Hierarchy of interests

I picked up a few magazines this last weekend:  a computer (Linux) magazine; a woodworking magazine; and two music (recording) magazines.

I was carrying all three around in my work bag, so I had equal access to all of them.

The woodworking magazine trumped the music magazines:  I plowed through it in a day's worth of commuting on the bus.  And the music magazines trumped the Linux magazine.



Likewise, I have about thirty books on my “To Read” bookshelf by my bed, in various states of completion.  The criminology books keep getting trumped by WW, music, computer.

So, this all suggests where my interests currently lie:  woodworking, then music, then computer things.  And this is a correct reflections of how I've been spending my time.


But -- over the last two days I read an article called “A Comparison of Propensity Score and Linear Regression Analysis of Complex Survey Data” in the Journal of Data Science (2006, vol 4), followed by a 17 page printout from the *.pdf version of one of the Stata manuals (Stata is the statistical software that I use at work) for the “teffects” command for calculating the treatment-effects estimation for observational data. 

I've been reading this on my own time; because it’s interesting -- but also probably useful at work.  And this has trumped the music magazines.

So, I guess data geekery is pretty high up there.


I originally wanted to be an academic -- and I **do** enjoy teaching and research.  But my current job involves restructuring data to find patterns -- and I'm enjoying it.  So, it seems that I've found my niche.


--GG