Author Archives: pmean

Recommended: This is Statistics promotional toolkit

The American Statistical Association is promoting careers in statistics though a new campaign titled “This is Statistics”. They just added some very nice promotional material: one and two page handouts, a PowerPoint presentation (a bit too glitzy, but still very informative), and a set of talking points. The materials emphasize the broad range of areas that statisticians work in, the very strong pay and high demand for statisticians, and the diversity of people who go into Statistics. Continue reading

PMean: I am now a number in the ORCID database

Life in the world of research is complicated, but it gets worse when you have a relatively common last name like “Simon.” There are thousands of research publications written by a Simon, and narrowing it down to “Simon S” or even “Simon SD” doesn’t seem to help. So how do you quickly identify all the publications that you have written? One way is to apply for a unique identifier from ORCID, an “open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers.” Continue reading

Recommended: Developing Grant Proposals: Guidelines for Statisticians Collaborating Under Limited Resources

This article provides guidance for developing the “statistical considerations” section of a research grant. I normally do not use that term, and suggest separate sections on statistical methods, sample size justification, data management plan, etc. But that’s a quibble. This is very good practical advice, such as reminding you that you need to write both for the statistical reviewer and the non-statistician who is also reviewing the proposal. Continue reading