Statistical Consulting with Limited Resources: Applications to Practice

One of the more rewarding opportunities available to academic statisticians is short-term consulting for clients in the private sector. Not only does statistical consulting have the potential to provide extra income, but, depending on the arrangement with the client, the results of the work can serve as the basis for research publications. The problems with which a client needs help are often interesting, partly because they are typically problems without “textbook” solutions (which is the main reason the consultant was contacted in the first place) and partly because of the novelty of being exposed to a problem with an unfamiliar context. The most common challenge in short-term statistical consulting arises from limited time and resources; a client is often in a situation in which a solution is needed quickly and there isn’t an unlimited bank account to finance the work. A good statistical consultant must recognize a client’s urgent deadlines and think creatively to produce timely, but reliable, solutions. Short-term statistical consulting arguably requires skills that are complementary to the ones used by researchers. In many consultations, the decision to hire a statistician is made at a point Mark Glickman is associate professor in the health policy and management department at the Boston University School of Public Health and senior statistician at the Center for Health Quality, Outcomes and Economics Research, a Veterans Administration Center of Excellence. He has had a longstanding interest in the application of statistical methods to rating tournament chess players and has been chair of the U.S. Chess Federation’s ratings committee for more than 15 years. when the client has already invested in a particular approach, and this creates constraints to the set of possible solutions. Furthermore, because of the typical time limitations associated with such projects, the statistician does not have the luxury of applying the most principled approaches to problemsolving and must therefore appeal to more imaginative methods not usually associated with long-term research projects.