Author: sukib596

Today we began the morning with another statistics lesson! We finally made it through! Dr. Laber started the beginning of our work experience with a long presentation ready to divide throughout all of our mornings with him, and this morning we finished all of the mathematical computational lessons and it began to come together a little bit. In all honesty, I know I did not absorb the information maybe in the manner that Dr. Laber expected us to, however I’m glad I was exposed to such things in statistics, as I had no idea half of those mathematical terms even existed. After this, we headed back over to the BOM where we continued helping create game board configurations for BoreDoom. We created 10 more boards, stopping for lunch at Smashed Waffles halfway through. In total, we managed to create 22 total BoreDoom board configurations with different setups and ways to solve them. At the start, Luke and I thought it would be extremely complicated to figure out, however we got the hang of the seemingly hundreds of rules of the game and got into a pattern with the quickest way to get through lots of boards and ways to make levels “harder” or more complicated. After completing all the board game configurations for the day, we were tasked with creating an algorithm in which could be coded into a computer (however our job was to write it out in human language), which would apply to any game board of BoreDoom it is assigned and successfully solve that level getting from the start point to the end point. Through a series of tasks such as calculating the numbers of moves it takes to win the game, and finding the “optimal” (we had to define optimal) pathway to the final destination, we roughly got somewhere which we felt like was not entirely right but much further along than it was when we started! After some delicious waffles, finding some fun graffiti in the Freedom Expression Tunnel, and creating an algorithm, it was time to go home.

Today, we started the day with some more lessons in statistics. Equally confusing, but much easier to get through today’s lesson than the past ones! Beginning to get comfortable with the million different variables used, and what they all mean. After hearing this, Dr. Laber took us over to the BOM again where we were introduced to a board game called “Boredoom”. Basically,  a play on words of the computer game Doom to emphasize just how boring the game is, however it is also being done entirely for statistical purposes. Today, our job was to come up with different “levels” of the games and create different board configurations, solving each one, and annotating pieces of paper to denote each board setup we successfully made and completed. Working for 4-5 hours on just that today, we created a dozen different board configurations! He told us we are going to be working on this tomorrow as well with the goal of creating about two dozen different board configurations for the real final game, in which a board is being carved out of wood and pieces are being 3-d printed! Really cool! We met up with Lindsay in a coffee shop during our lunch break and she requested to make it on my blog :). Aside from this, we are getting the hang of doing these little tedious statistical tasks for the graduate students, workers, and Dr. Laber himself to help with the thousands of digital images and tons of board configurations which must be done before the actual statistical analysis and algorithms can be derived for each project they are doing.

Today, we came in and met with Dr. Laber in the conference room first thing…surprise surprise! With more calculus, I remained very lost on most of the equations and computational facts about statistics he put up on the board. After struggling to understand some of the terms, we got free donuts along with the rest of the office and he gave us a statistics problem to solve on our own. To my own disbelief, we got it RIGHT! After not understanding the majority of the morning lessons we had been having, getting something right and beginning to grasp a concept was fabulous. Of course our explanation was not even close to the one that Dr. Laber showed us a statistician would have used to get the same answer…but still the right answer! The former Dean of the Statistics Department at NC State then came and talked to us. We talked a lot about the college process since he has worked on the executive boards of multiple universities and currently is the Dean of Statistics at Oregon State. He has a daughter who is the same age as me, so he could relate to exactly where we were at students at the moment which was a refreshing point of view in the department! After this, we met with Brian who was another member in the Statistics Department. He told us about fascinating projects he had done, how he got into statistics, and kind of his story to where he is now. It was really neat hearing the point of view of someone who truly had the perspective that people like Luke and I could do projects like the complicated dust spatial problems which made it onto a CSI episode! He believed that the concepts were simpler than they seem…but I agree to disagree. We went and ate some lunch and then met Ryan Martin, one of the most published Statisticians in the country who also is in the Stats Department at NC State after lunch. He told us about the two main methods of statics, the classical method and the Bayesian method. The really neat thing, was that he had created Inferential Models, a third method which he hoped would spread nationally through teachings and the book he published to become one of the three main methods of statistics. He had a really interesting perspective being the only person we had talked to thus far who enjoyed the statistics for the pure math and less so for the applications. Overall, meeting all of these new people was eye-opening and tomorrow we are planning to help out with a project in the Bureau of Mines with graduate students again.

