Day 4 - Teaching Day

Day 4 – Wednesday, Mar 25 – Teaching Day

For the reader of this blog, the events of the day were quite boring – albeit VERY exciting for me. I left the hotel and it was a beautiful spring morning. I was walking about a mile to University of Basel to give a short course hosted by the Basel Biometric society on a topic that I specialize in called estimands. The course had about 30  students -  – mostly PhD statisticians from pharma and few graduate students of statistics at U Basel.  [Note: U Basel has a long history of prominent scientists gong back to Erasmus (1521-1529) and the famous mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1683-1697)]. Enough of those details. If you want more, you can pre-order the book I wrote – “Does This Treatment Cause That Outcome? The Science of Estimating a Treatment Effect and Why It Matters.”

After the all-morning short course, I walked to Novartis to do some consulting. [Novartis is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.] However, notably, the weather had changed dramatically, and it was VERY windy and getting colder. Although the walk was less than a mile, it was a bit challenging. The consulting went well – discussions on estimands, decision-making for clinical development programs, and Bayesian methods. 

 After consulting, I met Dr. Mouna Akacha, a long-time statistical/professional colleague and friend. She invited me to join her husband and two little daughters (7 and 4) for dinner at their house. What a gracious invitation and a real delight. Although Mouna and her husband Roberto speak English, French, Spanish, Arabic … the family speaks German in their household. I say this because, of course, I only speak English. So, me and Mouna and Roberto were conversing in English while they converse with the little girls in German. Early in the dinner, the youngest daughter – Layla – leaned over to Mouna and whispered something to her. Mouna then informed me that Layla said, “Please tell him that we speak German in our house.” Out of the mouths of babes … Roberto was most gracious in taking care of the kids while Mouna and I talked “shop.” He also graciously drove me back into town to my hotel. It was an enjoyable evening with good food (fresh salad and bread, lasagna, fruit for dessert) and a wonderful family.

It was easy to go to sleep that night.

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