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The necessity of teamwork

The task is simple: take a pile of car tyres, pieces of wood, and bits of string, build a 50cm platform on which you can stand, and do it quicker than everyone else. The trick is that none of the piles...

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The power heuristic: When is a billion not a billion?

‘One’, ‘two’, ‘many’, or ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘two-and-one’, ‘two-and-two’, ‘two-and-two-and-one’. Learning to count is a doddle in cultures that use a base-2 counting system where knowing that there are...

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Data Scientist, Data Miner, Statistician or all of the above?

It was not so long ago that Steve Lohr quoted economist Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google at the time, as saying  “ that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.” Lohr spoke of a...

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Revealed: The secret life of the perfect statistical analyst for you

• You won’t believe how young she was when she learned long division • More letters after her name than you’ve had hot dinners • Check out the MOOCs on him! • SAS, SPSS, and Stata: everything you need...

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Studies show we should cancel Christmas

Dreaming of a white Christmas, are you? Buying presents for loved ones, eh? Office Christmas party? Wrote a letter to Santa that ended with the words “and a surprise”? Anticipation building with every...

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Measure for Measure: Five steps to validity bliss

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure (Shakespeare, 1623). There are those who would have you believe that Shakespeare was writing...

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New year, new job

Our new year’s resolution is to help you get a job and, unlike normal resolutions, it’s not one we’ll be giving up on after a week of failed attempts to get up at 6.00am to go to the gym. For us, it...

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That’s just so meta: Data about data

“Sir, I think you should see this.” Imagine an 18th Century sorting office, musty and dusty with leather-bound ledgers in which were meticulously scratched with quill and ink the dates, senders, and...

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How to Clean Up Your Online Presence and Make a Great First Impression

Odds are someone is searching the web for you right now, or at least has looked you up fairly recently. Do you know what they learned? Better yet, do you control the pages and profiles they visited? If...

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Conference utility-maximisation

This next slide shows the two research questions I sought to answer in my PhD. Students scored on average 4.26, which is between 4 and 5. What’s really interesting about this chart is that… I have...

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Looking for a data science position at Facebook?

Looking for a data science position at Facebook?  After two successful prior Kaggle competitions, Facebook continues their mission to identify the best data scientists and software engineers that...

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Contributors

StatsJobs is seeking contributors to share their  experiences with our audience. Generally the types of article that we use are news, reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, industry updates, infographics...

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Profiles: Milensu Shanyinde, Medical Statistician, Oxford Clinical Trials Unit

Milensu Shanyinde Medical Statistician, Oxford Clinical Trials Unit Studying for a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Statistics at Plymouth University was the right decision I made for a career in...

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Outsourcing Twist Creates European Opportunities in Biometrics

Outsourcing remains a buzzword in the programming sector, but the nature of this drive for efficiency is undergoing an evolution. The reasons for outsourcing jobs in biometrics, as delegates to the...

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A-huntin’ for jobs on the wide open plains of the interweb

You push back the rough wool blanket and reach for your gun as the sun creeps over the ridge. Sleep came late on the stony ground and left early when the horses stirred. Standing, stretching,...

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Women in Statistics: Start counting

Are there any women here? asked the High Priest at the stoning in The Life of Brian. Of course, there weren’t any, only bearded men with deep voices. Are there any women where you work? Do they have to...

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Review of Andy Field’s Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics...

It used to be called “Discovering statistics using SPSS and sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” but the fourth edition has relegated the sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to the inside cover, where you’ll...

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Efficiency

Lionel Messi is one of the best footballer players ever. He’s an outlier in the number of goals he has scored (a record 91 in 2012), the rate at which he scores (1.35 goals per game for Barcelona in...

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Why there’s nothing like a good theory: Blonde penalty-takers and controlling...

Stephen Hawking applied his considerable intellect and mastery of theoretical physics to devise a logistic regression model that reveals: bald penalty-takers and blonde penalty-takers are more likely...

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How opinion polls create the future

Imagine Hugh Grant and Seán Connery are in the same class at school. They have a maths exam in six weeks and whoever gets the higher mark wins a gold star. At the end of the first week, they have a wee...

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In the madding crowd at a careers fair

Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak would feel right at home visiting a careers fair. They spend their time tending their sheep then bring them to market and seek a buyer. They’ll be hoping to get a...

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The magical realism of mixed methods

The Big-Endians would have everyone break their boiled egg at the larger end. The Little-Endians would have everyone break their boiled egg at the smaller end. Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled...

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The Perils of Economic Forecasting

Imagine the most delicious meal you could ever eat. For starters, it’s Kalamata olive tapenade on garlic ciabatta or mussels roasted in lemon juice and coriander. Then it’s rack of lamb on a bed of...

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When independence and ideology try to pass in the corridor

What happens when my independent analysis indicates that your independence creates a sub-optimal state of affairs? Depending on how your research is commissioned, results and recommendations could be...

