Laura J. Simon

Contact information

DISCUSSION BOARDS and E-MAIL: Questions that would normally be asked by raising your hand in class should be posted on the appropriate discussion board. If you have a question, then no doubt several other students do as well. If instead you have a question or concern that is personal in nature, then e-mail the instructor using the course e-mail system (accessed by way of the "Communicate" tab). I would like to emphasize the importance of all e-mail communication taking place within the course e-mail system. I unfortunately cannot reply to students who send me e-mail to my external mail accounts.

AVAILABILITY: Students are welcome to post to the discussion boards or to contact me by email any time — I am usually able to respond within 24 hours. I will check e-mail and the discussion boards regularly — at least once in the morning and once in the evening — throughout the work week (Monday through Friday).

If you need to talk to me by phone, please e-mail me your phone number and the time that you would like me to call you. I will do my best to get in touch with you as quickly as requested.

About the instructor

Yup, that's a picture of me, Laura Simon, the author and instructor of this course. My hope — of course — is that you have as much fun taking this course as I have had creating it. I have taught a graduate version of Stat 480 a few times in a traditional classroom, and this will be my sixth time teaching it as an on-line only course. It is my view that any course, no matter how many times it has been offered in the past, can always be improved in some way. Therefore, I am always willing and eager to hear your feedback on any aspect of the course. Just as the students before you helped sculpt this version of the course, your feedback will help sculpt future versions. So, please do speak up!

I have been affiliated with Penn State in some shape or form since 1987, when I first arrived on campus to work on my Master's degree in Statistics. Once in the program, I decided — or so I thought — to pursue my Ph.D. instead. After three years of courses and a few too many exams, I needed to take a break. I took off in 1990 to serve in a one-year temporary position as a mathematical statistician at NOAA's Auke Bay Fisheries Research Lab in Juneau, Alaska. My primary assignment was to help estimate the number of Alaskan salmon that were accidentally caught in the driftnets of Japanese squid fishermen. A memorable experience — to say the least!

I returned to Penn State in late 1991 to finalize my Master's degree, and then went immediately off to work in the Center for Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Penn State's College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. Although I worked with over 40 different medical investigators while there, my primary assignment was working on the National Institute of Health's Interstitial Cystitis Data Base (ICDB) Study. Interstitial cystitis is a painful, often debilitating, urinary condition of unknown cause. The main purpose of the study was to collect data on people who were afflicted with the disease — predominantly women. (You'll work with a number of the ICDB data sets in this course!)

After spending an academic year as a Visiting Instructor in Statistics at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, in 1997, I moved to Penn State's University Park campus in 1997 to serve as an Instructor in the Statistics Department and to be with my new husband. While an Instructor, I co-authored — with another Penn State faculty member, Bob Heckard — nine units of the web-based introductory statistics textbook, Visualizing Statistics (Cybergnostics, Inc).

Oh, yeah, about that Ph.D. degree! In 2000, I took a leave from my Instructor position to complete my Ph.D at Penn State. My dissertation concerned the design of a study — and analysis of the resulting data — to determine if asthmatics of a certain genotype fare less well on albuterol-as-needed inhalers than do asthmatics of another genotype. I earned my Ph.D. in 2002, at which time I returned to my current position as a Lecturer in the Penn State Statistics Department.

The thing that I think is so cool about being a statistician is that you get to work with so many different people in so many different fields. Among others, I've helped fisheries researchers estimate salmon catch, urologists characterize patients with interstitial cystitis, pulmonologists study the treatment of asthmatics, and chemists model the cracking behavior of house paint.

In the past, when I wasn't playing the role of a statistician, you would most likely find me outside walking, gardening, swimming or traveling, talking politics, enjoying my husband's company, or reading. But, that all changed a few Augusts ago when I gave birth to our daughter. That's a picture of her hiking on a nearby trail!

With warm regards,

Laura Simon