Waiting...

In my time with the Lord this morning, I was reading Psalm 27. The part that really spoke to me was the final two verses. They read:

I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.

Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.

School has been crazy recently, but the Lord is saying to me that I can see Him in the land surrounding me. Therefore, I will wait for the Lord. I will work on keeping my eyes focused on Him and the things He is doing around me. I love how the Lord knows the encouragement that I need and gives me words like these.

Waiting for Him.

Tilted Chin

If you tilt your chin up, what is it that you see? Where is it that your eyes focus?

This afternoon I spent time praying with a dear friend. She prayed that my chin might be tilted up so that my eyes would be focused on the Lord.

This coming week is going to be VERY intense as my thesis paper needs to be completed by Friday. I know that if I am not careful, I will focus my eyes too much on my work. When this happens, I become stressed and anxious. Now I still might feel overwhelmed, but I want my eyes to see Jesus.

I am praying that my chin may be tilted and my eyes focused on Jesus.

Comments

I had not realized that there was a "Comments" setting and that I had to set it so that anyone could leave a comment. I have now changed the setting so anyone should be able to leave a comment.

Power

Last night we had an amazing thunderstorm. The thunder was so loud that the house was shaking and the lightning lit up my room. I was in awe of the power, authority, and strength that resonated from the storm.

I was reminded of the following verses:

Psalm 77:15-16
The clouds poured down water,
the skies resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.

Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.

The Lord is the One whose power, authority, and strength are displayed in the storm. Though the thunder is loud and the lightning is bright, He cares for me gently. What a great reminder of His power, strength, and authority!

Pictures

Spring is arriving!

My favorite bridge in Ames

My lovely sister

My favorite brother
(Christian, this is the only picture I have of you by yourself.)

Praises

Today I will conclude, for now, what turned out to be a "Praise the Lord" mini-series. Here is a short list of the things that I am praising the Lord for today.

His love
His grace
His healing
Spring
Rest
Bible
Shelly and Jenny
Chris Parker
His strength
Sunshine
Running
Friends
Good books
Tea
His provision

Praise the Lord

Today I continue with yesterday's theme of praising the Lord. One of the Bible passages that I am currently memorize is the following:

Psalm 103: 1-6
Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all the oppressed.

I have been learning about how the Lord is the One who forgives me, heals me, redeems me, and satisfies me. I need forgiven; I need healing; I need to be redeemed; I need Him to satisfy me. And He is the only One who can accomplish these things fully in my life. I want my innermost being, all that I am, to praise the Lord for the good things He has done for me.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Praise you with this dance

Another song that I have been listening to a lot lately is Praise you with this dance by Casting Crowns (listen here).

School and work are overwhelming right now. I have more to do than I can even imagine getting accomplished. This song has become words that I say as a reminder that the Lord hears me and I need to praise Him.

I will sing to the Lord
And I will lift my voice
For You have heard my cry

I will sing to the Lord
And I will lift my hands
For You have brought me out of the pit
For You have brought me out of the pit

And I'll sing glory, hallelujah
I lift Your name on high
And I'll sing holy, 'cause You're worthy
I'll praise You with the dance
And I'll sing glory, hallelujah
I lift Your name on high
And I'll sing holy, 'cause You're worthy
I'll praise You with the dance
I will praise You with the dance
I will praise You with the dance

The Roads

Today I was on a walk with my camera. I was walking along the paved path and I came to this point. If you look carefully in the picture, you can see that there is a little, dirt path to the right. I took it.

I think of all the "roads" that I have taken in my life. There is the road to follow and love Jesus, the road through different schools, the road to Ames, and now the road of healing my heart. I have been on this road of healing with Jesus most recently. Oh, the road is bumpy and difficult at times, but there are the beautiful meadows too. This road is not one that is often traveled, but it brings me freedom, joy, and life through Jesus Christ.

The Road Not Taken

- Robert Frost -

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

God speaks

My current favorite quotation is the following by C.S. Lewis:

God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks to us in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains:
it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

In my pleasure, He whispers to me "I am here, don't forget that I am the One who gives you these pleasures." In my conscience, He speaks "I am the One who made you. You are My child." In my pain, He shouts "I love you! I am right here to listen, comfort, and embrace you."

Most recently I have been hearing His shouts. Jesus is always near to me, no matter how far I might be from those people who mean the most to me. Jesus brings us to a place of healing and He walks beside us all the way.

Jesus is...
my best friend
my listener
my comforter
my teacher
my Savior
He is the Lord of my life.

50 years of LOVE

Today is my Grandparent's (Stan and Joan Alf's) 50th wedding anniversary. Congratulations Grandpa and Grandma on 50 years of faithfulness and love!

