Liza here, a statictician/epidemiologist in progress aiming to craft some statistics-flavoured simplicity on this site. More formally, I am a PhD student in Biostatistics with background in mathematics, currently working on the modeling of infectious diseases - how they spread and take over the world.
Bayesian statistics, spatio-temporal clustering, predictive modeling, understanding of transmission dynamics via deterministic and stochatic processes is by far not the complete list of topics that have come up since the beginning of the doctorate (through work and extended activities) and interest me. Not to forget are the effects of importation and networks on eradiction of infectious diseases, as well as the power of DNA-sequencing and phylogenetics as tools to distingush between local and imported cases.
Anyhow, the main learning of the PhD program so far has been the understanding of the role of patience, perseverence and resilience that it takes to stay on track. Not having published YET does not mean one has not done or learnt anything useful. On the contrary - each day is full of micro-discoveries, worth if not a paper, but a mini-post in your blog even if it consists of several lines of code or one formula. Exactly for posts of such kind this space has been created.
At the very beginning of my PhD I asked a more senior colleague how did he learn the craft. With all respect to that person, his answer was as coincise as useless - 'learning by doing'. Looking back I wish I had more guidance on good and bad practices. Learning by doing certainly works to find A solultion, but not necessarily a good solution. Learning the hard way leads to a great loss of time which can be otherwise spent on creative ideas instead of solving technical issues. It is not wise neither from individual nor communal point of view.
Having said that, the concept of this site is straightforward - getting simple and neat examples from statistics and related computational strategies posted; creating standardized workflows for the use of my epidemiology/biology friends sometimes stopping by to chat about their analysis objectives. In a word, this is my PhD-period sketchbook.
Hope to start filling this page with more content soon. Feel free to browse away, there are already a couple of posts awaiting in the Blog!