2DkcTXceO

B.G. Lindsay 89My first PhD investigation was with Ron Pyke of the UW math department.The subject related to two-dimensional Brownian motion, but it generatedlittle fascination in me — it was too remote from applications. I thereforehad to go through the awkward process of “breaking off” with Ron. Ever sincethen I have always told students wishing to do research with me that theyshould not be embarrassed about changing advisors to suit their own interests.The best applied people at UW were in the Biostatistics group, and aftertalking to several of them, I ended up doing my dissertation with NormBreslow, who also had a pretty strong theoretical bent and a Stanford degree.My first contact with Norm was not particularly auspicious. Norm taught acourse in linear models in about 1975 that had the whole class bewildered. Thetextbook was by Searle (2012), which was, in that edition, doggedly matrixoriented. However, for the lectures Norm used material from his graduate daysat Stanford, which involved new ideas from Charles Stein about “coordinatefree” analysis using projections. The mismatch of textbook and lecture wasutterly baffling to all the students — go ask anyone in my class. I think we allflunked the first exam. But I dug in, bought and studied the book by Scheffé(1999), which was also notoriously difficult. In the end I liked the subjectmatter and learned quite a bit about how to learn on my own. I am sure thegeometric emphasis I learned there played a later role in my development ofgeometric methods in likelihood analyses.Fortunately my second class with Norm, on categorical variables, wentrather better, and that was where I learned he was quite involved in epidemiologyand cancer studies. I later learned that his father Lester Breslow wasalso something of a celebrity in science, being Dean of the School of PublicHealth at UCLA.Although he was an Associate Professor, my years of military service meantthat Norm was only a few years older than me. He had already made a name forhimself, although I knew nothing about that. I found him inspiring through hisstatistical talent and biological knowledge, but mainly his passion for statistics.I sometimes wonder if there was not some additional attraction becauseof his youth. The mathematics genealogy website shows me to be his secondPhD student. Going up my family tree, Norm Breslow was Brad Efron’s firststudent, and Brad Efron was Rupert Millers’ second. Going back yet further,Rupert Miller was fifth of Samuel Karlin’s 43 offspring. Going down the tree,Kathryn Roeder, a COPSS award winner, was my first PhD student. This“first-born” phenomenon seems like more than chance. At least in my line ofdescent, youthful passion and creativity created some sort of mutual attractionbetween student and advisor.One of the most important challenges of graduate life is settling on aresearch topic with the advisor. This will, after all, set the direction for yourcareer, if you go into research. I would like to discuss my graduate experiencein some detail here because of combination of chance and risk taking that aresearch career entails.