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Computer says you like Roquefort quiche

There was a fun-for-all-the-family mid-1990s sit-com called 2point4 children. It was supposed to be about the average family, which had at the time 2.4 children, but the joke is that there’s no such...

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The Leadership Debate

”It’s not my job to tell people what to do,” said the deputy leader of a political party, illustrating a distinct approach to leadership. In interviews for senior positions, and even entry-level...

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The backlash against big data

Once a year, every Googler makes a pilgrimage to MountainView to pay homage to the algorithm. The algorithm has brought joy and happiness to many who have found love or laughed at videos of people...

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I am not a role model

“I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model… Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids,” said Charles Barkley in 1993 when advertising a brand of sportswear....

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Error, Part 1: Type I and reliability

Statistics is far, far simpler than normal life. In most spheres of daily existence, there are hundreds of things that could go wrong whereas in statistics there are just two, very simply named Type I...

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Error, Part 2: Type II and sampling

“How many would you need for a nationally representative sample? Would five be enough?” “Five thousand?” “No, five participants.” There are trials in the life of a statistician, and being asked silly...

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“So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?” Scepticism and scientific literacy

“So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?” said Jim Carrey’s Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, delighted at the prospect of one in a million. Lloyd is demonstrating a high degree of statistical and...

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That’s a surprisingly big number! Descriptive statistics

You’re on the bus. It’s early in the morning and difficult to remember what number comes after one. (Twelfty, isn’t it?). There seem to be some other people on the bus, people with coats, and hair, and...

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Unsuccessful at interview: The six stages of rejection and recovery

“Tell me, baby: Where did I go wrong?” (Prince, 1990) “Dry your eyes, mate” (Skinner, 2004) “I will survive” (Perren & Fekaris, 1978) Looking for and not getting a job is an emotional experience...

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Frequentism vs. Bayesianism: Pick a side

Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP). The editorial making the announcement is full of evocative language about having...

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Walking the line: Stats and policy development

In 2011, with Ireland’s economy in the depths of recession and a general election imminent, several prominent journalists and commentators seemed to be about to launch bids for election to the national...

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Electoral collage: If I want to get elected, which party should I join?

Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur....

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The Stats of Wall Street: Banking on probabilities

Mark Kermode’s (2014) review of The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese, 2013) opens somewhat confusingly with a quote from a review of the 1929 film of the same name that bemoans the “madness, women and...

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Announcing the First Annual Corrigan Brothers Statistics Music Video Medal

The Corrigan Brothers are leading exponents of how to capture the zeitgeist. They wrote about Barack Obama’s Irish roots and helped him win the 2008 American presidential election, about the 2011 Irish...

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Liars, damned liars, and people who respond to opinion polls

“If this exit poll is right, I will publicly eat my hat on your programme,” said Paddy Ashdown on the BBC’s election night coverage. People on all sides struggled to believe the exit polls and came up...

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Someone to watch over me: FIFA’s lesson in supervision

FIFA is in the middle of a bit of a crisis at the moment. The president has resigned, seven senior officials are being investigated by the FBI after one entered a plea bargain, and a former...

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Make Your CV Sparkle with Statistics Software

Counting on one’s fingers is no longer enough it seems. Luckily, there are plenty of software packages to do the counting for us and this post will take you through everything from the most basic...

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The perfect do-you-have-any-questions question

“I thought you were going to go that way,” says your passenger as you speed past the motorway exit marked The Way You Really Should Have Gone. “Did you not know about the ten-mile tail-backs causing...

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Psychometrics: HR meets hocus pocus

On their first day at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Rowling, 1997), each pupil dons The Sorting Hat. Since the school was founded, Godric Gryffindor’s hat has administered a battery of...

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The dangers of accepting a counter offer

“They’ll be sorry when I leave!” All too often, employers do seem sorry – suddenly offering the kind of salary, promotion or opportunity for recognition that they had refused to grant before. Of course...

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Careers in Statistics Evolve and Expand

Science Careers, a publication that provides a variety of content to assist scientists of all disciplines, backgrounds and experience levels navigate their career path, this week published online an...

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Variability On Interview Panels

You’re in full flow describing the potential of latent variable modelling with socio-demographic data. You’ve made it to the interview shortlist, not least thanks to your sparkling CV [how to make your...

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Expect to be asked your salary expectations

“What are your salary expectations?” they ask towards the end of the interview. If you’ve got the nerve, say nothing for a minute, until they ‎make ‎an offer. If it’s enormous and they mistake your...

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With Big Data comes Big Responsibility

The citizens of the European Union have just elected 751 MEPs to the European Parliament. Across 28 countries, some 500 million citizens voted by secret ballot for public representatives. A small...

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The job description-reality gap

We left our heroes, Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, trying to get a good price for their sheep at careers fair. This week’s analogy is another market, the oriental bazaar stall that is the job...

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When story-telling is censorship: How independent is your research?

“Into the woods you have to grope, but that’s the way you learn to cope. “Into the woods to find there’s hope of getting through the journey.” So sing the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and...

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