To the World Cup again

It's been 4 years and another of the world's biggest celebrations has come and gone. The World Cup is great! Not only does it bring a unique, worldwide tournament into our homes, but it provides one of the best distractions from work imaginable. For that alone, I will miss it, but it was a great Cup and I would like to salute the many participants.

To our host, Brazil...I gotta be honest, as soon as they announced that you would host the 2014 World Cup, I chalked up your 6th Cup championship. I mean, you take a team that would be a favorite to win wherever they played and let them play at home where they basically never lose? Yep, it all seemed so predetermined. Even as you struggled your way through the group stage, I still fully expected you to somehow win. Then you had your star go down to an unfortunate injury, you lost your defensive leader to cards, and you faced a perennial juggernaut who threw one punch and you never got up again. You might not have won, but you still made history with that truly humiliating and bizarre loss. In fact, people may talk more about that game and its outcome than the actual final for years to come.

To Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Japan, Russia, and South Korea...Congratulations on making it to the World Cup! Some of you even got a few wins, but by in large you barely made a peep and I don't know what to say about any of you. Better luck next time, especially to you Russia as you'll be playing host in 2018.

To Croatia...You have one of my favorite uniforms, but I can't say too much more about you. You played in the first game of the Cup against the host and hung in there, till a bad call turned on the Brazilian samba machine and that was it for you.

To England and Italy...You each have won World Cups. You both have very high expectations for each World Cup. You each went home very early and very disappointed, but at least your game against one another was awfully good.

To Spain...You won the last World Cup and put together one of the more historic runs for any one national team ever. Expectations were very high for you and your tiki taka, but it looks like those days are over. Netherlands was out for revenge and certainly got it! Why if it wasn't for Brazil, that game would have been the biggest shock of the tournament so I guess you owe Brazil some thanks. Still, girls seems to like you whether you win or lose so you got that going for ya.

To Australia...You barely made it into the World Cup and you lived up to the low expectations that everyone had for you. Still, you have my favorite yellow jerseys and the Socceroos is still one of the coolest nicknames out there. Plus, Cahill kicked one of the best goals of the tournament so it wasn't all bad.

To Ecuador and Honduras...I pulled for almost any Latin American team in this World Cup, including you guys. Unfortunately you were placed in the same group and were the only Latin American teams not to advance out of the group stage. At least Honduras played in what some are regarding as the worst game of this Cup so, you sort of left an impression.

To Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iran...Thanks to being in the group with Argentina, I watched all of your games. Thats probably more than most folks did. You played tough and have nothing to be ashamed even if you didn't advance through the group stage.

To Portugal...All we really talk about when we talk about you is Cristiano Ronaldo. Once again he followed through on what is becoming one of his World Cup traditions and posed rather revealingly for a magazine cover before the Cup began. Kind of a weird World Cup ritual, but somehow not surprising for him. He also followed through on what is becoming a tradition of not being enough to carry Portugal through the Cup. He did help prevent the USA from getting a truly great win by assisting with a great pass on an infamous last second goal so he definitely has some skills besides taking his shirt off and hanging out with beautiful women. Frankly I don't know why we talk so much about this pretty boy when Portugal has this dude on the team:

How is this guy, Raul Meireles, not the face of the Portugal team? He is clearly the most interesting man on the team.

To Ghana...You couldn't keep up your streak of kicking the USA out of the Cup, but you did play Germany to a very exciting draw. You also won the gold for best goal celebration in that same game.

To Chile...I was pulling for all the South American teams (except for one), and all of them did well including you. Unfortunately they pitted you against another South American team (the one I wasn't pulling for) and you didn't pull it off even though you put up a great fight. I liked that you were coached by an Argentine and you easily had my favorite commercial leading up to the Cup.

To Uruguay...You got out of the group stage, but sort of a tough Cup for you. You'll most be remembered for the bizarre tactics of Luis Suarez. No, not the goals he scored for you, but for his taste for Italian. You can at least be proud of the fact that no one wears tighter jerseys than you. Yes, other teams are starting to catch up to you in this regard, but we all know you were the trendsetter here.

