Home » Featured

What Is Simply Statistics?

1 August 2014 1,553 views No Comment
The Amstat News staff enjoys reading the blog “Simply Statistics,” created and written by three biostatistics professors—Jeff Leek, Roger Peng, and Rafa Irizarry—so we interviewed them to find out more about it.

simplystats

Why did you start Simply Statistics? Has your mission evolved over the years?

At first, it was just the three of us sending links back and forth and talking in the halls. We realized that data analysis was becoming increasingly important in science, industry, and government and that it was a great time to be an applied statistician. Through our own experiences, being immersed in scientific projects, and using our statistical skills to be an integral part of solving real-world problems, we became particularly excited about the potential of our discipline. The motivation of the blog was therefore two-fold. First, we wanted to share with lay people that applied statistics has much to offer during this new era of data-driven initiatives. Second, we wanted to share our positive experiences developing specific solutions to specific problems and try to demonstrate to academic statisticians that our contributions can go beyond context-free methodology. That is how we came to the name Simply Statistics.

Over time, we realized there were other statisticians feeling the same excitement, which gave us the motivation to spend time writing. We also wanted to encourage statisticians to be more ambitious in terms of leading data-driven initiatives. With so many fields becoming data driven, statisticians had an opportunity to lead in these fields as opposed to just performing power calculations and approving p-values or serving as skeptical police. We also felt that, in many academic stats departments, software and applications were under-represented. As our readership grew, particularly among young statisticians and data scientists, we wanted to make them aware that applied work can have real statistical and scientific impact and that that work deserves equal importance in the statistical community.

What progress have you made on your original goal(s)?

Originally, our goal was to just get people excited. Then, as more people started to read and comment, our ambitions grew and we wanted to have an impact on the way people think about statistics. It is hard to tell for sure, but we think we are going in a positive direction. We have noticed that some of our posts have made it to Wikipedia (including in the definition of data science) and have been picked up by aggregators. We also get a lot of positive feedback when we travel, in particular from younger statisticians. Finally, we have built a large readership of thousands of daily readers, with a large audience of students and postdocs. Our recent Unconference on the Future of Statistics drew more than 10,000+ viewers from around the world.

Any objectives for the next year toward your overall goal?

For the moment, we just want to keep the ball rolling with good content. We are also considering a few creative ideas like the Unconference, so stay tuned.

What have been some of your more popular blog entries?

Our most popular blog entries are always the ones we least expect to be popular. Some recent popular entries are:

What successes are you most proud of?

Well, we are just happy the thing is still around :-). When we first set out to start the blog, one of our primary goals was to get our point of view out into the world and give like-minded people a familiar place to go to on the Web. Almost three years later, we feel like we’ve tapped into a tremendous community of people who read the blog and discuss our ideas. It’s helping bring this community together that we’re most proud of. We’re also really proud of our interview series and the way it highlights the contributions of up-and-coming statisticians.

To what do you attribute the popularity of Simply Statistics?

Having done no market research whatsoever, keep in mind this answer is pure speculation. That said, I think the popularity stems, in part, from the fact that we’re trying to show that statistics is important for real-world problems and not just theoretical food for thought. There is a huge community growing up around R, Bioconductor, and other applied analysis and we think we fit in well with that community.

What recommendations do you have for students considering a career in statistics?

Work on real problems that involve analyzing data. Don’t be afraid to collaborate on problems that won’t necessarily lead to a context-free general methodology. Without being exposed to real-world problems, it will be difficult to develop useful statistical methods. If you do develop methodology, make sure to provide software that disseminates your ideas. Make use of social media to advertise your work. Don’t rely exclusively on academic journals. You also want to develop strong computational skills so that you are not restricted to working on problems that do not require this expertise. Data are becoming increasingly complex.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...

Comments are closed.