The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI

Interview with Shafi Chowdhury - principles for good programming theeffectivestatistician.com Ok – not everything, but in this episode you will get all the tips to make sure, you avoid the most common mistakes and that your code looks professional. Shafi Chowdhury is an expert programmer who has developed a style guide, which his clients apply broadly. He regularly gives trainings on SAS programming and build his own company based on these skills. He walks us through the different points and clarifies, why they are important from an efficiency but also from a quality perspective. About Shafi Chowdhury I have over 20 years of experience as a statistical programmer in the Pharma industry. I worked for Pharma companies and CROs across Europe in many different therapeutic areas and in all phases of clinical trials before setting up my own consultancy firm. I believe knowledge should be shared and therefore I am a regular presenter at PhUSE conferences and regularly attend many other conferences including PSI conferences for Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry. I also provide bespoke training and have a website to allow users to learn just the module they need at that time. I specialise in reviewing processes and developing standards, tools, templates and macros to improve the expertise of individuals and efficiency of processes. As an independent consultant with all the proven experience behind me, I offer unbiased expert opinions which can be used by management to make their decisions. My aim is always to drive up Quality by Design. Specialties: Writing SAS programs to check, modify, analyse and report any kind of data.  Developing client specific template programs and generic macros. Developing bespoke training programs to produce well rounded programmers within weeks.    

Interview with Shafi Chowdhury theeffectivestatistician.com/on-building-your-own-company-interview-with-shafi-chowdhury In this episode, we’ll cover an amazing story by one of the best programmers and mentors I ever worked with - Shafi Chowdhury (www.shaficonsultancy.com). We’ll explore how it changed from being a freelance programmer only to building his company on the side. He had a great vision in mind, that drove him forward.   You’ll also hear about his approach to teaching and mentoring – or in general helping people do their job better. His abundance mindset inspires me a lot. Shafi explains, why and how he made his own job redundant in his own company.   Retention is a major cost driver and disrupts some companies a lot. You’ll learn how he manages to have nearly no turn-over in his company and how is approach to recruiting and training new employees fits in to this.   Further, we’ll cover how and why Shafi and his team is regularly presenting at different conferences. We’ll especially go deeper on this presentation at the PSI conference in 2017 about an amazing tool to analyse and visualize data at the same time. His approach to delivering all this innovation is very unique.   Finally, you’ll learn a lot about the leadership attitude, that helped him grow his business fast into a medium sized CRO with a very stable client base.   You can find out more about his company here.

Thoughts about the mindset of a successful statistician In this episode we share out ideas and experience, which mindset sets up statisticians for success. We cover topics around: Leading people Convincing business partners Delivering value and selling it - and what does selling means Thinking outside the status quo to improve things in the long run  Always learning about the business and the people in the business Learning about statistical innovation Doing things more effectively Becoming more impactfully Raising your business acumen - internally and externally Having quality in mind  Quote of the Episode by Bill Gates “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Interview with Nigel Howitt PSI Chair theeffectivestatistician.com The guest in this episode represents the sponsor of this show - Nigel Howitt - current chair of PSI. After a short introduction of Nigel and his experience with PSI, we will cover the following topics: How can someone, that is interested become a new PSI member? What rules are there for students? If you’re a data scientist in the pharma industry- is PSI the right association? How to get most out of PSI? What are the different ways, you can become more engaged within PSI? How can you get involved with one of the PSI committees?  What’s the role of the SIGs and how do you get involved there? What Nigel is recommending new members of PSI as first steps? What are your highlights of the PSI conference in Amsterdam? Finally, we'll also discuss how to get most out of the conference.

Interview with Zachary Skrivanek about visual analytics theeffectivestatistician.com In this podcast episode, we tackle a difficult topic for a podcast, but Zak provides lots of expertise in this field and will introduce you to what visual analytics is and how it will help you. Furthermore, we touch on questions like: What is the difference that visual analytics plays in 'exploring/learning' and 'messaging'? Why is visual analytics important? Why should I care? How does the job of a statistician in visual analytics look like? Is visual analytics purely descriptive and exploratory in nature? What does the future of visual analytics in the pharma industry will bring? How can you implement these approaches in your day to day work? What tools are there for beginners, people with decent programming or advanced programming skills? What are the other places to learn more about Visual Analytics? (IEEE VIS: InfoViz, SciViz, and VAST; Flowing Data; Perceptual Edge) What you can expect from Zaks presentation at this years PSI conference in the wednesday morning session “A picture says more than 1000 tables- interactive data review using visual analytics” About Zachary Skrivanek Dr. Skrivanek graduated with a Ph.D. in biostatistics from Ohio State University and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. Dr. Skrivanek’s research interests started in genetic linkage analysis. He has published several papers and presented at Joint Statistical Meetings in this area. He developed a software package, Sequential Imputation for Multi Point Linkage Estimation (SIMPLE), to implement the methods that he developed. He joined Eli Lilly in 2002 where he contributed to the development of Endocrine drugs and related biomarkers in early clinical phase drug development and later transitioned to a product team in late phase clinical development as the lead statistician and developed a novel Bayesian adaptive, seamless phase 2/3 study which selected the doses algorithmically for the entire Phase 3 program for the compound. Dr. Skrivanek heavily leveraged Visual Analytics in his compound work and is currently leading an effort to make Visual Analytics an integral part of drug development at Eli Lilly. Dr. Skrivanek is also an adjunct professor at IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis) and chair of a lecture series, “Pharmaceutical Statistics”, which is taught as part of the doctoral program in biostatistics at IUPUI.

