Faculty Bulletin

For our final interview before Spring Break, we go "in-house" with a well-known campus figure: Vice Provost Ali Hadi. His remarkable career has taken him from a village in Upper Egypt to a professorship at Cornell University, and finally to his key administrative post at AUC. Along the way he overcame the loss of his father in infancy, a major paperwork blunder by his primary school principal, and in February 2010 a horrific accident as a large and speeding truck loaded with bricks rammed into the driver's side of his parked car. He also worked as a Customs Official at Cairo Airport, and later rose to become a chef in a New York restaurant while in graduate school. Vice Provost Hadi is known as a prolific researcher in his field of specialty: statistics. (He will discuss his work when he gives the Provost's Lecture this May.) In the following interview he discusses his remarkable background in detail, and also offers useful advice on time management for young academics.

 

 

Q: Before we start the interview itself, there is a recent dramatic story to tell. Much of the AUC Community might not realize that you had a very lucky escape from a car accident in mid-February. Maybe you could tell the story for those who haven't heard it yet.

A: Yes, I was indeed lucky, and hence thankful. I was sitting in my car which was parked in a driveway off the street, waiting for someone and checking my e-mail on the BlackBerry. All of a sudden a truck driver lost control of his vehicle, hit a car on the road, and then smashed into my car at almost full speed right on the driver's side where I was sitting. I had cuts, bruises, and torn muscles, but (thank God) no broken bones.

Q: Now let's go back to the beginning, since you have such an interesting life history. You came from a tiny village in Upper Egypt, attended Ain Shams University, and then worked for awhile as a customs officer at Cairo Airport. And then, perhaps miraculously, you ended up in graduate school in New York. First I would like to know how many other people left your village and went abroad? This sounds very difficult to do.

A: As you said, I was born in a tiny village in Bani Sweif named Saft El-Nour (which translates into English as “source of light”). At the time no one from my village has gone abroad, but now many people go, mainly to work in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. To give you an idea about the environment in which I was raised, I repeated the whole year of sixth grade because on the day of the exam that qualified us to go beyond sixth grade, I and another student did not find our names listed among exam takers. We discovered that the reason was that the school Principal has forgotten to submit the applications from the entire school! To be fair to the Principal, though, it was only the two of us who had applied.  So, we repeated the sixth grade and, amazingly, no one complained– including me. The next year two other students joined us. So, I was one of four students in my village who advanced beyond the sixth grade. Three of us made it to high school, and only one to a university.

 

Q: Was there any point at which you thought that failure was imminent and you might have to stay in the village?

A: Yes, at least twice. One of these moments was when my family (meaning mother and uncles: my father died when I was 2 months old) was hesitant to send me beyond the sixth grade for various reasons. But thanks to the role that my fifth grade teacher (Mr. Fawzi Haleem) played in convincing my family that I should continue my education. Mr. Haleem is the one who saw that I had some potential, and he inspired me. I wanted to grow up to be like him: a primary school teacher. These are some of the reasons why I dedicated one of my books to Mr. Haleem. I had not seen or contacted him since 1965, until in 1997 I came to Egypt for a visit to Egypt and looked for him. I was very happy to find him and to deliver a copy of the book I dedicated to him. This caught him by surprise (a pleasant surprise, of course). I had to remind him of myself and of the role he has played in my life.

 

Q: Did you have any contact with AUC in those years, such as meeting AUC students or professors?

A: Honestly, I had never heard of AUC until my senior year in college! This was partly ignorance on my side, of course, but it was also because AUC was so small and not as visible as it is today. My first contact with AUC was in 1998 when I came here as a Distinguished Visiting Professor.

 

Q: Was it always your goal to study in the United States, or was this something that sneaked up on you?