Not to anyone’s surprise, in the morning Luke and I met with Dr. Laber in the well-known conference room. He derived some more equations, talked more about precision medicine, data analysis, and how calculus applies to problem-solving. Although I have not taken calculus, stats, nor did I know what was going on it wasn’t complete gibberish to me. We went on our lunch break and then met Lisa, another worker in the BOM (Bureau of Mines). Lisa, Luke and I went out to coffee and she introduced us to what she does as the main graphic designer on staff at Laber Labs. She showed us all the different tools she uses for design on her iPad and computer, and told us more about her story. Growing up in Cary, NC we had a lot in common and a lot to talk about! She showed us how to use the program Unity, and we got introduced to AR (augmented reality). She showed us museum exhibits she had helped design herself which became a moving picture when a device was held up to the poster on the wall…super cool stuff! She made us each a card with our names on them in big letters, and we played around with the program Unity to create our own AR simulation. With different images appearing, the letters moving around, and the card seemingly coming to life when help up to a computer camera it was really cool to try something like this which I had never done before. After spending most of the afternoon struggling with frustration with the new Unity program, we got maybe half a step towards the right direction in four hours and called it a day. Overall, was really interesting to learn all sorts of new things today!

Day 3…we are finally feeling at home! With each day, comes more comfort not only in the environment but with the people all around us (all of which are absolutely incredible). This morning we arrived to SAS Hall around 10:15am and met Ana-Maria Staicu, another statistics professor and executive in the statistics department. Coincidentally, her son played tennis with Luke so they happened to already know each other. Mrs. Staicu told us about how she got into statistics from being a very mathematics focused person, and how the applications of statistics can literally never get boring. Originally from Romania, she followed in others footsteps in coming to the United States for her final degree. She walked us through many different papers she had written and different research she had done, showing us various graphs, data sets, and write-ups about past projects. Her favorite project is one which she was in the middle of working on right at this moment, as she said it is the project with the most potential to be implemented onto a larger national scale. This particular project was analyzing the statistics in forearm muscles to create a bionic arm for amputees which can function as close to a human hand as possible. Also showing us her other projects such as those including pigs, mental health, and marathoning (go running!), we got to look into why she loves her job and is never bored with analyzing statistics. Following our discussion with her we went back to the BOM where we met Eric, a graduate student from Connecticut who has been religiously working on a project involving the video game Madden since the day we arrived. In the BOM on at least three computer screens and three TV screens Madden will run continuously without stopping. He talked to us about the meaning of reinforcement learning and how that is what was going on, these monitors had been running the program and game of Madden for several months now already without stopping. Ultimately, they were finding a way to have a computer play a game of Madden with a higher win-probability than that which the computer already comes programmed with. They were able to manipulate the game and predict probabilities of various plays to create the optimal setting. Following a lunch break, we were released earlier compared to other days and will be learning how to use a specific program we had to download onto our computers tomorrow!

On day 2, things got much more interesting as we got more into the rhythm of the work place and the environment of the lab overall. First thing in the morning, we got lost and walked back and forth across NC State campus a couple times before finally finding the correct meeting place and meeting with Dr. Laber. He took us through some more statistics lessons and we learned how to calculate the depth of data sets, how to analyze different scenarios and determine solutions to problems such as indicators of if various paralyzed dogs will recover in 6 weeks or 6 months. After learning more statistics, to which Luke and I felt intrigued but lost…we headed off for our lunch break. Meeting Lindsay Callihan for lunch was fun, we ate on Hillsborough street with her since she is also working on NC State campus with a digital marketing firm (happy birthday Lindsay!). After a relaxing lunch break we went back to the BOM where we met with Allison Wu again to continue helping her take images and train her chess-playing robot, Nona! After playing lots of computer-generated chess games and taking nearly 800 automated images, we went out for coffee with Allison and Lisa, one of the designers at Laber Labs. Lisa went to Green Hope for high school, NC state for undergrad, and is now working with Laber Labs full time. She was super helpful talking about the field in general and giving us insight on her background coming into Laber Labs. Overall, the day was really good. We learned a lot about statistics and got to help out more! Getting to know the undergraduate, graduate, and full-time workers who are a part of Laber Labs is really neat. Everyone is super welcoming, nice, and funny and I can’t wait to meet the rest of the team these upcoming two weeks!