Interview with Claire Brittain https://theeffectivestatistician.com/ If we think of world experts, we often think of people, that are candidates for the Nobel prize. We tend to have the believe, that we will never be able to achieve such a status. Actually most of us probably don’t even think about getting to this level. This is why we are so happy to have Claire Brittain as our guest on the show. In an ordinary role of a statistician working in early phase, she has done outstanding work. Listen to her story of how she came to be called a world expert on Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disease. This amazing story has lots of learnings for each of us. Finally, Claire will present a poster about her work at the PSI conference in Amsterdam. Actually, it’s not just a poster, but listen to the episode and you’ll learn what’s so special there.

Interview with the two candidates for the PSI chair Lucy Rowell and Naomi Givens about the future of PSI a theeffectivestatistician.com In todays episode, we take a look into the future - the future of PSI and how it will impact you. Both candidates, that run for becoming chair of PSI - Lucy Rowell and Naomi Givens - speak about their vision in our interview today. Of course, this episode will help you to decide who to vote for, but it will also help you to understand how to benefit from PSI by becoming an active member. Both candidates share their stories of how they got more and more involved within PSI and how they were able to impact the world of statistics through PSI. In more detail, we’ll cover the following topics in the episode: Experience of the candidates with PSI Achievement at PSI and their current role on the board of directors for PSI Why do they want to become chair of PSI Changes to PSI, that the candidates would like to initiate The candidates visions for the future for PSI and how to get there

Actionable advice theeffectivestatistician.com Do you have a lot of email ping-pong, where emails go back and forth many times – too many times? Are you aware about the brand of you, that you communicate with your email style? Is email your default communication tool? Then this episode is for you. We have researched various articles on good email writing copies and distilled the best for you in this episode. By listening to this episode, you will learn about: When is email the best way to communicate? Approaches to attachments. How to take care of your style? How to structure your emails? About different email cultures Simple actionable tricks to improve your effectivity directly

summary of expert advice theeffectivestatistician.com Everybody uses email multiple times during the day and email represents a key communication channel. Managing the flood of emails effectively, will reduce your stress. In this episode, we discuss various approaches, that we learned over the years from different productivity experts. We discuss how we implement them in our daily routines. By listening to this episode, you’ll learn about these topics: What are helpful mindsets about emails Five step approach to managing emails Good habits to establish like Reply in a timely manner Send and respond less to receive less. Tips on how to set up filters Smartphone vs desktop email checking When and when not to work on emails And the option of last resort

Interview with Cytel statisticians Yannis Jemiai and Rajat Mukherjee theeffectivestatistician.com Data science, big data, business analytics … these are all buzz words in the industry at the moment and the hopes are high on what these areas will provide to our industry. Cytel organized a long session about data science for the PSI conference 2018 in Amsterdam (learn more and register here). In this episode, we’ll speak about: Why is data science such a hot topic at the moment? How can we separate the different buzz words? Is this only something for google, amazon and such companies? What distinguishes a statistician from a data scientist? What are the biggest areas of impact for data science? What case studies are there, where data science had a profound impact? Which problems you might face? Which role do visualization approaches play in data science? What’s the difference between “machine learning” and “deep learning”? What would a statistician need to know, in order to compete in this field? Where are good resources for this (see also the Cytel blog here)? Finally, we will dive into the sessions, which Cytel chairs as the main sponsor of the PSI conference. You’ll learn if this session is a good fit for you. About Yannis Jemiai Yannis Jemiai has a pivotal role within Cytel, leading the company’s consulting and software business units, as well as the global marketing group. With Cytel Consulting he heads up an elite team of biostatisticians, skilled in applying the latest trial techniques and methods, to help our customers accelerate clinical development and mitigate portfolio risks. Yannis also oversees the development of Cytel’s software product lines, including trial design packages East® and Compass®, and exact statistics applications StatXact® and LogXact®.  Yannis guides global marketing efforts to raise the awareness of and uncover new opportunities for the company's growing range of clinical research services and specialized software. His own research has been published in numerous statistical journals. Dr. Jemiai earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.P.H. from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Molecular and Cellular Biology also from Harvard About Rajat Mukherjee Rajat Mukherjee has 15 years of professional experience as an industry and academic statistician, and brings a range of expert knowledge to Cytel’s customers. This includes work in pattern recognition problems for devices and biomarker discovery, Bayesian clinical trials, adaptive designs, and design and analysis of complex epidemiological studies. His experience and expertise also includes statistical computing, survival analysis, longitudinal analysis, nonparametric and semiparametric inference, as well as statistical classification and high-dimensional data. Rajat has a strong background and interest in the development and implementation of statistical methodology with application to real life medical problems.