My name is Rosina Savisaar. My background is in biological research - I hold a PhD in evolutionary genomics from the University of Bath, UK, and did post-doctoral work at the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Lisbon, Portugal (CV). Through my experiences teaching bioinformatics, as well as collaborating with scientists from different backgrounds, I realised that both students and researchers were often gravely hindered in their work by insufficient training in statistical thinking. What is worse, statistics is often perceived as boring, impossibly hard to learn, or a mere box-ticking exercise that one needs to get through to get a paper published.
That's me!
I became interested in why so many students and researchers were struggling with the most basic statistical concepts, despite having successfully completed one or several statistics courses during their education. I realised that this was the result of many factors. To start, statistics courses are often taught in a way that is far removed from the practical realities of everyday research work. As a result, even if the student has learned the concepts, they may not be able to later apply them in practice. Moreover, the theory can be presented in an unnecessarily maths-heavy manner, alienating students that have less of a quantitative background or that have internalised negative attitudes towards maths because of bad experiences during school years. At the other extreme, students often end up doing little more than memorising a list of tests, without gaining an intuitive understanding of the underlying concepts. As a result, they never learn to see how the different analyses are connected, and do not perceive statistics as the creative field that it is.
I found these challenges exciting, and began to design and teach courses in statistics and related fields. In 2022, I created Mondego Science to take my teaching to the next level. See here for courses currently on offer. If you are a university, an institute or a company, and would like me to design a bespoke course for you, let me know!
The Mondego river in Portugal (Vitor Oliveira, CC BY-SA 2.0)
When I am not talking about analysing data, I am probably analysing it. I am very fond of Bayesian modelling, and I would love to apply such techniques to your data. Do get in touch!
P.S. If you're wondering about the logo, it is loosely based on Iberodorcadion brannani, a lovely creature that you may be able to find quite close to the Mondego river.
An Iberodorcadion brannani thinking about the way of the world (an early sketch for the logo).