Li Yuan
What is your hometown? Chengdu, China
What is your educational background? I finished my Bachelor’s Degree in Natural Science in Statistics at Sichuan University, located in my hometown, Chengdu, China. During my undergraduate, I have taken many Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science classes, so I have a strong background in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. After my four-year undergraduate, I went to the University of California, Berkeley, to take a full academic year plus two summer sessions, one from Yale and another from UCB. I took some Mathematics classes, which I didn’t consider when I was an undergraduate and are essential for Artificial Intelligence. And taking CS61a at UCB, which is very famous for computer science across the United States and CS50 from Yale, which is an introductory course for college students, intensified my computer science for Data Science. This full academic year at UCB refined my English Skills, helped me access San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and interacted with world-renowned faculty.
Why data science? I love Data Science because it combines Computer Science and Statistics and minor Mathematics, all of which are my favorite subjects. I love coding using codes to solve real problems. But only codes aren’t sufficient to explore the real world. We need Mathematics and Statistics to describe and quantity the objects and laws of the real world. Nowadays, human beings already entered the information and digit world. Everything in the world can be converted and stored in the digit number. These push humans to use these data we collect to analyze the disciplines and real world. And Data Science is the future trend of position and jobs.
Why did you choose Vanderbilt? I think Vanderbilt Univerity is a diverse and international university where students and faculty can share free thoughts from across the globe and experience world-renowned academics and research.