“The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data."
John W. Tukey (the first of six “basics” against statistician’s hubrises) in “Sunset Salvo”, American Statistician, 40, 72–76 (1986).
Target Audience
All Researchers (Faculty, research/academic staff and graduate/undergraduate students) at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences (FAFS) and at the American University of Beirut (AUB), who will be required to carry out statistical analysis in the course of their research.
Aim
The SSC offers statistical support and consulting service to all researchers at FAFS and at AUB. The ultimate aim is to promote high-standard research through appropriate statistical data analysis.
Services (virtual and/or onsite)
Our services range from statistical advice to new methodology development. In particular, the SSC offers researchers a wide range of statistical support services relating to, but is not limited to,
- Proposal development (design of experiments, data collection and sampling techniques, sample size calculations, data analyses plan, and other proposal-related issues)
- Data survey (forms development, checking survey results, monitoring of data collection, and examining non-response bias, and other survey-related issues)
- Data analyses (data management, data cleaning, data coding, organizing data, pilot testing, descriptive analyses, and other analysis-related issues)
- Model development (perform modelling and model selection, model checking and verification, model diagnostics and predictions, and other model-related issues)
- Manuscript/thesis preparation (tabulating and summarizing results, data and graphic representation, write up of statistical analyses section, and other manuscript-related issues)
Besides, we will be very interested in discussing potential academic collaborations and possible joint projects. We also hope that sometimes our discussion might evolve into genuine scientific collaboration.
Students taking statistics courses should understand that SSC is NOT a teaching/supervision service.
Training
Our aim at SSC is to meet the needs of researchers, helping them keep their skills up to date and relevant, especially non-statisticians or users of statistics who want to understand the basics of statistics and data analysis to help them either in their jobs or in their personal lives.
Towards that end, SSC offers practical PC-based workshops tailored/designed for researchers with a basic working knowledge of statistics and are/will be required to carry out statistical analysis in the course of their research. The training offers hands on activities on data analysis and interpretation in the context of medical and health-related studies using the statistical package R and/or SPSS.
SSC Team Members
Director:
Dr. Samer A Kharroubi, PhD, CStat, MHS
Associate Professor in Biostatistics, FAFS, AUB
Honorary Reader in Medical Statistics, University of Sheffield, UK