John McGready interviews Jeff Leek

John McGready interviews the esteemed Jeff Leek. This is bearded Jeff, in case you were wondering.

John McGready interviews Roger Peng

John McGready, a fellow faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics, interviewed me for his Statistical Reasoning class. In the interview we talk about some statistical contributions to air pollution epidemiology.

Simply statistics logo contest

Simply Statistics has had the same logo since Roger grabbed the first picture in his results folder that looked “statistics related”. While we do have some affection for the logo, we would like something a little more catchy.

So we would like to announce a contest to create our new logo. Here are the rules:

1. All submissions must be sent to Roger with the email subject, “Simply Statistics Logo Contest”
2. The logo must be generated with reproducible R code. Here is an example of how Simple created their logo for inspiration. 
3. Ideally the logo will convey the “spirit of the blog”: we like data, we like keeping it simple, we like solving real problems, and we like to stir it up.

Have at it!

Pro-tips for graduate students (Part 3)

This is part of the ongoing series of pro tips for graduate students, check out parts one and two for the original installments. 

1. Learn how to write papers in a very clear and simple style. Whenever you can write in plain English, skip jargon as much as possible, and make the approach you are using understandable and clear. This can (sometimes) make it harder to get your papers into journals. But simple, clear language leads to much higher use/citation of your work. Examples of great writers are: John Storey, Rob Tibshirani, Robert May, Martin Nowak, etc.
2. It is a great idea to start reviewing papers as a graduate student. Don’t do too many, you should focus on your research, but doing a few will give you a lot of insight into how the peer-review system works. Ask your advisor/research mentor they will generally have a review or two they could use help with. When doing reviews, keep in mind a person spent a large chunk of time working on the paper you are reviewing. Also, don’t forget to use Google.
3. Try to write your first paper as soon as you possibly can and try to do as much of it on your own as you can. You don’t have to wait for faculty to give you ideas, read papers and think of what you think would have been better (you might check with a faculty member first so you don’t repeat what’s done, etc.). You will learn more writing your first paper than in almost any/all classes.

NBC Unpacks Trove of Data From Olympics

NBC Unpacks Trove of Data From Olympics