

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

Mar 5, 2021 • 4min
Join The Effective Statistician in Clubhouse App
Download app here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clubhouse-drop-in-audio-chat/id1503133294

Mar 2, 2021 • 59min
The Chimp Paradox
Interview with Stuart McGuire
Join us in this episode while we discuss these interesting points:
Author Prof Steve PetersPsychiatrist working on performance and function of brainsHelps business but also sports like FC Liverpool
Chimp vs humanHow this compares to Kahneman: thinking fast and slow
And then there is the computer and the goblins within it, how to learn about finding these goblins (false beliefs).
Manage you inner chimp and how the question “Do you want to behave/feel this way?” helps you.
Keep focusing on solutions "What’s in your boat?"
Celebrate your winssee also Michael Hyatt - don’t focus on the gap.
Reference:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Prof-Steve-Peters/dp/009193558X
Listen to this episode now and share it with your friends and colleagues!

Feb 23, 2021 • 54min
Data monitoring committees for clinical trials and the role of the statistician
Interview with David Kerr
Join us while we discuss these questions with David and learn more about the following points:
How did David get to this position as a biostatistician at a CRO?How is it made sure that information from the DMC stays within the DMC?What is David's most challenging and most exciting experience he had while working in a DMC setting?When working on open-label trials, it is sometimes requested to “artificially” blind the date but have a DMC review the unblinded data. Has he come across these settings as well, and what’s the challenge he sees here?
References:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcdavid/
https://www.cytel.com/blog/0-key-qualifications-for-independent-statisticians-reporting-to-the-dmc
Listen to this episode and share it with your friends and colleagues!

Feb 16, 2021 • 26min
Bias-variance-trade off - an important principle you should know and 3 examples for it
This trade-off is universal: It has been shown that a model that is asymptotically unbiased must have unbounded variance”
In this episode, we dive into 3 examples for it:
Subgroup analysesCluster analysis Regression analysis
Reference:Wikipedia - Variance trade off

Feb 8, 2021 • 45min
Reflections on Statistics Career Opportunities in Drug Development and Healthcare
Interview with Jenny Devenport
Join us while Jenny and I talk about these important reflections and answer the important following points:
1. Get comfortable with ambiguity.
2. Manage your energy.
3. Being right is not enough.
4. It’s about impact.
5. Academia or industry?
Here's the link to the LinkedIn article, which we refer to in the episodehttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reflections-statistics-career-opportunities-drug-jenny-devenport/

Feb 2, 2021 • 31min
Career dedication and motivation – the unsung heroes of COVID
Interview with Nancy Carpenter
However, we know that there are thousands of ‘unsung heroes’ around the world, working in different capacities on different clinical trials to make the breakthrough. It has been a herculean collective effort. Of course, while this is a particularly high stakes situation, seeing an impact on patients’ lives motivates us no matter the therapeutic area. In this podcast, I interview Nancy Carpenter, a Principal Statistician at Veramed who has worked extensively on COVID-19 trials over the last several months. Our wide-ranging discussion covers:
Her experience of working on COVID-19 trialsHow patient stories inspire herHow we balance risks and manage the impact of COVID-19 on other clinical trialsHow a role in pharma provides meaning and fulfilmentHow the pandemic has increased public interest in the pharmaceutical industry
Listen to this episode now and share this to your friends and colleagues!

Jan 25, 2021 • 28min
5 steps to present successfully to upper management about complex stats (and everything else)!
Listen to this episode and learn about the 5 steps to present successfully to your upper management:
Determine your goalThink about your audienceStart with the conclusionBe simple but accurateHave the stats as backup and explain them in easy terms, focusing on the most important parts.
Train yourself to become a great communicator.
Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

Jan 18, 2021 • 47min
Do you want to think and act more strategically?
Interview with Swarna
Thus, I'm thrilled to talk with Swarna Khare about this topic. Swarna is a long-term listener of the effective statistician and today, it is a great opportunity for her to share with us the ways to think and act more strategic.
We answer the following important points:
The role of the branding of statistics and how it led Swarna to change from statistics into RWE?What does “working strategically” means for her?What did she do to prepare for this change?What she learned after the switch to RWE?What she recommends to statisticians to become more involved in strategic discussions?
Listen to this interesting episode and share this with your friends!

Jan 11, 2021 • 46min
How to best visualize uncertainty
Interview with Paolo Eusebi
Interestingly, the visualization of uncertainty - one of the primary forms we use to communicate it - is a rather unknown field. In this episode, I'm very excited to speak with Paolo Eusebi, who has done research in this field to answer the following questions:
What can we learn from examples outside of medical research? How is it explained to the general public?What’s the current status in medical research?How can we become better in communication of uncertainty?What are further excellent resources regarding the display uncertainty?
Listen to this episode and learn more:
Find the slides from Paolo here:
https://www.psiweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/uncertainty_psi_200827_pe.pptx?sfvrsn=1838dadb_0
View also the webinar about visualization here (only for PSI members):
https://www.psiweb.org/vod/item/psi-webinar-using-visualisation-to-help-make-decisions
Resources:
Cairo, Alberto. The truthful art: Data, charts, and maps for communication. New Riders, 2016.The MU Collective directed by Jessica Hullman and Matt KayWilke, Claus O. Fundamentals of data visualization. O'Reilly Media, 2019. PSI Visualisation Special Interest Group (VIS SIG) Van der Bles et al. "Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science" Royal Society open science 6.5 (2019): 181870.Bonneau et al. "Overview and state-of-the-art of uncertainty visualization." Scientific Visualization. Springer, London, 2014. 3-27.Spaghetti Plots and Hurricanes' Paths

Jan 5, 2021 • 50min
What you should know about change management
Interview with Beth Manning
So today, I'm glad I have a great colleague with me who is an expert on change management and has helped me a lot to drive changes within a big organization.
Listen to this episode and learn the following points:
Key steps one should consider when driving changeCommon problems people step intoSkills to learn to become a change agent