Miscellaneous stuff about P.B. Stark

applications | ultras | espresso | bread | wheels | Erdös | Newton | schooling | the king and I | Vicarism | In Memoriam | pithosophy | neologisms | haiku

Thoughts on applied Statistics:

Some ultramarathons I've run:

See Stan Jensen's run100s.com or zombierunner.com for more about ultrarunning.

Lately, I've been running barefoot and in minimalist non-shoes, primarily homemade huaraches. In cold and mud, I run in homemade moccasins or split-toe surfing booties. I believe humans are well suited to distance running in minimal footwear or barefoot.

I'm serious about espresso:

I roast coffee on the stove using a 6q pot and a whisk. I grind using a Zassenhaus Turkish hand mill or a Porlex ceramic-burr hand mill. I recently abandoned my Olympia Cremina 67 (another review) for a Bacchi stovetop espresso machine. It is not a mokka pot. It's a steam-powered piston espresso machine, truly a marvel of engineering.

I bake:

Before I adopted the paleo diet, I baked bread from scratch, including grinding the grain by hand.

Favorite wheels:

I drive a Vespa GTS 250ie; a 1981 Hujsak Columbus-tubing bike with a first-generation Dura-Ace gruppo; a Colnago C40 Carbon, full Campagnolo Record 10-speed, Ultra Torque carbon cranks, Easton EC90 bars. But mostly I walk or run for transportation.

My Erdös Number is 3:

(Erdös → Felzenbaum → Hochberg → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Freedman → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Evans → Stark)

(Erdös → Tovey → Donoho → Stark)

In December 2006, there were about 33,605 people with Erdös number 3. I believe that my Erdös number of the second kind is also 3; in December 2006, there were about 10,118 people with an Erdös number of the second kind equal to 3.

I'm an academic descendent of Sir Isaac Newton ;-)

(Devised by Duncan Agnew.)

Schooling

My education is a little unusual for a professor of Statistics. I dropped out of high school to go to MIT, where I intended to major in Physics and Philosophy. After a year, I transferred to Princeton University, where I majored in Philosophy. I spent a semester in Oxford as a junior. From Princeton I went to law school at the University of Texas at Austin. I dropped out after six weeks, and worked in management for an industrial marketing company. After a year, I switched to part-time consulting and took undergraduate courses at UT in Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Physics, then started graduate work in Geophysics. I transferred from UT to University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), where—while self-employed as a car mechanic— I finished my Ph.D. and started postdoctoral work in Geophysics. I came to UC Berkeley as a postdoc in Statistics, which was my first formal exposure to Probability and Statistics. I was hired as Assistant Professor of Statistics in 1988 after a year as a postdoc.

The King and I

I am not King Harald V of Norway. But I could play him on tv.

Moral system

I am the founder of Vicarism.

In Memoriam

Two of my dearest friends died in late 2008:

John Matthew Emery III, M.D., 8/23/1957–12/7/2008: obituary, eulogy, second eulogy.

David A. Freedman, Ph. D., 3/5/1938–10/17/2008: obituary, eulogy.

Pithosophy

• No matter how busy I am, I can always find time to procrastinate.
• Nothing feels quite as good as feeling good.
• Pain hurts more than anything else.
• There's no need to seek out irritating wastes of time: They will find you.
• An anal retentive obsessive compulsive's work is never done.
• The problem with patience is that it's so time-consuming.
• The glass might be half empty. It might be half full. Regardless, somebody will have to wash it.
• Measure twice, twice.
• Don't take shortcuts if you don't have time to spare.
• There's no present like time.
• If the answer to a question will make you feel bad—no matter what the answer is—consider not asking.
• If you piss into the wind, more often than not, you'll get wet. The stronger the stream or the wind, the wetter you tend to get.
• Just because you're a jerk doesn't mean you have to act like one.
• Meditation is all fun and games, until somebody loses an I.
• There's a fine line between being morally eccentric and having a scruple loose.
• Unsolicited advice is rarely heeded. The same goes for solicited advice.
• What I lack in willpower I compensate for with appetite.
• I'm a pretty good Buddhist: usually in the present, tense.
• Pain can cripple but it does not kill—even when we pray it would.
• You will never fall down if you touch the ground only with your feet.
• Thinking is perhaps the most pleasurable thing to do with one's brain, aside from learning.

Favorite neologisms

irrationalization, pithosophy, somatisfaction, unnececeremony

Haiku on working as an Expert Witness

The job is simple:
Help the judge and the jury
understand the truth.

If the other side
were scrupulous and careful,
I would be useless.

Opposing counsel:
They feed me and my children.
Why don't I love them?

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Last modified 17 May 2012. statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/other.htm