To Nigeria and Greece...You both made it to the knockout stage and should be happy about that, but there isn't too much to say about you. Good job though.

To Switzerland...You know, nations that are most known for refusing to participate in major world events and being neutral while the world is in chaos probably shouldn't be allowed to participate in world tournaments. Somehow you were a top seed in your group and thanks to it being the worst group in the Cup, you advanced. Good work.

To Algeria...Not only did you give Germany one of their best challenges, but your nickname is the Fennecs, or desert foxes, which is pretty cool.

To Mexico...Generally, you guys have some of my favorite jerseys, but this time you brought lesser ones. Thats ok, because you proved to be one of the more exciting teams out there. Your goalie, Ochoa was superhuman against Brazil, proving that even a draw can be a terribly exciting game and your coach stole the show with his exuberance.

Unfortunately your great run came to an end, but at least it was at the tail end of probably the most talked about flop in the World Cup.

To the USA...You weren't suppose to even get out of the group stage, but you finally beat Ghana and were 10 seconds away from a very good win against Portugal and that was enough to advance. Then you lost in what some people regard as the best game of the World Cup (they even try and reason this with fancy, but subjective, statistics). Tim Howard though deserves special mention for his heroics. Just look at what he did in just one game.

The bigger story though is it seems like Americans are finally buying into the World Cup. I mean, people ditching work to watch games, talking all about it and making things like this:

Yep, its safe to say that the USA likes the World Cup now. Not sure that you can say that they like soccer much more now, but they certainly like the World Cup. We'll see if this continues in 2018 when the games are all played in the middle of the night. 

To Columbia...Another South American team coached by an Argentine. You guys were the real tournament darlings, led by James Rodriquez and his "best goal of the World Cup" ways:

Like Chile, you had to play against Brazil and found yourself stuck in an out of control game resulting in a lot of heartache for both you and Brazil. Was really sorry to see you go, especially when we all saw the epic collapse that awaited Brazil.

To France and Belgium...Both of you were regarded as being really good, but I never really saw it. I guess after France's last World Cup anything would be a big improvement, but aside from scoring 5 goals against the mighty Swiss, all I remember from you is playing in perhaps the only game I fell asleep watching. At least Belgium played in some good games.

To Costa Rica...Pretty safe to say that you were the Cinderella of this tournament. Came out with a bang and exceeding all expectations. You had back to back games that went to penalties. The ball bounced your way for one of those, but not the other. Such is life with the clearly most fair and conclusive way to settle a game that remains tied.

To the Netherlands...Boy, the way you began this Cup against Spain was spectacular! Especially that header from Robin van Persie:

I really thought that the days of your jerk soccer past was behind you, but you quickly reverted back to it. Hard not to with Robben on your team. That guy sure can run and is an awfully good athlete. Shame he will most be remember for his flop against Mexico. For the record, it wasn't the worst flop of the Cup. No, that honor belongs to Brazil's Fred. Anyway, you secured the pointless 3rd place position and continued your impressive knack for advancing far in every Cup without ever winning it all.

To Germany...In a World Cup full of great individual players you were the only guys regarded as a complete team. You scored a lot of goals (thanks primarily to a Brazil team that could barely stand on its feet), but for some reason I just have never found your style to be very enjoyable. Maybe I just believe the German stereotypes too much or maybe I am biased against European teams or maybe I just hate you because you have eliminated Argentina from the last 3 World Cups. Who knows? Nevertheless, you won it all. Congrats.

To Argentina...Mis benditos Albicelestes. Of all the possible sports narratives of this World Cup, you had one of the potential best; the first major tournament win in decades, alongside the coronation of Lionel Messi as the world's greatest. All on Brazil's turf, no less (with a great chant for your rival). Nothing could have been sweeter...but to the world's disappointment, it wasn't meant to be. Still, this was a great Cup for you. Messi did give us much to celebrate.

