{"id":370,"date":"2020-02-26T19:15:05","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T19:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/?p=370"},"modified":"2020-02-26T20:27:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T20:27:09","slug":"meet-an-ou-statistician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/2020\/02\/26\/meet-an-ou-statistician\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet an OU statistician"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Would is\u00a0 a year 12 work experience student who has visited the Maths and Stats department of the OU. She interviewed Karen Vines, a senior lecturer in statistics, to find out about her and her work<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maths<\/b><\/span>\u00a0and Stats\u00a0<\/b>students<\/b><\/span>\u00a0at the OU will have studied with Karen on modules such as M346 and M140.\u00a0 She also\u00a0<\/b>wrote<\/b><\/span>\u00a0one of the M249 Practical Statistical Modelling books.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

This is Rebecca’s report:<\/p>\n

Let’s start with my favourite opening question:\u00a0\u00a0What is your favourite vegetable?<\/em><\/p>\n

Karen: Avocado, or carrot.*<\/p>\n

\"\"

Karen in Orienteering mode<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Are there any particular bits of stats that are of interest to you?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m reasonably eclectic. There are many different areas and I\u2019ve moved around a bit, I haven\u2019t really got a main focus. Possibly the most fun has been what\u2019s known as sonification, turning graphs into sound.<\/p>\n

How do you do that?<\/em><\/p>\n

Usually you start with a scatter plot or line graph, then equate pitches with the numbers, and each graph produces its own unique tune.\u00a0[There is a 5-minute video about this project\u00a0here<\/a>].<\/p>\n

I like to think as a statistician I have more fun than a lot of my colleagues, as I really can pick and choose, there\u2019s data on everything. And it\u2019s nice to know that if I were to leave I\u2019d be able to find somewhere, everyone needs a statistician \u2013 I\u2019m not going anywhere, but it\u2019s good to know the option is there.<\/p>\n

How do you get to be a statistician at the OU?<\/em><\/p>\n

Mostly by accident. My career planning stopped at age 21: go to uni, get a degree. I did maths but no stats in my degree, unfortunately in first year no stats was offered, so when I started to become interested in second year I was told I couldn\u2019t as I didn\u2019t have the background. When I got to the end of my degree, I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming an actuary, and was completely put off when I went for an interview and someone said, \u201cNow I\u2019m more senior I get to play on the stock market!\u201d. Then I thought about doing an MSc in statistics or operational research, and having done operational research in my degree, I chose to do statistics. After that I was fed up of being on the education treadmill, and so went to work as a practicing statistician at a medical research place (MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit). There was a good mix of medics and statisticians and I got to learn a lot off my senior colleagues. They were doing a lot of fun things, some less fun things, but a lot of fun things. I stayed there for almost 2 years, by which point I decided that yes I did want to do a PhD.<\/p>\n

What was the biggest difference between doing a masters in stats and an actual job, if there was much of one?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think there was, yes. In a masters you could do this, you could do that, you could do a regression line, I could do a T-test\u2026 but it\u2019s knowing what to do when someone comes along saying \u201chere\u2019s some data.\u201d It\u2019s a skill certainly, and one I hope I\u2019ve picked up.<\/p>\n

After that I knew I wanted to move, so applied to the OU and got in as a statistical advisor, with the intention of staying 1\/2 years. Stuff happens, and here I am.<\/p>\n

Having started with the aim of 1\/2 years, how long have you been here?<\/em><\/p>\n

23. And a half.<\/p>\n

After this Karen and I talked a lot more about university and how it has changed over the years. It was really interesting talking to her, and she has a true enjoyment for everything. I\u2019ll take away from this the drive to keep researching more, and her love of stats.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Rebecca for writing this and Karen for taking part.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*Cathy comments here as a frivolous editor that we can say that Mathematics deals with certainty, while Statistics deals with uncertainty: Karen shows she is a true statistician in replying to a ‘what’ question with an ‘or’ answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Would is\u00a0 a year 12 work experience student who has visited the Maths and Stats department of the OU. She interviewed Karen Vines, a senior lecturer in statistics, to find out about her and her work Maths\u00a0and Stats\u00a0students\u00a0at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/MathEd\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}