Talking Stats with Firemen
Highlights from StatCom's first year
Outline
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What is StatCom? Why should you get
involved?
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Project #1: Shoreline Fire Department
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Project #2: ACLU of Washington State
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Q&A
What is StatCom?
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Student-run organization which provides
statistical consulting services to non-profit
community and governmental groups
Serves clients external to the university
community who do not have the resources to
hire professional statistical consultants
A brief history
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2001: StatCom founded at Purdue University
2005: Purdue seeks to expand StatCom,
contacts other universities. Assaf Oron decides
to create StatCom chapter @ UW
2006: StatCom featured as Amstat News cover
story. First joint meeting of StatCom chapters
at JSM, Seattle.
2007: 5-6 active chapters (Purdue, UW, Cornell,
Michigan, Ohio State, UHasselt (Netherlands))
Services
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Study design
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Questionnaire design
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Data analysis
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Statistical literature review
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etc
StatCom @ UW
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Members:
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Students from Stat/Biostat, Genome Sciences
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Recent graduates (Epi, Math) currently working at
UW and Microsoft Research
Meetings:
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Roughly monthly, depending on member availability
and workload
Structure:
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Non-hierarchical, decisions reached by consensus
StatCom @ UW (cont'd)
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Project teams
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Usually involve 3-4 StatCom members
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Often led by a more senior/experienced student
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Autonomous, report on progress at general StatCom
meetings
What's in it for me?
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Real-world consulting experience
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Potential for publications
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Good karma
Example Projects
Project: Shoreline Fire Dept.
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Serves a 13-square mile area with a population
of 50,000
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100 employees
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Handles 8,000 calls annually for
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fire suppression
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technical rescue
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emergency medical and advanced life support
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fire prevention, education, and inspection
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etc
SFD Project: Initial problem
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How to compare peer evaluation ratings of
candidates for promotion to paramedic from
different station houses?
Paramedics
Station House #1
Station House #2
Station House #3
SFD Project: Initial solution
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Fit a linear mixed effects model to account
for an individual-specific “rater” effect
OK, but... the peer evaluation system as a
whole needed an overhaul
So... StatCom took on a larger challenge:
Design and help implement an improved
peer evaluation system for the Shoreline
Fire Department
SFD Project: Problems to fix
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Questionnaire: Peer eval questionnaire
much too long
Rater assignment: Employees volunteer to
rate candidates of their choosing
Analysis: Possibility for “halo” effect by
station
SFD Project: Solutions
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Questionnaire: Run psychometric analysis
tools on data from last year's evaluations
to identify/eliminate questions which
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are redundant
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correlate poorly with total score
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have small variance
SFD Project: Solutions (cont'd)
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Rater assignment: Introduce two-stage
rating process:
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Stage 1: Raters identify candidates whose
abilities they are familiar with
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Stage 2: Raters are matched to candidates via
semi-random algorithm and asked to complete
full questionnaire
Analysis: Linear mixed effects model as
described above
SFD Project: Current status
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Two-stage design proposal adopted
Shortened questionnaire adopted in principle,
still a work in progress
Design being rolled out for current round of
evaluations of Drivers
First-stage (matching) data in within two
weeks. Second-stage (questionnaire) data in
for analysis at end of October