Insights to Inform your decision making
Transform your data into valuable information
If you have data, but you’re not using it efficiently, you could be swimming upstream in treacle!
Data is useful, but only when used effectively.
Could samples and surveys provide robust data without the need to process every single example?
Are you using modern techniques such as statistical process control (SPC) to optimise your products?
Have you calculated your Cost of Poor Quality to see how much potential you have for improvement?
Statistics can be a valuable aid to product development, manufacturing processes, HR planning and project management.
All you need is a little expert support.
“The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.”
Richard Hamming
Training & Talks
Do you wish you were more skilled at handling data?
These days many people in business find themselves awash with data but lacking the skills to make full use of it. My expertise is in helping business people to understand what they have in their data and how it relates to their business problems. That includes identifying gaps in their data and suggesting ways in which they could be filled.
Sometimes you just need some help with a specific issue, such as setting up a process for sales forecasting, or reporting the results of a staff survey.
When you need more than an occasional consultant, the solution is often to train your one or more of your own people in data analysis. This benefits the organisation by delivering better information and analysis to senior managers and policy makers. The training benefits the team members also, as it gives them marketable skills.
Ask me about training in:
- The R Programming language and R/Markdown
- Exploratory data analysis
- Data visualisation
- Understanding samples and surveys
Note: For more information about these subjects, follow the links to my articles explaining more about these subjects.
Call me on 07918 619918 or email to set up a virtual meeting to discuss your needs.
Talks
I am available to present at conferences and symposia. Typical subjects include:
‘Common pitfalls in data analysis’
You don’t know what you don’t know. An overview of how imperfect data can give you wildly inaccurate results. The critical factors to check to ensure your outputs are on point.
‘Data science for engineers’
Introducing the application of data science to aid engineering strategies.
- Models for real-world data: Splines and GAMs
- Filling the holes with MICE. Introduction to missing values
- Model diagnostics: R2, AIC and cross-validation.
Data science for HR
How data can underpin HR decision making and ensure that both strategy and tactics are unbiased and accurate. This includes how to use contingency tables, mosaic plots and chi-squared tests.
If your event needs some expert input, in layman’s language, on statistical subjects, call me on 07918 619918 or email to set up a virtual meeting.
Consulting
When your project needs deeper analysis
When your project needs a professional data juggler – I can help!
- Is your data of sufficient quality to survive an audit?
- Do you have regulatory submissions, and assets to be included in financial reports?
- Do you know how to create an accurate risk register?
Using Exploratory Data Analysis you can get sound outcomes that help your business decision making.
And statistical information can help your HR department too. I can set up HR systems that will provide analysis to help decision making on:
- Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
- Workforce planning and recruitment
… or any other statistical challenge, think of me as a specialist backstop.
Some examples of projects I have delivered:
- Using sample data and regression modelling to replace lost data – saving £20 M.
- Diversity, Equality and Inclusion survey analysis to assess whether genders, ethnicities, age, part-time/full-time and company division etc. impacted on performance.
- Call centre software development to determine how many agents would be required for maximum efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Data analysis of TV advertising campaigns and the revenue generated.
- Sales forecasting contributing to the decision making on a multi-million pound international project.
However, whatever your statistical challenge, I’m always happy to have an exploratory discussion. Call me on 07918 619918 or email to set up a virtual meeting where we can explore how I can help.
“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”
John W. Tukey
About
The passionate statistician
Someone once wrote that about me in a review and it’s true. Many people think statistics is boring, but it really isn’t.
My first job after university (mathematics, at Queen Mary College, London, if you’re interested) was forecasting telephone traffic for Post Office Telecommunications. The methods used were basic, but there was a bigger problem—the forecasting process itself was flawed. No-one was tracking the previous forecasting errors, so there was no way to notice how bad the forecasts were or to improve them.
I stayed with the organisation for many years and worked in many different departments, always with a view to applying mathematical and statistical methods to improve the business outcomes. The business became known as BT and was privatised.
I continued learning mathematical methods, obtaining an MSc in 1993, an MPhil in 2007 and chartered statistician status in 2008.
After nine years in BT’s Management Science Consultancy Unit (MSCU), doing statistical consultancy across the BT group of companies, and another 10 years in BT’s research department, I spent many more years operating a one-man statistical consultancy out of various engineering departments.
Being a consultant requires more than having expert technical skills, I’ve learned:
- To make sure you are solving the right problem. It sounds obvious, but this happens a lot!
- To talk to non-statisticians. I have needed to be able to talk to clients (mostly engineers, but sometimes HR) who are expert in their own field, so we both understand the problem and be able to explain my proposed statistical strategy in their language.
- A separate, and distinctively different, issue is talking to senior managers, who have a business or finance focus.
I’ve had a long career with BT, but varied, working with departments throughout the organisation, solving a wide variety of statistical problems. From analysing the success of TV advertising to using regression modelling to work out how much copper cable exists throughout the country; it’s never been boring.
If you’ve got a business challenge that statistics can solve, let’s talk. Call me on 07918 619918 or email to set up a virtual meeting where we can explore how I can help.
Contact
Can I help?
If it’s something to do with statistics, I can probably give you the support you need – or I’ll have an associate that would be a good match.
Let’s have an exploratory chat. Complete the form below and outline your challenge and I’ll get back to you within 48 hours.