Daisy Wang
Can you tell me your year, majors/minors, and your pronouns?
I'm in the class of 2025, my majors are Applied Math and Statistics, and I hope to minor in Creative Writing. And my pronouns are she/her.
Where are you from?
Orange County, California!
I'm interested in your majors and your minors. How did you decide to study those?
For Applied Math, I've always just kind of liked math. And I'm decently good at it. I know what's happening in class and I like the subject. That's why I wanted to do applied math, because applied math is a lot more theoretical. As for statistics, I feel like it's more applicable, so that's why I double majored. I’d have both the theoretical and the more applicable side. And I like writing stories. I figured that out when I was in middle school and I've always been doing a little bit. So I feel like doing a creative writing minor would be fun, and it gives me an excuse to take fun classes.
Is there a specific genre that you like to write in?
I like fiction and fantasy, so just short stories… I have commitment issues with longer stories.
Do you ever feel like it's difficult to be studying so many things at once? Has it been difficult for your time and your workload?
I don't think it's hit me yet because my freshman year schedule wasn't that bad since it was getting through the lower divisions. And the creative writing minor isn't that much, it's five upper division classes. Two of them are literature classes, which I took last semester, and they were pretty good. Like, they're informative. They're also not like tech classes where only so many people get an A, so if you put in the effort, you’ll probably get an A. I haven't taken any of the actual creative writing classes because you need to apply to those, so we'll see how that goes. But I feel like [my course load is] probably going to get harder in the future when I take more upper division math and statistics classes together. We'll see.
Do you have any hobbies, or are into any books or TV shows?
I like [the Young Adult genre]. Post senior year of high school I had a trashy YA phase and now I'm back into it.
In SAAS, what were your past and current committees?
My past committees were Career Exploration for Fall 2021, Insights and Analytics for Spring 2022. And then I'm currently in Research and Publication.
What are your professional interests?
I'm not sure because I've had a weird journey of getting to where I am now. But I think it's mostly data science right now. 'm thinking about doing research in the future in statistics, and applying statistics in different fields. I realized I like making graphs, looking at graphs, and drawing conclusions from that, because I think “Wow, that's so cool. I made a conclusion.” Intuitively, there’s a lot of questions that I would like to answer.
Do you think that SAAS has helped you in determining your interests? Or your career path, or in deciding what you want to do?
Being in the SAAS community really made me realize the power of data science. And also all the opportunities out there, because I never really considered a lot of different careers, especially in the tech field because I was originally going to be pre-med. Before moving to Berkeley, I really didn't know what options there were, and I feel like SAAS has really opened my eyes.
What's your proudest accomplishment in SAAS pertaining to the work that you did in each committee?
My proudest achievement was when I got first place in the CX Kaggle Competition, because honestly after high school, I was like “I'm never going to code again.” But then getting that first place, I was like “Wow, you know, I can actually do something. So I'm proud of that achievement.
And what did you do for that competition?
So basically for that competition, we had data from different people with strokes and various features about them–their BMI, their gender, what type of house that they lived in, stuff like that. Then we created a model to predict on a new set of people with the same data, whether they would have a stroke or not. I used a logistic regression model.
Is that the sort of question that you want to answer in your career, or something that you'd be interested in working on in the future?
I don't know if it’s necessarily working on strokes, but I do think I would be really interested in learning in the realm of healthcare and medicine and things like that. One of the things that attracted me about data science and data is that you can really use it in any field. It's very interdisciplinary.
Now I'll ask you some questions about your experience at Berkeley. What has been your favorite class so far?
My favorite class has been Scandinavian 106, which is a class about Hans Christian Andersen. For context, he's the guy that wrote “The Little Mermaid,” and “The little Matchstick Girl,” which are all very depressing original stories that have very profound meaning if you actually feel like analyzing. But I really liked the class because my professor was really funny and he was really good. It was a really good class to delve deeper into literature. I also had a chance to do creative writing for my assignments, because my professor was basically like, “I don't want to read 20 different 6-page long papers. So, you guys are only required to do one paper this semester, and it's going to be three pages. And you guys can do creative projects if you want.” So I did two creative projects, and I wrote two stories. That's why I really liked that class.
Cool, and which professor taught that?
Tim Tangherlini.
Okay, what's your favorite spot on campus to study at?
Doe is just too quiet and Main Stacks is underground. Like, this is a bomb shelter, not a study place.
What's your favorite restaurant to eat at in Berkeley?
I like Poke Bar. I really like Poke Bar but I don't eat in there, I just get takeout and I eat it with my friends. But I'm lowkey obsessed and addicted to that place because the food's good. The fish is good and you can add as many toppings as you want for free, except for avocado. It’s such a good deal.
Have you ever tried Poke Parlor?
I have tried it, and it's just not as good, I'm sorry. I also have proof that Poke Bar is better because I had a friend who used to go to Poke Parlor, but after I introduced her to Poke Bar, she only goes to Poke Bar.
What would you sing at karaoke night?
A lot of sad songs or songs from Chinese memes. Those are the two genres of songs I listen to the most and are easiest to sing. And I can't rap, so yeah, probably some sad Chinese song.
If you were an animal, which one would you be?
If I were an animal and I wanted to live a good life, I would want to be a seagull at a protected beach. Because humans will feed you anyways, but at a protected beach, you’re not going to die from a human shooting you down.