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Member Spotlight Grace O’Neill

1 August 2010 1,385 views No Comment
Grace O'Neill

Grace O'Neill

Growing up, I was never particularly interested in math or statistics. I didn’t really mind it and, for the most part, could do the work, but I just wasn’t excited by it and never put any effort into it.

In high school, taking a math class in my senior year was optional. To me, this meant one less year of math classes, but to Mr. Riley—my geometry teacher—it meant I should start applying myself and take all four years.

Since neither of us was going to budge, we made a deal: He would sign off on me taking a “below-my-aptitude” math class my junior year as long as I promised to take a math class my senior year. To me, this was a win-win deal. I needed Mr. Riley’s signature to take the math course I wanted and Mr. Riley was able to keep an unmotivated, but good, kid in math.

My run-in with statistics came in college. Now, I was the kid with a new major ever week: biology, journalism, psychology … you name it and I probably at least considered it (although anything related to numbers never really made the list because I was interested in understanding people, not numbers).

Eventually, I ended up at The Pennsylvania State University via the Indiana University of Pennsylvania with big dreams of being a sociologist and demographer. I had no plans post-graduation, however, so when I was offered an internship at the U.S. Census Bureau through the Joint Program in Survey Methodology’s (JPSM) Junior Fellow Program, I jumped on the opportunity. If nothing else, it would allow me some time to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up while meeting new people and exploring a new city.

I learned a lot from that internship, including the ins and outs of the Watergate Safeway, that Ethiopian food is quite tasty, and that crunching numbers and checking data tables wasn’t really what I had in mind for my future employment.

That summer might have been the end of my interaction with statistics, except that summer also introduced me to a world I didn’t know existed: the world of survey methodology. Who knew I could make a living designing, collecting, and analyzing data on such a wide range of topics?

That fall, the U.S. Census Bureau hired me and offered to pay for some JPSM classes. Needless to say, I was quickly hooked and went off to the University of Maryland to get my master’s degree. While at JPSM, I learned everything from survey design to sampling to data analysis. While I’ll never be a sampling statistician, the concepts I remember and cite in meetings still amaze me.

I next went to work on the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The ATUS collects data about the amount of time people spend in various activities, including working, caring for children, watching television, and socializing. While my job was primarily survey design work, I was part of a small staff on a brand new survey so I helped do everything from planning imputation schemes to testing question wording. I really enjoyed my time at BLS; it was a great way to apply all I’d learned in graduate school.

My next move was to the Economic Directorate at the U.S. Census Bureau, where I experienced life on the establishment survey side of the fence. My job was all about reducing measurement error from forms, respondents, and interviewers, where applicable. As a consultant to the other census offices, I provided expert reviews of forms and survey practices in addition to cognitive and usability testing. This work was interesting, necessary, and often provided a good way to learn the data products collected and disseminated by the bureau.

I eventually migrated to my current job as a survey methodologist at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the Statistics and Methods group. While this work is similar to the work I did at the bureau, I found working with energy data fascinating and something I immediately wanted to learn more about.

As I like to tell people, EIA passes the cocktail party test, since most people have follow-up questions when they learn I work for the Department of Energy. I’ve had many conversations with people at parties or professional gatherings about the Smart Grid, shale gas and oil pricing, and, yes, even numbers. This type of conversation led to my recent involvement as co-program chair of the data collections methods section for my local ASA chapter, the Washington Statistical Society. I’ve attended and presented at several Joint Statistical Meetings, but being involved at the local level has been both an interesting and rewarding experience.

Back at home, my dad recently ran into Mr. Riley. They exchanged the usual pleasantries and Mr. Riley asked about me. I was shocked that he remembered me. It’s funny how the kid who made a deal all those years ago to take the “easy” math classes ended up not only working with numbers, but also shaping the way those numbers are collected, analyzed, and interpreted.

Mr. Riley probably wasn’t too surprised, but thinking back on it, I sure am. My first love will always be understanding people, but I have since learned that’s a hard love to follow without numbers.

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