I am running for an elected office, the Vice-Chair of District 4, Region 2, of the Council
of Chapters for the American Statistical Association. I could make some jokes about this, but
in all honesty, it is flattering to be nominated for this position. District 4 incorporates
the following ASA chapters:
I had to prepare a brief biography of myself, so I thought I'd present the first draft
here in case anyone was curious what I have been doing with my career in Statistics. I'm also
doing this because the web page where I submitted this information crashed on me and I wanted
to place my biography in an accessible location for the appropriate people at the American
Statistical Association.
Present Position
Research Biostatistician, Office of Medical Research, The Children's Mercy Hospital,
May 1996 to present, with a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the School of
Medicine at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Former Positions
Chief, Statistics Activity, Division of Biomedical and Behavioral Science, National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, December 1987 to May 1996.
Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Statistics and Operations Research,
Bowling Green State University, September 1981 to May 1987.
Adjunct Instructor, Department of Statistics, University of Iowa, June to August
1981.
Research Assistant, Statistical Consulting Center, University of Iowa, June 1979 to
August 1981.
Degrees
Ph.D., University of Iowa, Statistics, December 1982.
M.S., University of Iowa, Statistics, December 1978.
B.A., University of Iowa, Mathematical Sciences, July 1977.
Fields of Major Statistical Activities
My major research focus is the application of Evidence Based Medicine. In particular,
I am very interested in understanding when the statistical evidence in a medical journal
article becomes persuasive enough to convince a practicing clinician to change their
medical practice. I have a series of web pages devoted to this topic that have been
widely cited and translated into Spanish. I am working on a book based on these web
pages (working title: Statistical Evidence in Medical Trials) that will be published by
Oxford University Press in 2006.
I also have a strong interest in Quality Control, especially in the research
laboratory. I have helped organize several day long workshops at national meetings for
the American Society of Andrology and presented lectures on starting a quality control
program in a laboratory.
Publications
Evaluating the Benefit of Speech Recoding Hearing Aids in Children. Miller D, Nelson
P, Widen J, Simon S. American Journal of Audiology 2003: 12; 106-113. This article
received the Editor's Award for the American Journal of Audiology for the most
outstanding publication in the calendar year 2003.
Longitudinal Study of Semen Quality of Unexposed Workers. I. Study Overview. Schrader
SM, Turner TW, Breitenstein MJ, Simon SD Reproductive Toxicology 1988: 2:183-190. This
paper received the Alice Hamilton Award for 1991 for the best research paper in
occupational safety and health.
Assessing the accuracy of ANOVA calculations in statistical software. Simon SD,
Lesage JP. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 1990: 8(3); 325-332. Several of
the benchmark data sets from this paper were adopted as Statistical Reference Data Sets
by the National Institute for Standards and Technology and are published on their web
site.
I am co-author on 56 additional research articles, including a series of four invited
editorials at the Journal of Andrology.
ASA Activities
Member of the ASA Traveling Course committee (August 2004 to present).
Council of Chapters Representative (July 2001 to June 2004), President (July 1998 to
June 2000), and Vice President (July 1997 to June 1998) for the Kansas/Western Missouri
chapter of the American Statistical Association.
Secretary/Treasurer of Cincinnati Chapter of the American Statistical Association,
July 1995 to June 1996.
President (June 1985 to May 1986); Vice President (June 1984 to May 1985); and
Secretary/Treasurer (June 1983 to May 1984) of Northwest Ohio chapter of the American
Statistical Association.
Related Activities
I am the author of StATS (Steve's Attempt to Teach Statistics), a web page at
www.childrensmercy.org/stats which provides information on a wide range of statistical
topics.
In 1997, my presentation "Medical Statistics Case Studies on the Web" was voted as
the best presentation in the area of Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences at the
Joint Statistical Meetings.
I have served as a member of the Quality Management Advisory Board for the College of
Mount St. Joseph and of the Cincinnati Federal Executive Board Reinvention Subcommittee.
I was co-chair of the Statistics, Data Analysis and Modeling Section of the 1995
Midwest SAS Users Group conference in Cleveland OH.
