooting percentage would vary facing forward versus backward from the free-throw line. Surely the success rate would fall precipitously.** Actually, that might make things a lot more interesting – even the seemingly static 69 percent rate is too boringly accurate.

*One aspect of this “March Madness” is that it commences with a “play-in” game that makes one team the absolute loser!

**An exception might be 41 percent free thrower Ben Wallace seen missing the iron completely in this video . He should do the same as the fans watching him at the line — don’t look.