Richard Zink’s desire to win strategy board games like Axis and Allies and Fortress America in college got him started on the path to a career in statistics. “I wanted to better understand the rules of probability to make me a better player,” recalled Zink, a Principal Research Statistician Developer in
Annie Dudley Zangi was applying statistical methods to her science projects in primary school before she even knew about statistics. It just came naturally to her, and so did the experiments she conducted at her father's strawberry farm before she learned about split-plot designs. Read this full profile to learn
As a child growing up in Nigeria, David Olaleye would follow his dad, an auto mechanic, as he drove to work every morning. So he always thought he would end up being an engineer in the automobile industry. But when he went to college at the University of Ife (now
As a fourth-grader, Cheryl LeSaint was the one everyone was trying to beat. The teacher called her to the chalkboard to solve math problems and then challenged the rest of the class to race against her. “I always loved math,” said LeSaint. “I have a very vivid memory. Mathematics came
Don Wedding played a baseball simulation game called Sports Illustrated/Avalon Hill Superstar Baseball back when he was in grade school in Toledo, Ohio. The game involved rolling specialized dice, and then referring to cards representing the performance of the greatest baseball players of all time. The problem was Wedding knew
Anne Hawley’s "Introduction to Statistics” professor asked the class what percentage of students at St. Lawrence University in New York state were smokers. Although the answer (according to a survey of students) was closer to 10 percent, most of the class guessed a much higher number, possibly due to the fact
Chris Daman, an Analytical Training Consultant for SAS, says teaching statistics to data scientists isn't that different from teaching math to teenagers. Ultimately, we all need to be engaged and interested when learning. Read on to learn more about Daman and her love for exploring data for unexpected insights, and then be
Mark Kindem can thank his parents and brother for getting him started on the road to being a statistician. “My dad was a baseball card guy,” Kindem said. “I used to pore through data as a kid.” Kindem and his brother would line up baseball or basketball cards on the living
Dominic Jann’s Introduction to Statistics class near the end of his undergraduate days at the University of Oklahoma was terrible, if you consider the instructor he had. “The professor was always tardy and didn’t show up for half the classes,” said Jann, noting that even when he did, his attitude toward
Peter Christie, an Analytical Training Consultant for SAS, has a long and interesting relationship with statistics. To hear him tell it, the relationship is like a marriage with all the ups and downs of any long-term commitment. Read all about Peter and his love of statistics here, and then be sure to check
