Undergraduate students doing undergraduate research projects, masters degree candidates doing thesis research, and doctoral students doing dissertation research, all have a common need, which is obtaining expert advice about statistics. What they learn in their one or two statistics courses is never sufficient. The material in statistics texts and courses are limited to simple questions and data examples. Real world research questions are always more complex, and data are always messy, so the students must seek help. Without Departmental funding, they must turn to their professors. Their professors are not sufficiently trained in statistics to provide expert advice. Both the students and professors end up having a bad experience. The result is that students become discouraged about doing research, and professors become discouraged about providing students with research opportunities.
No matter what degree they are working on, B.S., M.S., or Ph.D., statistics students are not provided with enough real-world research problems to train on to make them experts at analyzing data upon graduation. Potential employers are reluctant to even interview them for statistician positions if they do not have statistician work experience on their résumés. The Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Utah has solved this problem. We offer a service to student researchers called Stat Lab to provide them with expert statistical consultations at no cost to them…
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