Behind Every Good Decision

Preface

PIYANKA:

I hate statistics. What I really wanted to do in 1999, in an environmental engineering thesis at Texas A&M University, was to track events that caused a hazardous waste site to be, well, hazardous. While researching in the lab, I was frankly mortified as it became clear to me that the only way I could solve this was by building an inverse speciation model using nonlinear regression.

I have always loved numbers and math—having derived the Pythagorean theorem in my own fashion four years too early for my grade. I have always questioned the impact of every engineering feat, including my dad’s breakthrough “waste-to-energy” invention. Math and engineering define me for what I am today, but in 1999, I worked to make sure that statistics ...