My father suggested I write a letter to the University of Miami football team requesting a statistician role. Considering I had no actual qualifications for such a job, I had fun with it...
Dear whomever this concerns,
I'm writing this letter, or rather typing it (for professional perception's sake), to request a position with the Miami Hurricanes football team. I know what you may be asking yourself at this moment, and no, I can't run a 40 in under 4.5 seconds. Sorry. But, I think I could be of use. You see, ever since I was a young boy growing up on the west side (of Broward County), I've been a fan of the Miami Hurricanes, and now I'm going to the university they represent! What good luck! And, I know, that doesn't entitle me to any sort of position with the team, but there's something else you should know about me; I'm hellaciously good at mathematics and statistics.
Don't believe me? Well, that's good! You obviously wouldn't have made it anywhere in the world if you believed every piece of information flown your way. But I intend to prove, to you and the jury, that I am, indeed, worth giving a role to.
Exhibit "A" will be my advanced placement scores. Now, I don't necessarily like to tout my own horn, but I just about embarrassed the Statistics and Calculus 2 AP tests. So much so that I have garnered recommendations from the venerable College Board of "well qualified" and "extremely well qualified" in Statistics and Calculus 2, respectively. Additionally, I graduated salutatorian of my class, and I staked a claim in the mathematics world that even the valedictorian tipped his cap to.
Exhibit B:
Daniel Drucker isn't a natural, he wasn't born with talent. No, he earned it. He worked for it; he worked hard, he worked long. And in the end, he came out on top. He put his blood, sweat, and tears into every integral. When a derivative bleeds, he bleeds out the soul of Daniel Drucker.
-- Miles Ross Kenyon, valedictorian of Northeast (c/o 2006), Dartmouth College freshman
Exhibit C:
A man can be an artist in anything. Food, sculpting, photographs, music...anything. Daniel Drucker has a singular gift, in that he is the only man I know who is a true artisan - a master - of numbers. The canvas he manipulates is not tangible, but numeric; his ability in that field is unmatched. One of my gravest regrets in this life is that I may not be around to witness him paint his masterpiece.-- Andrew David Sheffield, University of Florida freshman (we won't hold that against him)
Exhibit D:
I don't see why you need me to say something about your math; you already know that you're one of the finest mathematicians ever to grace the hallways of Northeast - your AP scores don't lie and neither do your peers.-- Kenneth Alexander Rivera, Columbia University freshman
So, I believe my mathematical skills are sufficient to garner a statistician role with the team. And I know there'd be pressure to perform. Of course there's pressure when you're working with a national championship-caliber team. But, as Michael Irvin once said, "For the good, for the good, it [pressure] makes them fold. But for us, the great, it makes us focus." And, before I run out of space, a writing role would suffice, too.
