1. What is Consulting

8/9/2019 1. What is Consulting

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What is consulting


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The function of statistics is tosolve real problems

Do statistics

Subject matter view vs Statisticalview


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Why statistical consulting?

Why people consult statistics?

Finding the righet system to explorea problem , nding the nuts and boltsto do the research

!ow to start identifying a statisticalrelationship?

Where and which are the importantsource of variation

Where are the uncertainty part


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consultancy


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12 Jan 2006 Hort Retreat Brian S Yandell 5

what is statistics?

We may at once admit thatany inference from the artic!lar to the "eneralm!st #e attended withsome de"ree of !ncertainty$

#!t this is not the same as to admit thats!ch inference cannot #e a#sol!tely ri"oro!s$for the nat!re and de"ree of the !ncertainty

may itself #e caa#le of ri"oro!s e%ression&' Sir Ronald (& )isher*1+,5 -he .esi"n of /%erimentsdi"ital&li#rary&adelaide&ed!&a!collsecialfisher


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The "deal Statistical #onsultant andthe Satised #lient

The statistician$sperspective%

The client$s

perspective% Five Dimensions of

&uality%

'ligning expectations%

Ten issues thatrepresentvulnerabilities in theclient(consultantrelationship%


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's)ing *ood &uestions??

'void errors of thethird )ind%

"dentify what youneed to nd out%

Develop ane+ective strategyfor gatheringinformation%


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ules to -ractice .y

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ule /0

NEVERgive advice over the phone%

"t will always be bad

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ule 1

NEVERanswer when as)ed howmany% "t is almost always the wrong 2uestion

The right 2uestion has to do withdening the goals of the experimentTypically, you will have to help the

investigator gure this out%

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ule 3

'lways interrogate the measurement

Systematic sources of measurementvariability abound

"vestigators rarely )now how to 2uantifythem .ut they often can tell you what could be

there

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ule 4 5suggested by 6isa.ernstein7 *et the raw data

8any instruments, vendor(supplied9user(created software :preprocess; the data

in ad hoc, cracult to get :raw data; anddi>cult to deal with when you havethem

e%g% images 12


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ule

Thermodynamics0 Disorder rulesunless you wor) hard to defeat it%So%%%Ta)e nothing for granted

-rovide explicit step by stepinstructions, data format

specications, %%% emember 8urphy

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Some useful things "$velearned 8ost science is about hypothesis

generation, not hypothesis testing

'll scientists have strong priors

'll variation is caused

.eware of the data that aren$t there5suggested by .ill Forrest7

'll replicates are not created e2ual @ou can never )now too much statistics

.ut most of what you learn is silly

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' few more %%%

6isten more, tal) less

'lways provide an :executive summary; ofyour results in a graph or two and a

paragraph or so of text ' little paranoia can be good thing

"t$s better to lead the parade than sweepup after the elephants 5good design is

more important than fancy analysis7 "f you don$t thin) it$s ethical, don$t do it

@our job is to spea) for the data A integrity iseverythingB

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'nd most important %%%

HAVE FUN !

5else why do it?7

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1. What is Consulting

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