

The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI
Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske, biometricians, statisticians and leaders in the pharma industry
The podcast from statisticians for statisticians to have a bigger impact at work. This podcast is set up in association with PSI - Promoting Statistical Insight. This podcast helps you to grow your leadership skills, learn about ongoing discussions in the scientific community, build you knowledge about the health sector and be more efficient at work. This podcast helps statisticians at all levels with and without management experience. It is targeted towards the health, but lots of topics will be important for the wider data scientists community.
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 4, 2021 • 24min
Non-clinical pharmaceutical statistics
Interview with Sam Gardner
What is non-clinical pharmaceutical statistics?Join us while I talk about this topic with Sam and dive deeper into these points:
Non-clinical statistics is the application of statistics in pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing and that is not directly related to planning and analyzing clinical trials.There are numerous statistical issues to deal with in these areas, and often regulatory expectations require the use of statistical methods.In this episode we discussed example areas for Non-Clinical Statistics in the Manufacturing and Quality area (also known as Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CM&C))Analytical Methods for assessing qualityUnderstanding the science and technology is important (understanding how the data is actually generated or "how data happens").Determining appropriate specifications for a drug product and ensuring that the natural variation in the measurements will not lead to failing specifications. Qualifying and determining the defined content of chemical reference standards (using appropriate experimental designs)Ongoing Manufacturing ProcessesUsing control charts for on-going monitoring of manufacturing processesUnderstanding sources of variability that impact the output of the manufacturing processWhen something goes wrong: for example there is a bad batch that fails to meet its quality specification, and when this happen, an investigation has to be conducted, and statistical thinking, data gathering and combining, data visualization, data mining and experimental design can be used as part of the investigationBuilding tools to automatically build data sets from manufacturing data and visualize that dataDesigning new manufacturing processesApplying the principles of good process design. Highly recommend book for any statistician: Juran on Quality by Design: The New Steps for Planning Quality into Goods and ServicesMore on this will be covered in a later episode.

Apr 26, 2021 • 44min
Learnings from 1 year of the Wonderful Wednesdays
Interview with Steve Mallett and Bodo Kirsch
The Wonderful Wednesday Webinar series was introduced in an earlier episode. In this episode we dive deep into what has happened over 1 year of the Wonderful Wednesday Webinars. This great series on visual analytics helped us to learn how we can use visualizations of data in our development process and beyond. Bodo as the new chair and Steve as an early member are talking with me about this initiative of the EFSPI/PSI Visualisation special interest group.
Join us while we discuss the following points:
What have you learned about data visualization in the last year from the WWW?What was your favorite visualization and why?What makes this webinar series special for you?What would you recommend to someone wanting to take part?
References
VIS SIG blogVIS SIG homepageRegister for Wonderful WednesdaysGrammar of Graphics“A Layered Grammar of Graphics” Hadley Wickham. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Volume 19, Number 1, Pages 3–28 linkWonderful Wednesday blog including an upset graphHans Roslings joy of stats

Apr 20, 2021 • 55min
Welcome to Sam Gardner and insights into non-clinical statistics
Interview with Sam Gardner
Let's welcome Sam Gardner as our new co-host for our podcast show! In his first episode as a co-host, we spend some time getting to know more about him while he answers the questions below:
How did he learn about this podcast and get connected to it?Why is he on the podcast & what are his plans for future collaboration?What is your educational background?Where has he worked, what kind of work has he done in the past?What is he currently doing now?Outside work, what does he like to do?
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Apr 13, 2021 • 40min
How AI helps us with patient insights
Interview with Dooti Roy
Join Dooti and I while we discuss the surprising opportunities of smartphone apps in clinical studies and discuss the following questions
How do you see the role of smartphone apps in clinical studies developing?What additional features become possible with such applications?Where does this impact studies?How will this change the way we analyse studies?
Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

Apr 5, 2021 • 30min
How to get the most out of a virtual conference
Join us while we talk about the following points:
Different styles of virtual conferencesJust recorded sessions Interactive sessions Community eventsGet familiar with the software and the app if applicable Use the chat functionality intentionallyKnow the conference detailsWho’s attending Who’s there to talk to Any profile to set up?Make sure it’s great Taking electronic notes forPost beyond the conference on social media Share learnings with your colleagues Praise your favourite speakers on social media and share your key take away and include an open question to trigger further discussions
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Mar 29, 2021 • 38min
Graduate Training Program
Interview with Diana, Nick, and Rhys
Listen to this episode while we dive deep into these advantages of joining this program:
Transition from graduate to effective member of a clinical biostatistics teamDepth technical trainingTraining schedulingFully fledged Statistician or Programmer and permanent employeeAccess to a broad range of additional training that is part of the Veramed Excellence Programme
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Mar 22, 2021 • 32min
A virtual summer academy for statisticians
Interview with Dooti and Qiqi
Join us and learn more while we talk about the following points:
Why have you started the BI Conn statistics academy?Who is the target audience for this academy?How has the academy evolved over time?What are your plans for 2021?
Reference:
Summer Academy website: https://events.stat.uconn.edu/BI-UConn/
Short video on academy: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dootiroy_uconnsummeracademy2020-activity-6704186061901357056-PTL3

Mar 16, 2021 • 30min
6 steps to prepare before you want to convince your business partner
Listen to this episode while I discuss the following important points:
Believe in yourselfYour experienceYour educationYour intent to move the project/the company forwardDo you need to state these to build trust?What is the problem?Tell a storyEvoke emotionsReference to the webinar about presentation skillsWhat’s in it for your business partner?Timelines?Budget?Recognition?Can you quantify it?Give a rangeA guestimate is better than nothingThink about possible objectionsAddress them upfrontAgain understand your audienceShow that you careProvide a call to actionWhat do you want them to do?What do they need to decide?
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Mar 9, 2021 • 56min
The power of simulations for designing clinical studies and beyond
Interview with Aiden Flynn from Exploristics
He has invested an enormous amount of time to leverage simulations for understanding the designs of studies and development programs. In this episode, I discuss the following questions with him:
Why is trial simulation necessary?What design features do you assess?How do you get a good stability in terms of the simulation precision?Where are the limitations to these simulations?What are his experiences in communicating the outcomes of the simulation?How he thinks simulating studies or development programs will look like in 5 years?
Reference:
https://exploristics.com/kerus-cloud/keruscloud2/
Listen and share this episode with your friends and colleagues!

Mar 8, 2021 • 14min
Bonus Episode: Leadership Program
Learn about our Leadership Program
We designed this program for statisticians and data scientist to strengthen your leadership skills so you can maximize your impact at work even if you don’t have direct reports.
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program, a modular program of self-learning parts and moderated small group discussions, helps all statisticians and data scientists. It especially takes into account the needs of pharmaceutical statisticians, but the concepts will apply to any data scientist.
It aims at all levels of statisticians and helps both junior statisticians without management responsibilities and experienced statisticians leading teams. We believe all data scientists and statisticians can be leaders.
Check out and learn more about the leadership program here: https://theeffectivestatistician.com/the-effective-statistician-leadership-program/