Learnings from the COVID crisis for statisticians

The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI

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I discuss my learnings, my reflection about this, and what is the meaning of this situation for us, statisticians, and more significant factors like the following:

• Hardly any tables out there, but lots of visualizations both interactive and explanatory - still most of our day-to-day jobs are providing tables
  • Tables are not the key deliverables episode
  • Interview with Zak Skrivanek - a figure says more than 1000 tables
  • Wonderful Wednesday episode
  • VIS SIG
• Get the data from many different sources - not just the one source at hand: e.g. the study currently working on; RWE, literature data, and other studies
• Many misunderstandings on the sources of the data and comparisons across different sources (e.g. different countries) and then infer on the differences between the policy making in the different countries - where are the statisticians in the news explaining the numbers?
  • We need more leadership
  • Our associations need to step up and become more professional and impactful
  • We have a responsibility here
• Responsibility for providing the numbers but also gives the background and advise on how to use the numbers - for example John Hopkins
  • FAQ not really helpful
  • What can be answered here and what not
  • How reliable is the data?
  • What are the strength and limitations?
  • Any guidance on the use of the data?
• Do we train people on how to read our data? Or do we just through the tables over the fence for someone else to deal with it?
• Power of scenario simulations - Washington Post article - great to show conditional probabilities e.g. if you have different prior information in Bayesian analyses

Listen to this timely episode and let me know what you think!