Introduction
This. This is my movie. This is my life. I hope you learn something and discover yourself.
- Tommy Wiseau, The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made 1
For thousands of years, storytelling has woven itself into the very fabric of human society, whether as non-fiction or fiction. It can inform as well as inspire others to take action, to understand, and most of all, to connect with one another as human beings; its impact can range from powering social movements across the globe to even driving a young ordinary child to succeed at a seemingly impossible dream. Hence, storytellers do what mere facts and ideas alone cannot do themselves - find meaning in those facts and ideas, interpret them, present them carefully, and convince us of their value, importance, and relevance to our lives (and by extension, the whole world itself).
At this point, you might ask, “So how does storytelling itself relate to my decision to major in statistics?” To begin answering that question, we would have to first go back to my upbringing several years ago.
I. A Family of Artists
When you drink, remember the source.
- Vietnamese proverb
Growing up, I had a long-standing fascination with movies, books tv shows, music, group conversations, and video games - different mediums of conveying ideas and narratives to a wider audience. Part of this sense of awe I had with storytelling in general came from the family I grew up in - a Vietnamese family of generally working class and artistic thinkers.
My father was a skilled laborer with a background in construction, home repair, and other similar trades; during his spare time, he would practice at home guitar solos from his favorite musicians, such as Carlos Santana, Eagles, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. My mother worked as a college library assistant where she got to indulge in her love of reading, exploring new cultures, and staying informed about new ideas and current events impacting society each day; you usually would find her each Saturday morning listening to documentaries, audio books, and cooking tutorials while making food - an art in itself. Finally, my sister got her college degree in communications and works as a film production assistant and singer-songwriter; art, she would tell me, “speaks to people” as a “transcendental form of human connection that brings us together, sometimes before we’ve even met the person we’ve impacted”.
Given how much the arts significantly influenced my family’s attitudes and upbringing, I naturally developed an inclination towards it myself. While I didn’t have my sister’s creativity, my dad’s maverick sensibilities as a rebellious guitarist, or my mom’s thoughtfulness, I did have one thing - my imagination.
II. A Boundless Imagination
Art goes beyond language, beyond lives. It’s a universal way to send messages between each other and through time.
- Rick Rubin
As a kid, I was drawn to the idea of writing fan fictions and making up my own stories using ideas and characters from movies, tv shows, video games, and other media I’ve consumed. For example, one story I wrote explored a corporate secretary looking to break out of his routine office life and travel more. Another would involve Spider-Man performing last-minute surgery on the New Goblin to save him from a fatal injury.
Whatever the ideas were, they were ways for me to push the frontier of my imagination and explore my understanding of the world, providing my own takes on the turbulent nature of the human condition; being autistic myself, I struggled to understand why people behave the way they do so writing stories of my own were my ways of trying to make sense of human behavior and explore the motivations behind them.
However, my interests in storytelling waned gradually over time when I started to go to college to study to be a math teacher - a career path that spoke to my technical side as well as my desire for connecting with and supporting others in their personal and career goals. I wasn’t perfectly good at math growing up, but I was able to get the hang of it through the values and skills my parents taught me - problem-solving, reading, determination, and adaptability. So by the time I graduated from high school, I was competent enough in math that teaching math felt practical and reasonable for me to pursue. Thus, I bid my farewell to storytelling and went off into the world of mathematics after high school.
Or so I thought.
III. A New Calling
To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.
- Walter Mitty, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) 2
While working on my undergraduate degree in applied mathematics, I began to also develop an interest in statistics when I took up a research assistant position at a community college district office; I needed a way to build my work experience as a math major as well as align it with my sense of service to others, especially students. Although the position wasn’t too related to math (besides the use of data visualization and coding in data set values), it mostly ended up opening doors to career paths I didn’t think were possible.
At the district office, I met a fellow statistician who recently got his Master’s Degree in Statistics from California State University - East Bay. We had an opportunity to participating in a series of data projects with our supervisor where the role of data in informed decision-making became clearer to me through our work. Every number and statistic we reported told some story about the students we were serving - their demographic information, their graduation status, their grades, their financial aid status, and so on. They were data sets that when carefully assembled and presented together, provided pieces of the stories of the people behind the statistics - their cultural heritage, their personal struggles, their needs, their wants, their dreams and goals, and so on.
Thus, in many ways, I saw the work of a statistician as akin to that of a storyteller - someone with the imagination, vision, and tools to bring to life an understanding of the world that could inform as well as inspire people. All those fan fictions I wrote as a kid were opportunities to practice those storytelling skills as well as speak to my need for a greater understanding of myself and the world around me. And statistics was an opportunity for me to leverage skills that while technical and data-oriented in nature, resonate with my spirit as a soulful storyteller.
So once I realized what I wanted to do in the future, I used my undergraduate senior year to take as many statistics-related courses as I can while still meeting the requirements for graduation as an applied mathematics major. Those courses served as opportunities to explore relevant skills and ideas that had to with statistics, helping to prepare me for the eventual rigor of studying it. Then, once I got my undergraduate degree in 2020, I searched around for statistics graduate programs until I came across one at California State University - East Bay (CSUEB). Finally, I applied for and successfully enrolled into the Master’s in Statistics program at CSUEB and the rest was history.
Conclusion
Maybe stories are just data with a soul.
- Brené Brown
Phenomenal storytelling is as much of an art form as it is an opportunity to connect and empathize with those around you, whether they’re the subject of your stories or the audiences consuming them. With good writing and thought, a story can show you new ideas, explore new worlds, or even change how you perceive them. Thus, storytelling’s a skill that’s applicable to a variety of different fields, even ones as rigorous and technical as statistics - an observation I made while studying statistics in graduate school.
In particular, when you’re collecting data, formatting it, and figuring out ways to interpret and present it, you’re in essence following the path of a storyteller. You have the details, the background information, the location, the visuals, and other important elements of storytelling. Then, with all these elements you have at your disposal, you craft a cohesive and thoughtful narrative that expresses what you care about that you want the audience to know and care about too - the same thing statisticians do with their presentations and data reports.
So given that connection I found between storytelling and statistics, I was able to see the value of statistics as an extra tool for collecting information as well as inviting others to explore and learn new insights. Then, with these new insights, they may find opportunities to get the inspiration and knowledge they need to change the world one story at a time.
