This page provides a collection of materials sorted by topic that will help students learn about statistical consulting. These resources can also be integrated into a course teaching the topic.
Learning Materials
Introduction
The
detailed list of topics delivers an overview and motivation of what one should be studying to learn about statistical consulting.
Consulting/Collaboration
The provided slides, which have been used in previous installments of the course, and papers help better understand the role, challenges, and rewards of being a statistical consultant or collaborator.
ASA is the acronym for the American Statistical Association, which has many helpful resources on their website.
Slides: Statistical Consulting and the Role of the Consultant in Research Projects
ASA: When you consult a statistician ... what to expect
Chatfield (2001): Confessions of a Pragmatic Statistician
Chatfield (2007): The joys of consulting
Scientific Method
What is our role as statistical consultants or collaborators in a scientific project? Understanding the scientific method produces a more holistic understanding of the answer to this question. The slides and flowchart outline the process and the built-in recursions. Studying the additional links adds more depth and appreciation of the topic.
Slides: Science and the Scientific Method
G. Wagner: Flow Chart Explaining Process of Scientific Methods
Additional links and resources
Ethics
Ethics should guide people's behaviour at all times. The slides discuss the ethics guiding researchers in general. The TCPS2/Core tutorial teaches the ethics that should direct scientists who include humans as their subjects. Completion of the tutorial is a requirement for all such scientists in Canada.
The documents from the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and the ASA address ethical guidelines for statisticians, in particular.
Slides: Ethics in Science
TCPS2/Core (Course on Research Ethics)
Statistical Society of Canada: Code of Ethical Statistical Practice
American Statistical Association: Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice
Additional links and resources
Communication with Clients/Collaborators
It is not enough to be a brilliant statistician who knows the role of a collaborator and is aware of the ethical guidelines. Communication is at the heart of being an effective statistical consultant. Starting with the basics, writing respectful and professional emails up to the challenges in communicating methods and results to clients.
The slides provide some initial guidelines for emails and meetings. The document "Preparing for the first meeting with the statistical consultant'' was developed by former students and is distributed to clients with the invitation for the first meeting. Students also use the document to lead the first meeting with their collaborators.
Julia Sharp, Emily Griffith, and Megan Higgs created the videos provided by the ASA. They are beneficial when preparing for meetings with clients. They effectively illustrate what can go wrong or what could go better. Students will benefit from discussing the scenarios shown in this work.
Many more links about writing emails and meeting clients are shared as additional resources.
Slides: Writing Emails
Slides: Meetings
Preparing for the first meeting with the statistical consultant
ASA: Statistical Collaboration Training for Applied Statisticians (videos)
Additional links and resources
Writing Scientific Texts
Writing Scientific Texts is part of the general topic of Communication but deserves its unique headline. It is very challenging to create a complete, informative, well-structured document, which is written at the appropriate level, applies the correct table, figure, and citation styles, and reads well.
For support with this arduous task, many resources are collected here. The materials include a discussion of the structure of a report to clients when sharing statistical methods and results, citation guides, APA style guide for statistical reporting, and concrete help for writing method and result sections.
Finally, some collected reports inform young researchers what is expected as the final outcome.
Slides: Structure of the Final Report
Additional links and resources: Scientific Writing
Additional links and resources: Writing Method and Result Sections
Examples of good reports
Statistics and Statistical Computation
The consulting course, a capstone course, is an excellent opportunity to review some fundamental concepts from statistics. Former students found the papers by Wasserstein and Greenland particularly enlightening. Also, revisiting the art of data description should be a great bonus to students since this topic is often pushed aside in favour of inferential statistics. The many links to different types of graphs and introductions to ggplot2 (R library) students usually appreciate.
Students also often struggle to choose the appropriate statistical method for a given scenario. In the resource link, we share an attempt of categorizing basic scenarios to select the proper tools.
In addition, some links point to fundamental statistical topics that should enrich all students of statistics.
Resources