Meet Professor Vivian Lew
Professor Lew is a Senior Lecturer of Statistics at UCLA and the Assistant Director of Statistical Consulting Center. She studied demography in college and began teaching over 20 years ago. Here’s our Q&A,
How did you get into teaching?
By chance. I was having a cup of coffee and the chairman of UCLA Statistics at that time walked by. As a statistical consultant, I’d developed a good reputation. The chairman walked towards me and said “I want to interview you for a position”. That’s how it started in 1994.
I truly believe something positive like that happens. And when it happens, you can’t ignore it. You’re obligated to investigate. Like if someone needed help, you would walk over to them and help out. It’s similar if it’s something positive.
Which class do you most like to teach?
Stat 10, because I get to meet people from different backgrounds. An accountant once told me she really liked statistics because she had a good professor in college. I think Stat 10 is a nice way to meet a lot of people who would otherwise have negative feeling about the field, and influence them for the positive.
What are some skills you want to bestow on a statistics student?
Linear algebra, because it’s so important if you want to pursue an advanced degree. When students say to me, “I like the way Professor Zhou teaches because he just understands things so well”, it is really because his underlying mathematics knowledge is so strong. So I would love every student to understand statistics at its core and see how it could develop in the future.
Also, what’s impressive is when someone – at our faculty meeting for example – quickly sees the answer to solve a problem. Any company loves to have someone like that. People who would understand a question without being given much detail.
What kinds of students do you write the best recommendation letters for?
People who are a joy to be around. There’s something you can’t teach. It’s hard to teach people to be a hard worker or to be honest or friendly. Everybody at UCLA is smart and special in some way. But I write the best letters for people who, for example, would get all their teammates to show up or show initiative and do more than what I instruct.
How can students master R?
You need to practice writing code. Have questions you want to ask yourself like “how do I extract all basketball players who are older than 25”, etc. I guess you have to have a mind willing to play, and be willing to spend time investigating the data. It’s similar to learning to be good at writing. Practice a lot and borrow other people’s code.
What’s your favorite distribution?
Poisson. The first time I heard Poisson in an introductory class, it looked like poison. Then my professor started talking about deaths by horse kicks. A German mathematician published a book called The Law of Small Numbers and he studied the number of soldiers who were killed by horse kicks over a period of years.
When I learnt it, Poisson was used to model rare events in biostatistics. The more modern use is waiting time like how many emails you’d get in one hour or how many customers call for help. But thirty years ago, you’d learn it in the context of rare diseases or deaths by horse kicks.
I tried to not laugh. I like Poisson because it’s funny.
