The First Day of Jobhood

Today was my first day in the new job I just got, and I'll tell you what: it is AWESOME! The people seem fabulous, and I get my own

*cubicle

*desk

*phone

*phone extension

*laptop

*name placard

*business cards

*email address

*white board

(I'm really geeking out over this list, I can't even explain it)

and I get to pretty much, with the exception of a bunch of meetings I need to attend, make my own schedule. It doesn't pay a whole lot, but I more than doubled our annual income (not saying a lot there) and got us dental insurance!

Okay, those are the perks of the job, but let me tell you what I actually do (and try to avoid gaging on this one): I'm a data analyst. You heard me right, I analyze data! Remember the statistics course I stopped after one semester in high school partly because my teacher (Mr. Atkinson) was a complete num skull and partly because I hated every minute of actual statistics? Yeah, that's basically what I do, or will do starting tomorrow, and I absolutely love it! Partly I think it's the organization and the people I am doing the work for. They really believe that I am going to do a good job, so even when I look at all the things they're asking me to do and think "there's no way" I feel capable when they look at me and think "she's incredible." I will try to never underestimate the power that thinking the most of others can have on their lives.


The organization I am working for is called Parent Pathways, which helps teen parents raise healthy families. It funds an alternative high school for teen mothers. Now I know what you're thinking: "Shouldn't Rachel be encouraging these moms to place their child for adoption rather than keep their babies because, well, she's trying to adopt?" You're probably right, but I know that not every teen mom was meant for adoption. My oldest sister Cindy wasn't, and she was able to create a beautiful family with the father of her children. These moms who are trying their best, given their situations, to improve their children's lives should get the help they need to do so. Overall, I feel like while this solution to teen pregnancy isn't perfect, it is beneficial in reality.


Let me just say I never would have guessed, not in a million years, that I would be getting business cards with the job title Data Analyst on them! But I do feel like God has known all along, and this is where He wants me to be. I am truly grateful for this job, and the fact I don't have to write anymore cover letters for a while.


And yes, I totally called my voicemail about 5 times today just to hear my name, and the first time I did I hung up really fast because I thought I had actually called a real person who answered their phone. Very professional, I know.

Thursday Thirteen #14: Reasons to Like Math

I was born on the 14th so it seems only fitting that my first Thursday Thirteen should be the fourteenth in the series. If you hadn't already guessed from the title, this is an all-Nicholas production. So without further ado, here's why you should love math.

1. Math is a wonderful thing and Jack Black says so. (Unfortunately YouTube won't let you see it but you can still hear it.)


2. Nothing impresses people at parties like a bit of math. Trust me, deriving the quadratic formula makes you the coolest kid at any party.

3. When you love math, Newton can be your homeboy too.

4. You can make cool analogies that make ridiculously large numbers more meaningful. For example, light travels at 186,000 miles per second but that's so fast it's pretty meaningless. However what if I told you that in the time it takes a computer today to add two numbers (half a nanosecond) light travels 6 inches?

5. Taking math classes leads to making more money. From emurse.com:

According to the book Overcoming Math Anxiety, a professor at National University estimates that starting salaries across all industries increase by $2,000 for every math class someone has taken after the ninth grade.

...Unless your getting PhD in physics, in which case the effect wears off after your 10th math class or so.

6. You can properly use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.


7. Chicks dig trig.

8. You can use math to make a computer that can play Jeopardy - and win. From the New York Times:

For the last three years, I.B.M. scientists have been developing what they expect will be the world’s most advanced “question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday human elocution — “natural language,” as computer scientists call it — and respond with a precise, factual answer. In other words, it must do more than what search engines like Google and Bing do, which is merely point to a document where you might find the answer. It has to pluck out the correct answer itself. Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a holy grail, because it would allow machines to converse more naturally with people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords.

Click here for a short video explaining how cool this thing really is.

9. You can avoid being fooled by hillbillies.


10. Math has answers. Philosophers wonder about unanswerable questions - for example Kierkegaard questioned whether true faith was compatible with human reason and contended that to embrace God one must become a "knight of the absurd". Compare that with "what's 7 x 5?"

11. Using math you can actually understand the national deficit.


12. You'll be able to see complex looking stuff like this
and know that it's simply means a sphere.

13. Without math you'll never be the very model of a modern major general.

You've just got to have those cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

Why Our Country Needs Better Math Skills

I am always amused by how those who understand math and have a sense for numbers can use that to befuddle those who don't. You can see it all the time on TV ads for pay-day loans or cash now for your structured settlement payments. In both cases, people who can do math are making a lot of money off of those who can't (or choose not to). In a lot of ways, politicians do the same thing. Bush and Gore argued over "fuzzy math" seemingly non-stop in the 2000 presidential election. Here in Colorado last fall we had a "right to work" ballot measure where both sides claimed widely different numbers as far as the cost of passing or failing the measure, and when a local news channel did the math, it turned out that both sides were using ridiculous estimates.

The latest example, from the Associated Press, reads "Obama orders Cabinent to cut spending by $100 million". To someone who can't or won't crunch the numbers, $100 million looks like a lot of money. But when compared with the size of the federal budget it amounts to a 0.0025% cut in spending. In fact, that cut is well within the projected error in the budgeted expenses and income for the government for any given week. However, since most people have a hard time appreciating the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion, it looks like Obama is working hard to cut the federal budget and save the taxpayers money.