In the past two years, close to 1000 professors and students have attended JMP workshops held by Melodie Rush on U.S. college campuses. As the 2009-2010 academic year approaches, Mia Stephens joins the workshop circuit.
Mia, a new member of our JMP academic team, is an applied statistician who is no stranger to JMP. You may have seen her present at a JMP User Conference or be familiar with a data mining white paper she co-authored with her colleagues at North Haven Group.
I spoke with Mel and Mia after a campus visit.
Gail: What is the purpose of the workshops?
Mel: When a university licenses JMP, unlimited numbers of professors and students in the licensing group, say a Math Department or a whole campus, have access to the software. Some professors know JMP; others don’t. We want to arm the new professors with the JMP basics they need to teach the statistics covered in their courses.
Mia: And we want to show the JMP-savvy professors new features that they might use in teaching, like the reliability capabilities added in JMP 8.
Gail: What do you cover?
Mel: We demonstrate how to use JMP for basic stats; how to interact with the graphics JMP generates for almost all statistics; and how the data, graphs and statistics are all linked. This always creates a lot of energy in the room!
Mia: We make sure to cover at least univariate, bivariate, and multivariate summary statistics; t-test; basic regression; ANOVA; and contingency tables. Often, there are professors in the room who also teach or use SAS, and we show them how JMP integrates with SAS.
Gail: I've heard a lot about JMP from business schools.
Mel: We get asked about Biz Viz all the time. The JMP Graph Builder is a great way to compare data, so we show people how to analyze business and other data by dragging and dropping onto graphs. Everyone loves this!
Gail: How long are the workshops?
Mia: Two hours is about right to cover the basics and still keep people engaged.
Gail: Does each participant have JMP on a computer?
Mia: No, these aren't training sessions. We use JMP on a laptop connected to a projector.
Gail: How do you decide where to hold workshops?
Mel: Time and travel costs are a consideration. So, we take requests from campuses that can provide a room and are sure there will be at least 15-20 professors attending the session. They can bring as many students as the room will hold.
Mia: Our academic account team offers workshops to new sites that license JMP. We also get requests directly from professors.
Interested? To inquire about a workshop for your campus, send an email to the JMP academic team.
Hear Mel and Mia talk about the workshops.
