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If you were to ask me what I want to be when I grow up, the answer is likely to be Fairy Tale Hero. You should know that I don't expect this to happen. There are no fireball spells, pixie dust, or enchanted swords casually lying around. Furthermore, I'm a statistician, seemingly not a place for heroic feats. But wait! Let's hear from two speakers at the 57th Session of the International Statistical Institute:
Those speakers were describing the Cambodian experience after the Khmer Rouge and the recent situation in Afghanistan. They sound pretty heroic to me.
Of course, not everyone lives in a war zone or former conflict area. For others, we can look at the secondary definition of heroic, "grand or grandiose in scale or intention". Under that definition, lots of statisticians are heroic. For instance, the Kenyan delegation left the ISI early to start their national census. I met four provincial coordinators of Maths4Stats, part of South Africa's desperate effort to fix generations of intentionally poor education. New Zealand, England, and Ireland are revamping their school maths curriculum to become more relevant in data handling and statistics.
Through a combination of circumstances, I was the lead author on a paper submitted to the IASE Satellite in Durban, South Africa. It was accepted into the referreed section, meaning it counts towards my scholarship requirement. It will appear in a couple months, if I went to the conference. With some funding from Bellarmine, some from the US Government through the ASA, and some from my pocket, I decided to attend. Because it seemed silly to travel just to conference venues, I also scheduled five days near Cape Town before the satellite and main conference.
Travel and Leisure Magazine, and lots of other sources, consistently place Cape Town near the top of the world city list. I understand why. The place is dominated by hills; neighborhoods have to bend around them. Combine that with the ocean and pleasant, snowless weather, and things are good. I was reminded a lot of San Francisco. Given that I very much like the Northern California cost, this is a good thing. I had a great time, even without taking the cablecar on Table Mountain (closed for maintenance) or the ferry to Robben Island (closed due to choppy seas). A South African told me that the British have bought lots of property in the area. Given my glance at housing prices, I could see why. Ocean view flats in Simon's Town were about $200,000; California prices are at least double that.
Cape Town, and the rest of South Africa, has a big problem with Crime. Rates are well above the first world average. You can find other numbers online. It changes society. Cape Town's central district became very, very quiet at sunset. The V&A Waterfront stayed open, but almost every parking area had a security officer. Cape Town houses generally had high walls and security signs prominently displayed; I saw some with razor wire and electric fences. Even in Ceres, a small town, lots of houses had full front fencing. Basically, in safety South Africa starts at Hyde Park (U of Chicago) standards, which are marginal. Then it goes downhill. Society does not flourish under those conditions.
These pictures include lots of animals. South Africa has made a strong recent effort to protect its remaining big game and establish game reserves. The Big 5 animals even appear on the currency, after all. The biggest parks are Kruger and Greater Addo. With limited time, I chose a smaller park within easy travel of Cape Town. I will gladly recommend Inverdoorn Game Reserve on the Karoo, even with only 3 of the Big 5. I had a great time. In addition to animals, the staff were very attentive.
This points out another South African contradiction. On an individual level, service is much better than in the States. The idea of respect for customers, fleeting in the US, still holds in Cape Town and Durban. This is a good thing. On the other side, large scale management in South Africa is very poor. While there's plenty of unskilled labor, management and skilled workers are in short supply. I saw terrible line management at Cape Town airport, poor planning at the opening ICC reception, and a severe lack of queue management at the beach party. At the beach, I wound up blocking some line jumpers and protecting two older couples in the queue. It was abysmal. The depressing part is that staff were available to provide guidance, but nobody was tasked to placing them in the right position. That night, I commented that "this is why South Africa is still poor." The country needs real MBAs; not the generally pointless programs that are currently offered, but actual work on planning and organization.
Part of my visit to South Africa was eating. People online sometimes publish reviews, so I decided to offer pictures. I didn't include all the conference food, and I missed a couple of items, but the linked page is a pretty good record. I sampled from a variety of price points; there are even two fast food places on this list.
Overall, South African food is better than American. At least in tourist areas, there's a strong British influence. I got a wider variety of meats and fresher side dishes than I would in the States. Not trucking things around helps. In particular, convention buffet food was outstanding, compared to the States. There's no rubber chicken and overcooked green beans. It's not a shock that something from the Convention Center, made for about 1000 people, rankes on my top dish table. If you click on the link, you can see more extensive descriptions.
Least Favorite Food: Delta pancakes from Dakar to Cape Town, Hungry Lion chicken, and Moyo Durban dinner.
Most Favorite Food: Five Flies Springbok Wellington, Sibaya lamb mince curry, Convention Center chicken with mushrooms in leek sauce, and Inverdoorn breakfast with peanut butter biscuits.
At the statistics education satellite, I had a conversation about the opening speaker at the main event. Because South Africa is a big country, with almost 50 million people, I thought we would get a minister. I was wrong. The conference was a very Big Deal, as we were honored by a speech from President Jacob Zuma. It wasn't the best speech I've ever heard, yet I am still pleased that he attended. He did do well for a person speaking in his second language, and one who had at most five years of formal schooling. He became fully literate only in prison at Robben Island.
The problem, as you likely know, is that apartheid era schooling for Africans was very limited. President Zuma's experience was not unusual. With the end of white dominance around 1990, things have started to change. Unfortunately, there's a lot of work to be done. Quality teachers and students are in very short supply. One Cape Town newspaper carried a story with a quote that teachers shouldn't take off just because it was pay day. At the university level, I heard that every statistics department is short at least one lecturer. Figures show only 22 Statistics PhD students in the entire country, which is less than that at the University of Chicago. It's not THAT small a place. Maths4stats will help, but the effort is still enormous. Almost heroic.
According to the list, people attended from over 130 countries. I didn't speak with them all. I did speak, at least briefly, with at least one person from 17 nations: United States, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Slovenia, Australia, New Zealand, Phillipines, Korea, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa. I heard speakers from 10 more: Canada, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Mauritius, Mozambique, Kenya, China, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. There were bracing contrasts between the first world and third world, like when I walked from a talk about how Bankruptcy is a financially prefered option in stock markets directly into one about measuring seasonal agriculture employment based on rainfall. Another afternoon, my first session was on nutrition in Africa, 80% black, with definitions of Stunted, Malnourished, and Orphans, then the second session on Western education, 80% white, had Holistic, Collaborative, and Web. Big contrast there.
There's a lot more I could say, but most of you just clicked on the pictures, anyway. I had a very good time, both personally and professionally. Most importantly, I saw motivation. There are places where people really care about education and statistics. The national newspaper carried a story where teachers complained about poor student performance in mathematics. On the front page! Another day, they carried the results of the secondary school academic competition on page 3 - not buried in a small box on page 8B like it would here, at best.
I don't know if South Africa will make it; I haven't even mentioned the HIV rate of over 10%. I don't know if the educators I met can succeed. I have little idea about the others I heard, either. Yet what they do - unlike a lot of what passes for Research here - is noble, valiant, and well, let me say it, heroic. There are examples for when I grow up.