7
Gibbons Bequest continued
Jean Dickinson Gibbons
LISA provides walk-in services as well as more in-depth collaborative assistance. The LISA walk-in service is staffed by graduate statistics students for two
hours every day that classes are in session. Here, clients can have quick statistical questions answered, or they may be referred to a faculty member for more
specialized assistance.
To learn more about LISA’s consulting services, see
www.lisa.stat.vt.edu or www.science.vt.edu/
department/index.html.
ISSUE NO. 7 FALL 2009
Created in 2008, the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), “We collaborate with faculty from every college in the university and have
assists Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and graduate students with the statistical room to assist even more,” Vance said. “The best time to consult us is before a
components of their research and dissertations. Last year, the service was researcher starts collecting data so that we can advise them on sound methoffered to more than 300 clients, most of them within the Virginia Tech com- odologies.”
munity. LISA also provides consulting services to clients outside the university,
LISA also offers free statistical short courses designed to teach practical statistiacross the state, and even around the world for a nominal fee.
cal tools to graduate students and staff for use in their research.
LISA grew out of the Statistical Consulting Center, established by the univer“The breadth and depth of what we offer is significant,” Vance said. “Our
sity’s Department of Statistics in 1976. Most of its projects are supervised by
collaborators are trained to help design experiments, analyze and plot data,
statistics faculty but led by graduate students, thus fostering learning through
run statistical software, interpret results, and communicate statistical results
engagement.
to non-statisticians.”
“We want to improve the statistical literacy of all members of the university
Those who use the service usually come away with a stronger research compocommunity,” said Eric Vance, director of LISA.
nent to their project or grant.
LISA assists with designing experiments, using appropriate statistical terms
“I found the consultation eye opening to statistics overall,” said Courtney Culp,
and tests in grant proposals, and analyzing data. It also assists with preparagraduate student in biological sciences. “It enabled me to think more about my
tion of grant proposals, particularly by providing expert advice on the design
experiment and understand my data more in depth. It gave me great insight.”
of experiments and data collection, as well as suggesting proper tests and
analyses.
M A G A Z I N E
LISA OFFERS STATISTICAL EXPERTISE ACROSS
CAMPUS … AND AROUND THE WORLD
S C I E N C E
“I’m proud that I’ve been able to serve as a role model for a lot of female
students in statistics — and women in other scientific professions,” she said.
“We help clients learn about good statistical tools and assist in making research
results defensible,” Vance said. “It’s also an opportunity for our graduate
students to apply proper methods on real data and write better research
papers.”
O F
Gibbons said she was pleased that one of the biggest changes she had seen
in statistics over the decades was the increasing number and prominence of
women in the field.
“You can’t even
imagine the various
uses statistics has.”
C O L L E G E
“I went down there and presented the paper and we went to the faculty club
to have lunch afterward and, lo and behold, women weren’t allowed in the
faculty club. The situation had never arisen before. So my hosts had to sneak
me in.”