Thesis: In conclusion…

(Read Sunday – Wednesday’s posts first)

I hope that you have learned a thing or two about quality control, statistics, and my research. I find this to be quite fascinating when I step back and look at the bigger picture. Some days I get so involved in a small aspect of my research that I forget how much fin this is.

Although I am not particularly interested in agriculture and resource conservation, even though it is very important, I am very interested in quality control and survey error. And the things that I am working on have direct application into social statistics, an area in which I have more interest.

For now, this concludes my posts about my research. I hope that you enjoyed reading about what I do and that it didn’t bore you too much.

Thesis: So what do I do?

(Read Sunday – Tuesday’s posts first)

Without getting into the nitty-gritty aspects of my research, here is a brief exposure to my research.

I have studied the in-stream sampling method that was used to identify the quality control sample in the 2005 NRI data. Both the data collection and review are completed for this data. Thus, I am able to look at if the errors that we thought the data collectors were making they were actually making and if the sampling units that we were targeting actually contained errors. I have analyzed several different variables to determine this. The outcome is that the sampling method was doing what we expected and did a good job of identifying sampling units that contained errors.

I have then been looking at ways to improve this sampling method to be more efficient. Also, while the sampling method used in the 2005 data was good, there were also things that we didn’t expect to find and ways in which we can want to change the design. I am working on recommendations for the in-stream sampling design to be used in later NRI data collection.

Thesis: In-stream sampling

(Read Sunday and Monday’s posts first)

In-stream sampling is one sampling method used to effective identify sampling units for the quality control sample.

Things that we must consider with this sampling design are

• which sampling units we wish to target (i.e. which sampling units we think the data collectors might make mistakes on)
• what prior information we have on the sampling units to use for targeting the selection process
• how to design the sample so that the data collect cannot predict when review will occur
• temporal aspects of the sampling rate (usually we wish to oversample at the beginning and ending of the sampling process when the data collectors are more prone to make errors)

I am researching what attributes are important in designing an in-stream sampling method to achieve the desired results.

Thesis: Quality Control

(Read Sunday’s post first)

When we think of quality control, we usually think of its use in industry and manufacturing. This is an important use of quality control. But, the quality of the data that is collect in a survey is also of importance. This is what my research is about.

We are interested in knowing how well the data collectors are doing at accurately collecting the data. This information allows us to create margins of errors and indicate variability. In normal practice, a subset of the data collectors’ sampling units are identified to be reviewed. Then an expert in the topic of the survey looks at the data that has been collected and determines whether it is accurate. In many cases sampling designs are not used for the identification of the sampling units for review.

My research is to look at the sampling design that was implemented in the 2005 NRI data. My goal is to determine if this was a good design and to write the sampling design for the 2007 NRI quality control sample.

Thesis: What is the NRI?

Since I am in the middle of writing my Master's thesis and many people have questions as to what I am actually researching, I have decided to take this next week to introduce my research. My research is on in-stream sampling in quality control and its application to the NRI.

Today is an introduction to the NRI, the data set with which I work.
Monday I will explain quality control at large.
Tuesday I will explain in-stream sampling methods and their importance in quality control.
Wednesday I will explain my analyses on the NRI data.
Thursday I will try to conclude and tie things together.

I hope that this week will be understandable and let you into my world of statistical research.

In conjunction with the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology (CSSM) at ISU, I work for the United States Department of Agriculture on the National Resources Inventory (NRI) which is conducted by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The goal of the NRCS is to provide information to the government about the conservation on U.S. private lands. The data in the NRI is a means to accomplish this goal.

The NRI assess the status, condition, and trends in soil, water, and other natural resources on all non-Federal lands. This survey is longitudinal, meaning that it is a continuous inventory over time. The lands which are surveyed are in all 50 States plus Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Island, and some Pacific Basin locations.

The NRI contains data on land cover, land use, soil erosion, prime farmland soils, wetlands, habitat diversity, and conservation practices at more than 800,000 sample sites. As you can imagine, this is a complicated data set with a plethora of information.

The data is collected by people all over the Nation who are trained to view areal photographs of the land and answer a set of questions. I do not actually collect the data, but I am working with this data after it has been coded. So essentially, I work with a data set of numbers on which I perform statistical analyses.

So that, in a nut shell, is the NRI.

ISU Statistics Department

Our graduate statistics department was ranked 5th in a national ranking of graduate and professional schools published by U.S. News and World Report magazine. You can check out how other graduate schools ranked in a variety of fields here.

JOY

The JOY of the Lord is my strength.

Congratulations Carina!

Today Carina defended and passed her Senior thesis. This is such a big accomplishment. Her paper was titled "Trials, Truth, and Table of Stone: a Story of Sacrifice". She used the books To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt.

Great job Carina! I am so proud of you.
Love you!