Poet Management Scholar : Jasmine Kang

Math and numbers has been a love of mine ever since high school. I was fortunate to study under inspiring mathematics teachers who instilled a love for numbers in me. In my work life as an Industrial Engineer I have always been around some type of numbers and statistics. My favorite jobs were as Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt. I lived and breathed statistics in business environment for over five years. Hence, I was eager for our quantitative analysis course. Familiarity with statistics and numbers is not enough. The context in which they are used especially in academic writing takes time to grasp. I had struggled during our first course to understand the tables and statistics used by authors to validate their findings.

This course was just what I needed – to refresh my memory on the statistics and understand its application in academic writing. Correlation and advanced regression, familiarizing myself with terms such as bootstrapping, Winsorization etc. All this was new and started to make some sense during the session. Using Stata to perform statistical analysis was a new skill I acquired during this course.

Majority of academic articles especially those using deductive methodology use quantitative tools to validate their findings. As a consumer of the academic content in the past I had not questioned the validity of the papers. Putting on my producer cap I explored new questions. What is the robustness of the measure the authors are using? Does the sample tell the complete story? Is the correlation being used to explain causation? One of the most challenging part about doing research is to get the data for your hypothesis. Often business research is not conducted in a controlled setting. Hence it is challenging to replicate a with and without scenario. Controlled and uncontrolled group studies are often performed but these can be expensive and not always feasible. There was an interesting article we read during the course about efficacy of online education in higher education context. The authors studied the impact of online and in-person class room sessions used by a college as a response to COVID-19 pandemic. Our professor had carefully curated such articles where the academics had creatively used life events to study different phenomena. This has made me more observant of events around me. I am looking at business world through a different lens to look for research opportunities with opportunities for data collection.

There are so many quotes about statistics. One of the most famous – “There are lies, damned lies and statistics” – Mark Twain. However, world revolves around facts and numbers. In the current times of information overload, we look for the numbers and facts to validate theories presented to us. Karl Pearson said, “Statistics is the grammar of science”- hence we can’t get away from it. As aspiring academics despite our consternation with statistics, they are an integral part of evidence based research. They play an important role in story telling as an academic. Often they are the main protagonist who saves the day or discovers a new land. Telling stories with numbers is not easy, the dense tables and multiple charts can often make our eyes water. As a new academic my challenge will be to tell the story of numbers in an interesting and engaging manner.

Quant Life of a Poet

The Mean and Median stare
Descriptive statistics I prepare
Correlation and Regression plot
Dependent variable is fraught

Hetroskadastic and clusters
New words I mutter
Fixed effects agitate
To quasi-experiments I relegate

Experimental research is the key
Selection bias is the quandary
Quantifying Standard error determines
Comparative studies importance- it underlines

Statistics – challenging to comprehend
Numbers, tables we struggle to apprehend
The story, theory it narrates
Its capabilities often intimidate

I pause and ponder to compare
Poetry – lines, stanzas similar affair
Composition of Rhyme, Meter and Form
Terse style, in rhythm it performs

A poet also lives in numbers
The metrical feet is a wonder
Feet in a line chosen by the creator
A poet is also a number manipulator