Hey /r/machinelearning! I was reading the "nicest celebrities" thread on AskReddit, but I figured my story should probably go here instead, considering it's kind of a niche thing.
About a month ago, I was leaving Seattle after an interview (just graduated college in CS) and I decided to grab a beer at the bar. As I was joking with the bartender, an older gentleman sat down next to me and we started talking. At some point he mentions to the bartender that he has a PhD in Math and Computer Science, so naturally I'm interested and mention that I'm graduating. He mentions that his company is involved in statistical programing.
Immediately I ask "oh, so do you do a lot of work with R?"
Nope.
This guy was none other than Tom Lehman, the director of the SAS Advanced Analytics lab. Whoops. Turns out he had been in Seattle on business, and he had been meeting with the board of directors of Nordstrom.
After a bit of a talk about life and stuff, he gave me his card and mentioned that if I ended up in machine learning, to give him a call. Finished his beer and left for his flight. All around class-act kinda guy. He also spent a lot of time talking up SAS itself, and left me with a business card.
Just a fun story, I suppose. I really wish I was more into ML (or fly fishing) so we could've had more to talk about, but all in all, great guy, and although I ended up taking another job, for awhile I seriously considered applying at SAS.
Cool story, huh?
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