I wish I knew then what I know now Close to 40 years ago, I was a bright, young industrial engineer who had been using SAS for a year or so. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and could solve all problems. An older engineer, who did not have much use for all of those new-fangled computer things was told by his supervisor to talk to me about automating some type of factory loading. I don’t remember the details but I think it had something to do with figuring out how many people to have work each shift based on the hours estimated necessary to make each part and the number of eac ..read more

Often when analyzing data for annual reports, you need to summarize by fiscal year but people normally enter calendar dates. Also, if you didn’t know, now you know … SAS and Excel use different date formats If you have uploaded your data from an Excel file, you want to convert from an Excel date to a SAS date by subtracting 21, 916. This is because the reference date from which days are numbered in excel is January 1, 1900 and in SAS it is January 1, 1960. Coincidentally, 365.25*60 = 21,915 and at the century mark, we get shorted one day because 1900, 2000 etc. do not have a February 29. It’s ..read more

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about making college, or younger, students feel as if they are really getting the same education when teaching online versus in the classroom. As someone who has taught online since 1997 (yes, you read that right) and has taught the same classes both in the classroom and online, I have a few suggestions. Online Classes Can be Better than Face to Face Record Your Lectures The very first suggestion I have is to record your lectures and make those downloadable. The university where I teach has Blackboard and this is an option. If your school does NOT have that o ..read more

Before the pandemic happened, I was planning on speaking at the SAS Global Forum on things I had learned as a statistical consultant. I wanted to call it “This is a hill I will die on” but one of my students suggested “This is a hill I will not die on” was a better title. However, by the time I had this idea the deadline for changing anything in your paper had already passed so the title was Spirit Lake Natio From Santiago to the Spirit Lake Nation: 30 things I learned in 30 years as a statistical consultant You can click the link above and read it. My point is that I am a serious ..read more

My granddaughter was bored. She had been home for three weeks, in Minnesota, which meant much of her time was spent indoors because it is cold outside and she lives in a city. Not the most fun walk – Minnesota city streets in winterThis week was even worse because it was spring break and she said, Me and my friends used to think that if we had no school and we could just stay home all the time it would be great but really it’s HORRIBLE. Making it even worse, she and her sister were supposed to be spending spring break in Santa Monica with us, chilling by the beach and meeting up ..read more

Probably like many of you who read this blog, this pandemic has lasted longer for me than most people. Statistics is my thing. I teach it, I make games about it , I code statistical analyses and I provide statistical consulting. A few weeks ago, there were 1.9 cases of Coronavirus per million people in the United States. I remember looking at the growth curves in the U.S. and around the world, thinking to myself, “Oh, no, this is not going to be good.” We’re now about 3,000 times the rate of infection we were then. It’s no wonder we’re all stressed. Checking death statistics 10 ti ..read more

I’ve read a lot of cheery tweets that said something like, “Buffy, Biff and I are isolated at home with our terrier, Boo. Here’s a picture. Isn’t he cute? We played card games, then I baked this three-course meal I saw on Pinterest. Biff is taking this time to finally become proficient in Mandarin with a course he is taking online.” Seriously, what is WRONG with you people? Now, those are the people we all want to slap, but there is another group that is more worrying. If working remotely is your usual mode, you are still drawing a paycheck and no one in your family is serious ..read more

Last week, I mentioned that successful consultants have five categories of skills; communication, testing, statistics, programming and generalist. COMMUNICATION Communication is the number one most important skill. All five are necessary to some extent, but a terrific communicator with mediocre statistical analysis skills will get more business than a stellar statistician that can’t communicate. Communication is a lot more than explaining results to clients or making small talk at meet ups. Documentation Communication includes documentation, both in your code and internal document ..read more

A few weeks ago, I ended my post with “there is one thing a statistical consultant absolutely must have and promised to say what that is in the next post. Maria and I had just picked up our rental car at the Detroit airport when she turned to me and asked: So, what is the one thing a statistical consultant has to have? I told her, “I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking last month!” In my defense, I have been in five states and 22 cities in the past 21 days. Maria says it is only 16 because I was in Minneapolis, Fargo and Denver twice each. She also says I can’t count Denv ..read more

I’ll be speaking about being a statistical consultant at SAS Global Forum in D.C. in March/ April. While I will be talking a little bit about factor analysis, repeated measures ANOVA and logistic regression, that is the end of my talk. The first things a statistical consultant should know don’t have much to do with statistics. A consultant has paying clients. In History of Psychology (it was a required course, don’t judge me) one of my fellow students chose to give her presentation as a one-woman play, with herself as Sigmund Freud. “Dr. Freud” began his meeting with a patient discussing ..read more