What Do I Do All Day?
At any given time, I expect to have at least 10–15 projects on my
books. However, most of those are not active on any given day (luck-
ily). It is common for me to work on five to six projects a day, but it is
just as common for me to work on zero to one project. When there is
no looming deadline, which is most of the time, I can do anything I
want: work, exercise, nap, watch a movie, call a friend, or receive calls
from clients … . One aspect I like best about my form of consult-
ing is that, generally, I get to choose what I work on and when. As I
work out of my house, I can work before or after ‘normal’ working
hours. In general, however, I choose not to do this. First, I want to
be available to my clients when they are working (and I want them
available to me). Second, I want to have time off so I can do nonwork
activities—theater, dinner at a restaurant, lectures—many of which
are scheduled in the evening. This is not to say, however, I never sleep
in and never work late.
A major perk of being a consultant is that I’m free to do nonwork
and/or nonpaying tasks—such as this column and developing Stata
routines—when and if I want. For example, I am now serving on my
third institutional review board (IRB). Neither the first nor the current
IRB [have] paid anything. There was payment for meeting attendance
at the second IRB; however, I once calculated that the number of
hours spent outside of meetings meant I was receiving less than mini-
mum wage. I think IRBs are important, and I think the presence of
a statistician on an IRB is very important. I have now attended two
meetings of my current IRB. At each meeting, there was a new proto-
col with no control group. At the first, I was the only person to see the
problem. At the second, others also saw the problem.
I deal all the time with professionals (primarily lawyers and doc-
tors) who are not statisticians. Some are numerate, some not. I find I
need to, and am able to, explain virtually anything to any of my cli-
ents. However, the explanations, and particularly the examples, often
need to be different (i.e., what one person understands is meaningless
to another). Texts, and even articles, do not work for these people, as
they don’t have the time, desire, or—in many cases—the background
to read that much material. And even if they do read it, they quickly
forget what they have read. The problem is that longer documents
either make too many points (one at a time is desired), they are not
straightforward enough, or both.
It is helpful to have available a set of short (one or fewer pages)
descriptions of various issues and their importance. I have writ-
ten some (at least one of which is on the web and can be found by
Googling “Goldstein ratio Vanderbilt”), and some journals have
attempted to publish simple guides. The best are a series of short
papers by Martin Bland and Douglas Altman (and some collabora-
tors) in the British Medical Journal. These meet my criteria, and I
often give one or more to a client. Some other health-related journals
have attempted to publish guides by statisticians. I have found these
Invitation to ASA’s Centenary Celebration
useful, partly as a source of simple examples, but I rarely give them to
(1939), ASA Record Book, Box 9, Folder 1,
clients, as the articles are too long and clients will either not read them
American Statistical Association Records,
or quickly forget what they say.
MS 349, Special Collection Department,
I think it would be great if the ASA invited people to write simple, Iowa State University Library
straightforward, short (no more than one page) documents, each of
which covered one—and only one—issue. By straightforward, I mean
The URL for the archive is www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/
the point of the document must be made both explicitly (clients are
manuscripts/MS349.html.
not students) and clearly. The explicitness is needed because clients are
If you have questions, email spclref@iastate.edu or
not interested in the statistical point, only in how to apply it to their
call (515) 294-6672.
situations. Thus, they want and deserve to be given the statistical point
so they can immediately start applying it. n
JUNE 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 3
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