

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

Oct 7, 2019 • 40min
What statisticians can learn from Leonardo Da Vinci
Interview with Tricia Aanderud
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In this episode, Benjamin and I speak with Tricia Aanderud, a very good data storyteller. Here are the points you can learn from the interview:
How to think about the story within the dataHow to reveal your Aha momentsHow to get into details while keeping the big pictureHow to build tension and have an impact on the visualization

Oct 7, 2019 • 40min
Learning from Leonardo Da Vinci
Interview with Tricia Aanderud
Click here to get to the homepage of the episode!
Storytelling is one of the great leadership skills that play a role in communication. Through stories, you can create alignment and you can influence others. It's one piece of a puzzle to be an effective statistician.
In this episode, Benjamin and I speak with Tricia Aanderud, a very good data storyteller. Here's what you can learn from the interview:
How to think about the story within the dataHow to reveal your Aha momentsHow to get into details while keeping the big pictureHow to build tension and impact the visualization
Listen to this episode and share it with someone who might learn from it!

Sep 30, 2019 • 43min
Statisticians stepping up - leadership success stories - Part 2
Interview with Shahrul and Vanja
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In this episode, I'm speaking with two members of The Effective Statistician Leadership program. One is coming from academia and one is from a pharmaceutical organization - they both have interesting and inspiring success stories.
These are the points we have talked about:
How they took action to improve on their leadership programHow to help others understand your storyHow to refine things from other's reaction What impact the improvements in your leadership skills can have on your lives

Sep 23, 2019 • 39min
Statisticians stepping up - leadership success stories - Part 1
Interview with Ludi and Sam
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These are the points we have talked about:
What they find most helpful about the programWhat skills they have improved onWhat they learned from the leadership assignmentsWhat they think about the mastermind conceptWhat they learned about business acumenHow the program helped them to have more influence at work
Listen now and be inspired to become a leader.

Sep 16, 2019 • 40min
4 reasons why statisticians fail to lead
Webinar recording with Gary Sullivan
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In this episode, Gary and I will be talking about these major reasons why statisticians fail to lead and to overcome them. Specifically, we'll address:
MindsetBias toward technical skillsLack of leadership understandingLack of big picture thinkingHow to address the issuesSpecific actions to take
Listen to this episode and learn about the opportunities to overcome challenges in leadership!

Sep 9, 2019 • 41min
Don't be a victim
Do you actively kill your career without knowing it?
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According to Jon, the key is to differentiate between some venting, that we need from time to time, from systemically and constantly complaining.
Take this Power of Positive Leadership Self-Assessment and complete the questions to know your Positivity Quotient Score. By knowing your score you will be able to establish a baseline for growth. You'll also receive Jon Gordon's 6 Quick Tips to Help Stop Negativity in It's Tracks.
In this episode, Benjamin and I will discuss the following:
Ask for advice on how to work togetherMake proposals of what the manager could do to help with the situation Clarify roles and responsibilitiesBe a role model to othersFocus on what you can doConcentrate on changing yourself

Sep 2, 2019 • 50min
Non-parametric analyses - much more than just the Wilcoxon test!
Interview with Frank Konietschke
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Frank has something in common with Benjamin and myself - we all studied statistics in Göttingen and learned and researched in non-parametric statistics. Afterwards, we went into different paths. Whereas Benjamin started at a CRO and I joined large pharma organizations, Frank continued on the academic track.
He recently became Professor at the famous Charitee in Berlin, where he’s still dedicating a lot of research to the field of non-parametric statistics. However, he’s not an ivory tower researcher but also applies these approaches in the medical research he’s taking part in.
Learn about a whole universe of different approaches, which will help you overcome many limitations of the methods, which you’re using daily.

Aug 26, 2019 • 1h 2min
Taking the pain out of subgroup analyses
Interview with Necdet Gunsoy
This episode is based on a presentation at PSI 2019. Necdet won The Effective Statistician Best Presenter award for the amazing delivery of the presentation. But not only the delivery was excellent - the content will help you a lot. Here's the abstract for the conference:
Abstract: Practical aspects of subgroup detectionRecent years have seen the emergence of new methods for detecting subgroups with enhanced treatment effects and statisticians are now faced with an overwhelming choice of approaches to consider. Confusion around the potential advantages and disadvantages of different methods can often result in the implementation of an approach which is not appropriate for a particular research question. This talk will provide a practical guide to the design and conduct of subgroup detection analyses, providing points to consider for selecting an appropriate method based on the research objective, the context of the analysis, the outcomes, and the covariates under consideration. Two example case studies will be presented to illustrate the discussed considerations.
Necdet and I will also discuss the following
Do you have practical examples based on a given data set that leads to very different approaches?As a PSI awardee of best presentation in this year's conference, How do you approach presentations?What’s your key recommendation for giving a great presentation?

Aug 19, 2019 • 25min
My story of the Effective Statistician
Why I started The Effective Statistician and what you can learn from it
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It all started when I became a new supervisor and had my first direct reports and I thought I really needed to learn about supervisory skills but I have very limited time. I found out that podcasts really help a lot to learn while I commute to work - it's effective.In this podcast, you can learn a lot from the following:
What are my learnings along the way?What are my struggles? What are the strategies I used?How I balanced work and family life?How the production team helped me?What the effective statistician means to me?

Aug 12, 2019 • 1h 2min
What matters most? A scientific advice role play on estimands
Replay from the PSI conference 2018
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Are you a sponsor who is seeking joint scientific advice from a regulatory agency and from an HTA body?
If yes, this episode is for you. This presentation replicates the discussions which may go on during scientific advice. The example was in Respiratory. This roleplay is played by David Wright, Oliver Keene, Stephen Ruberg, and myself. The aim is to show a couple of discussion points and an interesting aspect that may come up with such discussions.
A lively debate followed about the differing needs of Regulatory agencies vs HTA, with the patient voice often not taking centre stage.
We will also be talking about the following:
Estimand for pivotal trials 5062018 and 5062019 (identical trials)Specifically strategy for intercurrent events
Listen to this episode and share it with others, who might learn from it!
Resources
Link to the video on demand side on the PSI homepage!
Link to the slides for the introduction.