I’ve been interested in writing for a long time. Writing appeals to me because it can require both artistry and cold logic to make it effective, it helps me test and develop my ideas, and it’s a way to produce something entirely my own. Whenever I tried to start writing previously, though, I felt that I didn’t have knowledge or experience worth writing about.
Now I’ve trained in statistics for several years and worked in clinical research as a biostatistician for five years. I’ve worked with medical doctors, surgeons, epidemiologists, PhD statisticians, and programmers; my knowledge of both statistics and medical science have grown steadily; and I’ve contributed to a fair amount of published research. I’ve had an insider view of medical research and have developed opinions about what’s right and wrong about it. I’ve experienced PhD-level training at a highly regarded department of biostatistics, and have developed opinions about that too. Meanwhile, I’ve developed practical skills for data analysis, and a way of organizing my analysis code that seems to work well, though it continues to evolve.
In other words, I feel that I may have something worth writing about now. In any case, I have the following goals for my posts here:
- Demonstrate my knowledge and skills to potential employers and collaborators.
- Form a habit of developing my thoughts more carefully and completely by writing about them in a public place.
- Collect and organize a) what I’ve learned about biostatistics and programming, and b) my favorite readings or resources on those topics, so that they serve as an easily accessible resource for myself and possibly others.
- Improve my writing and my approach to communicating about statistics to a broad audience. Ultimately, I’m interested in creating better educational and reference material for students and research workers.
Thanks to blogdown for making it easy (for a heavily R Markdown-dependent person such as myself) to get started!