

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

Aug 5, 2019 • 33min
How to become a leader in a cross-functional team
People who ask take the lead
Click here to get to the homepage of the episode!
People who ask take the lead
You can lead as well. According to Forbes, best leaders lead with questions, not answers. Leading with questions works because really good questions have a direct impact on the brain. When we are challenged by a question that triggers an insight, neurons connect in new ways. This releases neurotransmitters that create the motivation to act. The net result is that the other person not only likes the idea, but they also want to do something with it.
In today's episode, Benjamin and I will be talking about:
How success looks likeHow to create a win-win situationHow to get the team involved in creating the goal or at least tune into building relationships with peopleHow to move backwards once you have the goal, and put action steps into place to drive the project forwardHow to drive things by one-on-one
Listen to this interview and share it with others, who might learn from it!

Jul 29, 2019 • 31min
Help to make your organisation and yourself outsourcing proof
If you think of yourself as your own organisation – can you make yourself outsourcing proof?
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A lot of statisticians, especially in pharmaceutical companies but also CROs, fear outsourcing because it might make their job redundant. Think about:
In this episode, Benjamin and I will be talking about these tips and tricks:
Benjamin and I will be talking about these tips and tricks:
What are the things, that are done better, faster and cheaper by others? Does your supervisor know about your value? Do you help him or her to understand this? – Listen to our episode on selling your achievements Would your business partners care, if you would be replaced by a statistician at a different company or maybe even by a statistician within your organisation? Would they even notice? Might they even be better off?

Jul 22, 2019 • 46min
How to communicate effectively by telling data stories
Interview with Kat Greenbrook
Storytelling allows businesses to better understand insight.
Data visualization is a great tool to help share, or tell a story, but relies on the story being written first. Improved data communication comes from combining good visualization with a well-written narrative.
At storytelling with data, the goal is to rid the world of ineffective graphs and help people elegantly communicate with data. They aim to bring data to life and use it to tell a story to an audience, with a focus on simplicity and ease of interpretation. They believe everyone can inspire positive change through the stories they tell with data.
There's a lot to learn to be a good data storyteller.
Today, I’m talking with Kat about:
What do you understand by storytelling with data?Why is it important?Which role should statisticians play?What skills do statisticians need for this?Where to learn these skills?

Jul 15, 2019 • 1h 8min
How to make the collaboration between sponsor and CRO successful
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There is an endless list of things that can go wrong.I'm pretty sure you have been in painful discussions about this.Have you felt a lot of frustrations on both ends?
Benjamin works for the CRO and I work for the sponsor side. In this episode, we will be giving you a lot of insights on what to do and what not to do, and how to make collaboration between the sponsor and CRO successful.
Specifically, Benjamin and I will be talking about:
Have partnership on an equal levelCreate common expectations on qualityEstablish stable personal relationshipsHave low turn over ratesTransparency of processes is importantHave a fair paymentInvest in creating trustGood feedback habits Work towards CRO processes and SOPs Choose your vendor wisely - a good choice is half the success

Jul 9, 2019 • 32min
Best of PSI 2019
“Data Driven Decision Making in Medical Research”
Click here to get to the homepage of the episode!
In this series of interviews with the speakers at the conference, we talked about different topics:
Visualization softwareBenefit risks approachGlobal statistical test for multiple endpoint analysisEstimandsAE analysis using a volcano plot
I also talked to Rachel Phillips at the PSI conference. She is an NIHR doctoral research fellow at Imperial College London. Please help her with her study. It will help all of us in the end and you can win something!
This is a survey of clinical trial statisticians with experience of planning and performing final data analyses for pharmacological RCTs to explore their awareness of available statistical methods to flag adverse events as potential adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and identify any potential barriers to their use, as well as gain feedback on ideas for new statistical methods.
They would like participants to provide their personal views. This study is being organised and sponsored by Imperial College London.
This study is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete and all participants will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher.
The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete and all participants will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher.
If you are happy to participate in the survey, please follow the link below: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R5M2R83
Listen to this episode, to get more insights into what’s possible and to learn more about the conference!

Jul 1, 2019 • 39min
Mistakes – How to minimize them – How to manage them
Discussion between Benjamin and Alexander
Do you agree that everybody makes mistakes?Have you had to deal with a mistake yourself, that you were really concerned about?Were you afraid about speaking with your supervisor or your team with it?
We are all imperfect humans making mistakes. The questions are:
how do we deal with them, what we can do about them, and what to do to minimize them.
Processes are made to minimize mistakes and there different processes were set up to deal with mistakes and help you when mistakes occur.

Jun 24, 2019 • 48min
Presenting with impact: 7 mistakes to avoid
Interview with Julia Carter
Click here to get to the homepage of the episode!
Have you been sitting in boring presentations that made you start reading your emails? Have you been listening to someone, wondering if this is for me?Have you been getting away from a presentation and thinking 2 hours later: “what was this about?”
You’re surely don’t want your audience to feel this way, when you’re
presenting yourself. You can’t be an effective statisticians without good presentation
skills from my perspective. You will always need to present results, defend designs,
or explain data.
Todays episode will give you insights into 7 mistakes of presentations.
And honestly, I see at least one of them in nearly every presentation and I
struggle with them as well – just listen to this episode and you’ll have a live
example 😊.

Jun 19, 2019 • 6min
Join the abstract writing challenge!
Let's write an abstract together
Join the abstract writing challenge here!
The last PSI conference has just ended, but the timeline for a new abstract submission for the next one in Barcelone in 2020 will come up in about November 2019. Thus, it’s important to now start thinking about it.
Presenting at the PSI conference is an awesome experience. For me, PSI is by far the best conference for statisticians in the health sector as it is 100% applicable and actionable. If you’re abstract gets accepted for oral presentation or as a poster, you have a great argument for convincing your supervisor to approve the travel to Barcelona.
If you think, this is to much of a stretch, because you’re not located in Europe, just think about a different conference.
Join the challenge to submit an abstract and work together with others to overcome and roadblocks!

Jun 17, 2019 • 46min
Are you up for a job change? Insights from a recruiter
Interview with Jack Corbett
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I recently changed my job and moving from one company to another comes with lots of uncertainty.
Will I pick the right one?
How can I make sure, that I actually get the job, that I want?
Will hiring companies find me and offer me jobs?
For any statistician a job change represent a major shift and occurs rather infrequent – hopefully. For a recruiter – this is day-to-day business.
Look out for lots of great learnings and insights!

Jun 10, 2019 • 38min
How to work effectively as and with a placement student
A success story with Katie and Claire
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Have you ever considered to work with a placement student?
Do you consider to spend some time as a placement student yourself?
In this interview with Katie Thorn and Claire Brittain, we’re exploring factors, which help to make it a win for both sides. Both have worked very well together and share their stories.