And Mascherano was busting out this kind of defense against the world's finest:

All in all, Argentina left us all like this:

Its a real shame you couldn't grab the final prize, especially with it right there for the taking. It would have been very memorable, but I am sure we will all remember where we were when Germany won their 4th World Cup (to be fair, we all will remember where we were when Germany humiliated Brazil). One last thing though, if Argentina had worn their real jersey in the final game, which they should have been allowed to do just on the classic nature of that jersey alone, they would have won that game. I am convinced of this.

It was a great World Cup and I am back to being bored to death at work without it (though I never need to hear the "oo eh ah" ESPN promotion or that blasted commercial for youtube's epic raps again) . No it didn't end exactly as I would have wished, but it was a real fun ride. For some reason we're gonna go play the next one in Russia, but I am looking forward to it.

 

PI Probability

As problematic as a career in science can be, the endgame for most is still described as becoming a principal investigator (PI). Generally speaking, this is the same thing as a tenured track faculty member of a university. With that in mind a couple of guys decided to try and generate a prediction algorithm for one's likelihood of becoming a PI. You can check it out here. It is based on machine learning from publication and author records procured from PubMed. To summarize it focuses primarily on a publication record, taking into account the number of publications, the "impressiveness" of the publications' journals, and the number of first author publications, but it also incorporates gender (with women less likely to become PIs) and the length of your career (judged primarily on the date of your first publication). Whether or not these are good predictors or not is debatable, but this could be a useful tool so I went ahead and gave it a try. Here are my results: 

Wow! A greater than 50% chance? Right off the bat, you gotta be a little bit suspicious of this algorithm if it is giving me basically a coin flip's chance of becoming a PI. Thats far too generous, but I really like that I score so well (90%) amongst all those that are not a PI. I think this means I am rather PI-like...amongst those who never become PIs. Depending on how you look at that its either like a pitcher who somehow leads the team in RBIs or its like being given an especially shiny silver medal. Either way, its a true accomplishment. Now, years ago I realized that the life of PI was probably not for me, but having such an unexpectedly decent chance of becoming a PI forced me to reconsider whether I would ever want to be a PI. Here are my top reasons for being a PI:

• Generally you get your own office.
• There would be a firm "no journal club" rule in my lab. Journal club is easily the least beneficial meeting that is mostly commonplace in science. Has anyone ever looked forward to journal club? No. How many people are pleased if journal club is ever canceled? Everyone.
• Would really celebrate the accomplishments and publications of lab members so as to make these supposed worthwhile events actually seem maybe sort of worthwhile.
• I think you get to pawn off most your work to others. At least all the research, data collection, and analysis.
•  Lab meetings would not be held if they were simply to provide for a discussion between the PI and the individual(s) presenting, thus wasting the time of everyone else in attendance.
• At the very least, Fridays would be lab lunch days, but lunch outings on any day would be welcomed.
• I bet I'd get a lot more emails. I like emails.
• In the event that something important was happening, like the World Cup, the lab would accommodate the viewing of such important happenings, rather than shaming people into watching over their shoulders while viewing the events on their own.
• Explaining that I am a professor would be infinitely more understandable to those not familiar with science careers.
• Probably would actually get to wear some baller PhD robes from time to time at graduations. 
• Being a professor would really help with the distinguished aura I've been trying to cultivate.

Considering that none of the reasons listed have much to do with pursuing independent projects of interest or devoting all your time to reading and writing papers/grants, it is probably a good thing that I am not really gunning for a PI position. Thats probably fine since there are other statistics that suggest that only about 10% or so of people receiving a PhD will go on to become PIs and the number of people receiving PI positions has steadily been decreasing over the last couple of decades. How could that be if even I was given a 57% chance of becoming a PI? In fact, almost all PI predictions that I have seen reported from this algorithm are greater than 50% so something just isn't adding up, because nowhere near half of PI position applicants are having such success. There could be a reporting bias or perhaps despite great odds of success, most PhDs are just not applying for PI positions. That seems unlikely. I think the truth is probably closer to the fact that, like most scientific tools, this one also suffers from uncertain amounts of sensitivity and specificity (in other words, it doesn't work too well). Yes, becoming a PI still seems to take a few parts hard works, a bit of who you know, and just a dash (or several hundreds) of good ol' fashion luck.