The exciting part of being an applied statistician is the chance to help a coworker solve a problem. The scary part is the unstated assumption sometime lurking in the background: The meaning lies like gold nuggets waiting for only the right statistical dowsing rod to reveal it. The author calls this the "statistician as shaman" theory. This road should be avoided at all costs. Problems occur because there's a failure to understand that data are not self-interpreting. They depend on some prior context. Statistical practitioners should ceaselessly prompt the customer about why the data exist and how they are generated before beginning analysis. In this way, the statistician becomes an extension of the customer's team. The author calls this the "statistician as a team player" theory. On that road lies many more rewards.
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