Vote for me

Steve Simon

2005-12-21

I am running for an elected office, the Vice-Chair of District 4, Region 2, of the Council of Chapters for the American Statistical Association. I could make some jokes about this, but in all honesty, it is flattering to be nominated for this position. District 4 incorporates the following ASA chapters:

I had to prepare a brief biography of myself, so I thought I’d present the first draft here in case anyone was curious what I have been doing with my career in Statistics. I’m also doing this because the web page where I submitted this information crashed on me and I wanted to place my biography in an accessible location for the appropriate people at the American Statistical Association.

Present Position

Research Biostatistician, Office of Medical Research, The Children’s Mercy Hospital, May 1996 to present, with a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Former Positions

Chief, Statistics Activity, Division of Biomedical and Behavioral Science, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, December 1987 to May 1996.

Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Statistics and Operations Research, Bowling Green State University, September 1981 to May 1987.

Adjunct Instructor, Department of Statistics, University of Iowa, June to August 1981.

Research Assistant, Statistical Consulting Center, University of Iowa, June 1979 to August 1981.

Degrees

Ph.D., University of Iowa, Statistics, December 1982.

M.S., University of Iowa, Statistics, December 1978.

B.A., University of Iowa, Mathematical Sciences, July 1977.

Fields of Major Statistical Activities

My major research focus is the application of Evidence Based Medicine. In particular, I am very interested in understanding when the statistical evidence in a medical journal article becomes persuasive enough to convince a practicing clinician to change their medical practice. I have a series of web pages devoted to this topic that have been widely cited and translated into Spanish. I am working on a book based on these web pages (working title: Statistical Evidence in Medical Trials) that will be published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

I also have a strong interest in Quality Control, especially in the research laboratory. I have helped organize several day long workshops at national meetings for the American Society of Andrology and presented lectures on starting a quality control program in a laboratory.

Publications

Evaluating the Benefit of Speech Recoding Hearing Aids in Children. Miller D, Nelson P, Widen J, Simon S. American Journal of Audiology 2003: 12; 106-113. This article received the Editor’s Award for the American Journal of Audiology for the most outstanding publication in the calendar year 2003.

Longitudinal Study of Semen Quality of Unexposed Workers. I. Study Overview. Schrader SM, Turner TW, Breitenstein MJ, Simon SD Reproductive Toxicology 1988: 2:183-190. This paper received the Alice Hamilton Award for 1991 for the best research paper in occupational safety and health.

Assessing the accuracy of ANOVA calculations in statistical software. Simon SD, Lesage JP. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 1990: 8(3); 325-332. Several of the benchmark data sets from this paper were adopted as Statistical Reference Data Sets by the National Institute for Standards and Technology and are published on their web site.

I am co-author on 56 additional research articles, including a series of four invited editorials at the Journal of Andrology.

ASA Activities

Member of the ASA Traveling Course committee (August 2004 to present).

Council of Chapters Representative (July 2001 to June 2004), President (July 1998 to June 2000), and Vice President (July 1997 to June 1998) for the Kansas/Western Missouri chapter of the American Statistical Association.

Secretary/Treasurer of Cincinnati Chapter of the American Statistical Association, July 1995 to June 1996.

President (June 1985 to May 1986); Vice President (June 1984 to May 1985); and Secretary/Treasurer (June 1983 to May 1984) of Northwest Ohio chapter of the American Statistical Association.

Related Activities

I am the author of StATS (Steve’s Attempt to Teach Statistics), a web page at www.pmean.com which provides information on a wide range of statistical topics.

In 1997, my presentation “Medical Statistics Case Studies on the Web” was voted as the best presentation in the area of Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences at the Joint Statistical Meetings.

I have served as a member of the Quality Management Advisory Board for the College of Mount St. Joseph and of the Cincinnati Federal Executive Board Reinvention Subcommittee.

I was co-chair of the Statistics, Data Analysis and Modeling Section of the 1995 Midwest SAS Users Group conference in Cleveland OH.

You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Category: Professional details.

You can find an earlier version of this page on my website.