Top 10 Reasons why Jared Lander should go back to school for his Docorate

Jared Lander rose to fame as the Predictive Pizza Guy, but he only took his academic pursuits up to the Masters Level at Columbia ( I believe Columbia awarded me a Master's Degree when they asked me to leave and never return). Over the past couple of weeks a number of people have said to me that Jared should return to school to complete his education. Their arguments, although persuasive, were purely academic, and I do not believe they would have much traction with someone whose fame has burned so brightly as a result of Pizza. So I have compiled a top ten list of reasons that might inspire Jared to return to the academic world:

10. PhD students do not pay tuition.
9.   If you a starving graduate student, you friends will pay for your drinks.
8.   As a PhD candiate you can play of the University Club Hockey Team.
7.   Since you wrote your Master thesis on Pizza, you can write your Doctoral thesis on some other vice like booze or women.
6.   You get summers off to go to Asia to meet women who are your "type".
5.   Your parents will continue to support you while you complete your education no matter how long that might take.
4.   As a Doctoral candidate in a Math or Engineering Field you are highly likely to be surrounded by female students that are your "type".
3.  Every Jewish Mother wants their son to be a "doctor".
2.  Your parents will not pressure you to get married before you complete your education.
1.  Chicks dig the Doctorate.

I am an Analytics Meetup Junkie

I am not sure if there is a 12 step program to address this issue, but I think I might form a meetup of meetup addicts (MeetAnon).  Now I am a member of thirty Meetup groups and attend at least two meetups a week. I even have a collection of Meetup T-shirts.

It all started innocently enough. Years ago, my previous company funded some food for a New York R users group. I did not go to it at the time, but a year out of that company I was interested in what those people at the forefront of R development were working on. So I went to my first meetup. There was pizza and specialty ices, and a great talk by Andrew Gelman. After the meetup, the  group went out for drinks and discussions about statistics. I was hooked, but I also needed more than one meeting a month.

I joined the predictive analytics meetup in NYC. I joined the Machine Learning group in NYC. I found that these groups shared a lot of commonality, but also looked at problems from slightly different angles. I started to think about visualizations of problems so I joined the Data Visualization Meetup in NYC. After I added the various Hadoop Meetups in NYC, I exhausted the ones in New York that interested me. I needed to expand my reach.

I joined the RUG in New Jersey, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago. I have also added sport groups to my stable of Meetups. Right now it is mostly Baseball and Sabermetrics, but I am sure that will develop as well.

Here are the links to my Favorite meetups:
Boston Predictive Analytics Meetup
Greater Boston R User Meetup
NYC R user Meetup
NYC Predictive Analytics Meetup
NYC Machine Learning Meetup
NYC Data Visualization Meetup