Where did all the consultants go?

Consulting was closed for most of last week, and some of you may have wondered why. This wasn’t our typical end of the qaurter “dark week.” Instead, three of us (Xiao, Christine and Rose) went to the major North American gathering for our tribe, the Joint Statistical Meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah. Now, Salt Lake City in early August may not sound like paradise to everyone, but hidden away from the heat in a convention center, we enjoyed three days of learning, discussing and networking. We even got to see other statisticians dance, and we were surprised at the number who actually do so quite well.

So what goodies did we bring back to share with all of you and each other? I (Rose) took a full day course on adjusting for multiple hypothesis tests, which introduced me to a lot of new (to me) techniques for dealing with multiplicity. I still have some homework to do, but this should be really useful when working with clients who are running a large number of significance tests. Christine enjoyed talks on the use of the ACS (the American Community Survey, which is replacing the long form of the Census), methods for handling missing data in survey non-response, imputation methods in survey research, and finding out about the new features in SUDAAN 9.2 (which should be out any day now).

When asked about the conference, Xiao said, "I really enjoyed the sessions, especially some of the invited sessions, such as the session on causality, with Paul Holland, Judea Peal and Donald Rubin as the three speakers. The round table lunch with Professor James Robins from the School of Public Health at Harvard University was extremely educational and entertaining. I also enjoyed the opportunities to talk to some really awesome statisticians from SAS and Mplus. I learned a lot from them. I (Xiao) also enjoyed my little afternoon trips, such as visiting the University of Utah by tram, having a glimpse of the gleaming Salt Lake and riding the tram to Sandy, watching the great Wasatch mountains go by from afar."

So that’s where we were and what we were doing.

r.a.m.