Memories of Stanford

During my Master's in Physics, I had the opportunity to visit Josef Parvizi from Stanford University for a lab rotation. The visit was delayed several times, but I was lucky to finally arrive there in February 2020 - just enough time to get some work done before California was locked down.

My first days in the Stanford University hospital were a bit overwhelming. My supervising postdoc and I huddled over the computer screen, squinting at the latest batch of analysis results. "ANOVA," he muttered, "paired two-sample t-test," "degrees of freedom," "box plots", and "cluster analysis." When he realized, I didn’t understand a single word, he looked at me as if I tried repetitively to insert a USB stick into my belly button. “You have never seen a box plot before?!” ⁣

As a physicist, I was used to precise theoretical predictions and exact experimental results. But in neuroscience, the data is noisy and obtained in complex experiments that are performed on strongly varying individuals. It's a world where a lot of statistics is necessary. The postdoc handed me a one-pound book and told me to study it during the weekend.