A: As I mentioned, my first goal was to be a primary school teacher like Mr. Haleem. I upgraded this goal as I went from the preparatory school to high school and then college.  So, I always wanted to be a teacher, though at different levels of education. When I was in college at Ain Shams University my goal was to travel to the UK to obtain graduate education. But just a few months before making the arrangements to leave for the UK, while I was working as a customs officer professor, I met a passenger at the airport who was an Egyptian professor at Northern Illinois University. I talked with him about my plans, but he convinced me to go to the USA instead. And you know the rest of the story!

 

Q: Presumably you must have shown a talent for mathematics at a young age. But at what point did you decide that statistics would be your specialty?

A: I liked mathematics at an early age mainly because of the influence of my primary school teacher. I liked statistics in my junior year in college, again because of the influence of my college statistics professor (Dr. Abou Bakr Hussein). He used to award a cup in his name to a graduating student who obtained a perfect score in statistics: ties were broken by overall GPA. I received this award in 1972, and a few photos of the ceremony are found on my web site:

http://www.aucegypt.edu/faculty/hadi/

 

Q: And now for my favorite part of your life story… While a graduate student in New York, you started as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and gradually worked your way up to head chef. Tell us how this happened, if you would. Also, do you still like to cook fine cuisine?

A: I went to the USA at my own expense in pursuit of a graduate education. I remember that I had $214 with me, so I had to work to live and also save some money to pay for my own education. Restaurant work was the easiest to find. I started as a dishwasher but quickly climbed the ladder to an assistant cook, and then cook, first cook, assistant chef, night chef, and finally chef. I specialized in French-Continental cuisine. After a few years of working I started my part-time graduate work at New York University. I wanted to join Columbia University, but they did not accept part-timers. I took my cooking job seriously and I loved it. It was also financially rewarding. To give you an idea, my first salary as an assistant professor at Cornell University was 50% of the salary I used to make as a chef! Unfortunately, I am getting rusty in cooking now because I am not left with much time to practice. But I still treasure my own tools that I used when I was a chef.

 

 

Q: We know that you were at Cornell University for two decades. While there, you won an unusually large teaching award. Please tell us about the award and what you did with the prize money.

A: After finishing my Ph.D. degree from NYU and joining Cornell as an assistant professor in 1984, I thought I made a mistake by changing my career.  But after joining Cornell, I took my academic job as seriously as I have taken my cooking job, and also loved it. As a result I received several awards while at Cornell, and the largest one was for $25,000. I used the money to buy books, pay journal subscriptions, and society membership fees. The rest of the money I used to reduce the mortgage on my house in Ithaca. J.

 

Q: You were all set with a good job at a prestigious Ivy League institution. What made you accept an offer to move to AUC?

A: I was lucky to start my academic career in a place like Cornell.  The work environment gives one no option but to work hard. So, Cornell has played an important role in shaping the early stages in my academic career. I also loved living in Ithaca and have learned to ski and play tennis, but sometimes the long winter can get into you. But more importantly, I have always wanted to return and work in Egypt. I am, therefore, indebted to AUC for making my return possible even though I had to accept a substantial pay cut (for the second time in my professional career). After joining AUC, I was pleasantly surprised to know the important contributions that AUC offers to both Egypt and the United States (the two countries of which I am a citizen). This, not my salary J, explains my loyalty to AUC.

 

Q: You have published 5 books and a staggering total of nearly 100 articles in refereed international journals. Do you have any tips for junior faculty about effective time management?

A: Here is a small tip. Many of us spend a good proportion of time waiting for things to occur. This can range from 5 minutes (e.g., walking from one building to another) or 30 minutes as in waiting for the bus to depart or arrive, or even more (e.g., waiting for the flight to depart or arrive or waiting your turn in a doctor’s office). I use these waiting times efficiently by doing something else while waiting. For example, I can make a telephone call during my 5-minute walk from one building to another or read part of an article or report (I always carry with me something to read). You would be surprised how much one can do during these waiting times because it adds up.

 

Q: You are now Editor-in-Chief of the International Statistical Review, a great honor in your profession. How tough are you as an editor? And are you equally tough when reading grant proposals from AUC faculty? (The last question is a joke, of course.)

