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Keeping
your fruit and veg clean
Fiona
Thomson
I
am a consultant biometrician. On my arrival at work on 12
April, a voice mail told me that my 9:15 appointment was cancelled.
We had been going to discuss how to sample several crops of
parsnips for evidence of disease.
The sampling of the plants (by uprooting them) kills them
so the sampling design has to balance the aims of being able
to detect the disease without destroying too much of a lucrative
crop.
I then spent all morning familiarising myself with a file
containing the data from an experiment which I designed aimed
at screening hundreds of varieties of potato
for susceptibility to several diseases.
The potatoes from each plot in the trial are graded into small
and large and then each potato is given a score of from 0
to 5 for each of several diseases. It's a lot of data and
the scientist and I have to decide how to summarise the data,
which aspects of the data we are interested in and then what
sorts of approach I take for the analyses.
After lunch, I accompanied the strawberry breeder
to the site for the strawberry trials; we discussed how we
would fit the required trials into the allocated area. I then
returned to my office and began designing
one of these trials. The design and allocation
of strawberry testlines to individual plots takes most of
the afternoon.
At 3:30, I attended a presentation to a team
of entymologists who are runners up in our department's outstanding
achievement awards.
I then spent another hour on strawberry trial designs before
finishing up for the day.
My duties as a consultant biometrician (statistician) are
to collaborate with other scientists in the
design of projects and experiments, to analyse
the data from these and to further collaborate in the writing
up of the results.
I always liked maths and games/puzzles that required analytic
skills so I thought I would study economics. I majored
in economics and statistics and was employed by the ABS in
Canberra. That's when I realised that I preferred stats to
economics. I like working with people but
I also like to be mentally challenged. A job as a consultant
biometrician is the answer!
Now that I am in my fifties, I work part-time. The work is
challenging and interesting and rewarding and I still have
the time to support my special needs son at school so I have
the best of both worlds.
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