I wished I was a statistician,
That I would’ve dealt with a list of n,
Say unsorted values of anything.
And find its median.
Or the median of its median.
That I would’ve studied numbers,
Across samples.
That I would’ve befriended Euclid and Mahalnobis,
And Charles Babbage so close.
I wished she recognized me,
And admired me like I do to her,
Or like when Statistics and Computer Science
Found usefulness from each other,
When both attracted to each other,
When both fell in love with each other.
Look how the Order Statistics was used
To make the work of a Computer Scientist easier,
Especially in sorting.
Or how Clustering in Statistics finds solutions
To some of her problems, given a list of data items,
Where she can use such strategy
To data mining, retrieval of information,
Or to web search, and image processing,
Partitioning the items into similar groups.
It’s as good as making her smile,
And making her laugh;
It’s as good as how I’m capable of caressing her
All day long.
If I was a statistician, I would’ve given every bit
Of my knowledge to her.
I would’ve shared a million times with her,
And that each of these times were likely to be medians,
Because each of these times
Would definitely be special.
But that’s if I was a statistician,
But I’m not.
I’m not a statistician at all,
So this Computer Scientist
Walks away from me now.
—
Nassefh is a UP Mindanao graduate. He didn’t take up any Math-related courses, although he wished he did.