student on a team consisting of a postdoctoral fel- resource. Postdocs and graduate students from
low, statistics professor, economics professor, math- teams 1, 2, and 3 spent many days in the “super
ematical statistician, and economist. secret data room,” mulling through massive NASS
It turns out my role was far from what I expect- data sets and creating graphs and summaries. We
ed. It would be Michael Robbins (the postdoc) and shared the challenge of deciphering programming
I who would tackle the problem full time over the problems, counter-intuitive figures, and other
next 10 weeks. Other members of the team would anomalies in the data.
spend several days or weeks at a time at NISS, pro- After a quick 10 weeks, the problem was start-
viding guidance, suggestions, and a plan of action ed—not solved. I can’t help but think, “Wow! I can’t
for the upcoming days, but would soon be drawn believe how much I learned this summer!” I find
back to their busy careers. I never felt as if we were myself ready to make a dent in an additional field
put on the back burner, however. Whenever we had (my dissertation topic is multiple testing, not impu-
questions or concerns, everyone in the group was tation) and looking forward to next summer. While
quick to respond via email, phone, or teleconfer- next summer will mark the end of the project for
ence. Even NASS employees who were not assigned me, I believe this internship prompted the begin-
to the project spent a great deal of time tracking ning of several relationships with future collabora-
down bits of information and sorting through SAS tors: Michael Robbins (NISS-NASS), Sujit Ghosh
code to help us out. (North Carolina State University), Barry Goodwin
Other teams at NISS with their graduate stu- (North Carolina State University), Darcy Miller
dents and postdocs also turned out to be a valuable (NASS), and Kirk White (ERS).
Team 2: Design and estimation
methodologies for estimating the
Number of small Farms from NAss
sampling Frames
After our brainstorming sessions, I found
myself thinking about ways to improve upon each
Kenneth Lopiano, University of
approach, what the limitations were, and how these
Florida
limitations could be addressed. Rather than being
discouraged by an idea not panning out, Linda
Young—a senior faculty adviser—emphasized that
T
he opportunity to work as a graduate stu- research is usually two steps forward and one step
dent with NISS on a project with the USDA back. For me, the take-home message was to always
and NASS was priceless. As I only recently remember to build upon each step forward.
passed my qualifying exam, this was the first time I Once the advisers and other NASS team
researched a problem without a known solution. members left me and postdoctoral fellow Patricia
While working alongside statisticians from NASS, Gunning to the problem at hand, I found myself
professors from the University of Florida and North coming up with ideas that took me two steps for-
Carolina State University, and a postdoctoral fellow ward, but then reaching an obstacle that took me
at NISS, I started to learn what questions to ask one step back. With Young’s advice in mind, I
when conducting research. was able to recognize the net gain and persevere.
When the project began, we expected to imple- Working as a team, we were able to come up with
ment a capture-recapture methodology to reconcile viable methods to implement.
disparate estimates based on two frames. However, This summer’s work gave us direction, but there
once we received the data, it was clear that was not is more to be done. I look forward to thinking
going to work. We had to go back to the drawing about our problem when I return to the University
board and ask ourselves what alternative approaches of Florida and coming back to NISS next summer
we could take. with more ideas.
50 AmstAt News December 2009
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