Student SPHere 2008-09

As I’m sure most of you have guessed, my week started out fantastically, thanks to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ winning an unprecedented sixth Lombardi trophy. I am proud to say that I did some of my personal best terrible towel waving at the end of the fourth quarter, and I fully believe that it was the exuberant waving of the terrible towel by the countless members of Steeler Nation that ultimately propelled the football into Santonio Holmes’ hands to seal the six-pack for the Steelers. The aftermath of this landmark event will no doubt be felt for weeks to come. In fact Punxsutawney Phil (sporting a tiny groundhog-sized Polamalu jersey) was reported to state “Who cares about the weather, the Steelers won the Super Bowl!� and then declared six more weeks of winter only for Arizona fans. I’ll try not to babble anymore about the Steelers, but I make no promises.
Dan and I went to Bachmann’s on Lyndale on Monday. I guess Bachmann’s flowers are popular here or something. Someone had recommended that we go, and it was actually a very cute little place—obviously lots of flowers for sale. I think I might go back and purchase a “watch ‘em grow� pot. It is a large pot that contains bulbs like jonquils and crocus that you can keep in the house and watch grow and bloom throughout the spring. Since we live in an apartment, we don’t have a yard, so I thought it might be nice. Not nearly as nice, mind you, as the amazing Super Bowl victory I witnessed on Sunday. The other feature of Bachmann’s on Lyndale is the fact that a branch of Patrick’s Bakery is in the shop, so you can sit in a nice little garden area and have lunch. The owner is a Parisian trained patissier, and the shop has lovely individual quiches and pain au chocolat and whatnot. I was pleased to find that my favorite drink as a child—the diablo menthe—was also available, so I, of course had to get one, and it tasted just as good as I remembered. Of course, the taste of the diablo menthe did not hold a candle to the sweet taste of the unadulterated victory Steeler Nation experienced on Sunday in their historical SIXTH Super Bowl win.
I had all of my classes once again today. Dr. Neaton was out of town, so we had a guest lecturer for Clinical Trials. She discussed the factors that lead to the termination of a study before full data collection is concluded, and the whole process that is involved in ending a study early. It seems like a rather unpleasant process that is best avoided if at all possible—I cannot imagine how discouraging it would have to be to be the PI on a large-scale study that ends early like that. The disappointment probably feels something like the bitter sorrow of all of the fans of the pathetic teams that are not as wonderful as the Pittsburgh Steelers who have won SIX Super Bowls.
In translational research, we are learning about the ROC curve. ROC stands for receiver operating characteristic, and it is basically a plot of specificity by 1-sensitivity for a diagnostic test at various cutpoints for classifying a continuous test outcome as either “positive� or negative�. It is used to determine the quality of a particular diagnostic test, and also the optimal cutpoint for minimizing type I and type II error (i.e. false positive and false negatives). In order for a test to be maximally effective, it needs to be able to perform at as high a level as possible with as few mistakes as possible. In fact, we could model the ideal test after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ miniscule error rates and phenomenal success rate in their SIXTH Super Bowl win (diagnostic tests, however, will probably never be featured in a Mean Joe Green tribute commercial).
And last but not least, Dr. Carlin introduced us to the wonderful world of WINBugs in my Intro to Bayes class. We just did some very baby-like examples to begin, but I’m already impressed by the software’s obvious potential (although mind you, not as impressed as I am by the impeccable poetry in motion I witnessed on the football field this Sunday). One of the things I’ll definitely have to keep in mind with WINBugs, however, is that it does not use variance, but rather the inverse of variance, precision. Hey, maybe the Steelers are all Bayesians, ‘cause they sure exhibited precision last Sunday when they won their SIXTH Super Bowl.
I will not let that horribly corny joke be the last nugget of wisdom in my blog this week. Instead, I will leave you with the immortal words of Jack Lambert, Steelers’ linebacker and participant in four of Pittsburgh’s SIX Super Bowl victories: "If I could start my life all over again, I would be a professional football player, and you damn well better believe I would be a Pittsburgh Steeler.