27 development

Hadley Wickham
Stat405Professional development
Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Poster presentation
• Thursday 4:30-5:30
• Come a little early to set up
• Please dress professionally

1. Overview
2. Learn your tools
3. Communication
4. Email
5. Feedback

Overview

What is professional
development?
Things that have little pay off now, but big
pays off in the future

Learn your
tools

Learn your tools
• Touch typing
• Text editor
• Command line
• Caffeine
• R

Mailing list
Sign up to R-help: https://stat.ethz.ch/
mailman/listinfo/r-help
Make sure to set up ﬁlters
Skim interesting subjects and read them
Don’t be afraid to post
(use a pseudonym if necessary)

Books
R in a nutshell, Joseph Adler.
http://amzn.com/059680170X
Data manipulation with R, Phil Spector.
http://amzn.com/0387747303
Software for Data Analysis: Programming
with R, John Chambers.

Books
Regression Modeling Strategies, Frank Harrell.
Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS, Jose
Pinheiro and Douglas Bates.
http://amzn.com/1441903178 and http://lme4.r-
forge.r-project.org/book/
Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/
Hierarchical Models, Andrew Gelman and
Jennifer Hill. http://amzn.com/052168689X

Journals
The R Journal,
http://journal.r-project.org/
The Journal of Statistical Software,
http://www.jstatsoft.org/
Statistical computing and graphics
newsletter, http://stat-computing.org/
newsletter/

Communication

Professional
development
The aspects of being a statistician, apart
from knowing statistics.
Principally communication: written,
spoken, visual and electronic.
Take every opportunity you can to
practice these skills.

Electronic
Written
Spoken
Email
Website
Blog
Papers
Reviews
Vita/Resume
Video
Slidecast
Posters
Code
Long talk
Short talk
Oral exam
Visual
Bibliography
Teaching
Graphics

Written
Particularly important if you want to be an
academic, or if you‘re PhD student, or want
to become one.
“Style: Toward Clarity and Grace” –
Sign up for the thesis writing workshops
when they come around.
Develop a regular habit.

My habit
• Roll out of bed at 7am
• Make tea
• Write for an hour

Spoken
Seize every opportunity to practice.
Make use of Tracy Volz - tmvolz@rice.edu.
She is a fantastic resource - if you had to
pay for her, you wouldn’t be able to afford
it.

Email

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2007 2008 2009 2010
unread
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232,000 emails
120,000 unread!

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2007 2008 2009 2010
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2007 2008 2009 2010

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http://www.43folders.com/izero
Merlin Mann
There is no way you will ever be able to respond to — let alone read in
exquisite detail — every email you ever receive for the rest of your life. If
you take issue with this, just wait six months, because, believe me, we’re
all getting a lot more email (and other sundry demands on our attention)
every day. What seems like a doddle today is going to get progressively
more difﬁcult — even insurmountable — unless you put a realistic system
in place now.
Inbox Zero

Your time is priceless
(and wildly limited)
You need an agnostic system for
dealing with mail that isn’t based on
nonces, exceptions, and guilt.
[The] ultimate goal is for you to spend
less time playing with your email and
more time doing stuff.

Key concepts
Regularly empty your inbox
Minimal response
Delete, delete, delete
Filters
Email dashes

Inbox Zero
Your inbox is not your to do list!
(or it shouldn’t be)
“The truth is that you probably can take the
average email inbox – even a relatively neglected
one – from full to zero in about 20 minutes. It
mostly depends on how much you really want to
be done with it. The dirty little secret, of course,
is that you don’t do it by responding to each of
those emails but by ruthlessly processing them.”

“In an environment where attention is the economic
equivalent of cash, you aren’t doing people any favors
by sending gothic novels. And taking your cues for
etiquette, propriety, and efﬁciency on a message-by-
message basis will quickly land you in a very bouncy
room with a fresh box of crayons.”
Response does not need to be
proportional to request

“Good idea. I’ll add it to my to do list.”
“Here’s a link that might be what you’re
looking for…”
http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/13/email-cheats
“Do you still need this?”
“I don’t know”
[Delete]

http://tinyurl.com/nfdlzh
The nuclear holocaust of responses:

Delete!
Most minimal response is none.
“Just remember that every email you
read, re-read, and re-re-re-re-re-read as it
sits in that big dumb pile is actually
incurring mental debt on your behalf.”
Be brutally honest - if you’re not going to
do anything with the email delete it now.

Filters grey mail
“noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items
which can be dealt with all at a pass and
later.”
facebook, comments, university/
department memos, newsletters, mailing
lists
Good catch all: contains unsubscribe
http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/13/ﬁlters

bannerpcard@rice.edu, carlyn@rice.edu,
cchat@rice.edu, cmtcomment@rice.edu,
giving@rice.edu, payroll@rice.edu,
registrar@rice.edu, sandra@rice.edu,
sallie@rice.edu subject:(weekly message),
alldepts@rice.edu, list:"k2i-members.rice.edu",
list:"mailman.rice.edu"
allfaculty@stat.rice.edu, faculty@stat.rice.edu,
statdept@stat.rice.edu, colloquium@stat.rice.edu,
undergrad@stat.rice.edu
from:(statements@wageworks.com)
from:(TIAA-CREF_eDelivery@tiaa-cref.org)
1300/3500
(5/day!)

Patricia Wallace, a techno-psychologist,
believes part of the allure of e-mail—
for adults as well as teens—is similar to
that of a slot machine. “You have
intermittent, variable reinforcement,”
she explains. You are not sure you are
going to get a reward every time or
how often you will, so you keep pulling
that handle.”

Email dashes
Don’t have your email open all day.
Schedule times when you respond to
emails.
You can tackle emails a lot faster when
you batch them up.
Lack self control (like me)? Try an internet
blocker: http://macfreedom.com/
http://www.43folders.com/2006/03/15/email-dash

More reading
http://www.hufﬁngtonpost.com/linda-
stone
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/habit-
ﬁelds/

27 development

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