A: Of course I was both happy and surprised by my selection as the Editor-in-Chief of ISR. But the job is actually harder than I thought. Some of the submitted papers are clear cut (as far as rejected or accepted)  but these are very few. Most of the paper sfall in the grey area in between, and one has to make judgments and deliver a decision. Because of the high demand to appear in this journal on one side, and the limitation on the number of issues and number of pages in each issue on the other side, the rejection rate is much higher than the acceptance rate. In many cases I find myself forced to reject otherwise good papers only because other papers are better. So it is not aquestion of toughness, it is rather my concern about fairness in the decision-making process. Handling grant proposals at AUC is much easier because the rejection rate is far lower than the acceptance rate.

 

Q: In what area of statistics do you think your research has contributed most to the field? Or if that's too embarrassing to answer, maybe you can tell us which areas of your work are cited most often by other researchers.

A: In order to get tenure at Cornell, I was advised early on by the department chair to (a) try to separate your work from that of your Ph.D. advisor, (b) focus research efforts in one small area, get deep in it, publish and establish an international lead and recognition in the area. The area I chose was sensitivity analysis (how sensitive the output of a statistical analysis to a small perturbation in the input). My early effort appeared in an article that was published in 1986 in a good statistical journal (Statistical Science) together with discussions by about 10 leading experts in the area. This has led to the first book that was published in 1988 by John Wiley & Sons (a well know publisher especially in statistics and mathematics). After getting tenure and more experience in research I extended my research to other areas and disciplines such as engineering, artificial intelligence, and data mining.

 

Q: You have sat on doctoral dissertation committees from Sweden to Malaysia, from Canada to Spain, and of course in Egypt as well. You've also told me in the past that English is the language used for all work in statistics. So is it fair to say that in statistics there is truly a unified international academic community, in which everyone is familiar with what is going on everywhere in the world?

A: Actually, statistics is a huge area of research. It ranges from basic theoretical research to applied research. Probability is another big field, separate from statistics. While it is true that there is truly a unified international academic community (the International Statistics Institute was established in 188) it is hard to be familiar with what is going on everywhere in the world. But in the various sub-areas of statistics, we know each other fairly well.

 

Q: So far I've been avoiding any direct questions about your work, since even in your titles the terminology can be a bit intimidating for the layperson. But let's take data mining, since everyone has some idea of what that is. What sorts of uses are there for it?

A: The recent advancement in information and communication technologies has led to the collection of huge amounts of data. Think for example of a bank that keeps records of all credit card transactions for each customer, or of a commercial flight that takes hundreds of measurements eight times every second during the duration of the flight. One needs to extract knowledge (gold) from this wealth (mine) of data. So, data mining is the art/science of extracting knowledge from huge amounts of available data. This knowledge can then lead to wise decisions, by top management for example.

 

Q: You have spoken about the abuses of statistical data in scientific research. Are these abuses usually deliberate, or accidental? If deliberate, then what are some examples of how statistics can be manipulated?

A: Well, like any thing else, statistics can be used and abused: some times intentionally and others unintentionally. There is a small, easy to read, and inexpensive paperback book entitled “How to Lie With Statistics,” by Darrel Huff,  that illustrates possible uses and abuses of various statistical methods. For example, if you are estimating the average income based on a sample of people, you can choose between many types of “averages.” For example, the mean or the median. If it so happens that Bill Gates was one observation in your sample, then if you want to make everyone rich use the mean. But if you want to reach a reasonable measure of the average income, then use the median. Both the mean and the medians (and many other measures) can be referred to as  the “average.”

  

Q: In your Provost's Lecture this May, you will be speaking about outliers. Without spoiling any surprises, what sorts of things will you be telling us about outliers?

A: In the above example, Bill Gates is an outlier. The message that I want to get across is that outliers can distort the analysis of the data leading to erroneous conclusions. It is therefore important to identify outliers if they exist in your data.  On the other hand, outliers are not necessarily bad data. On the contrary, they can sometimes be the most informative observation in your data.