Tuesday, October 20 was World Statistics Day, and the Department of Statistics celebrated with a pizza party for faculty, staff and students.

Guests were encouraged to share statistics-themed desserts, with prizes for the tastiest treats and the most clever statistics puns.

 

Visiting Assistant Professor Sam Ventura said, "In today's data-rich world, terms such as 'analytics' and 'big data' are used and misused regularly. This can cloud perceptions about who is best suited to solve data-related problems. By celebrating World Statistics Day, we hope to remind everyone that statisticians are here to solve problems involving data."

Fifteen years ago, a study showed that London cab drivers had an enlargement in the hippocampus, a brain area associated with navigation.

 

But questions remained: Did the experience of navigating London's complex system of streets change their brains, or did only the people with larger hippocampi succeed in becoming cab drivers?

 

Now, Psychology Department scientists Tim Keller and Marcel Just show for the first time that brief navigation training changes a person's brain tissue and improves how that changed tissue communicates with other brain areas involved with navigation.

Javier Soltero (DC'98) - an information systems major with a concentration in computational finance - has climbed to the top of the technology industry.

 

However, Soltero's path to becoming the corporate vice president of Outlook Program Management at Microsoft was not without hurdles. He recently shared his experiences with the CMU community and met with current students.

 

"I Never Learned To Spell 'Successful'" was the first lecture in the Dietrich College Entrepreneurs Speaker Series and was also sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

 

Read more and watch the lecture.