This page provides a link to various blogs of mine and also to papers of mine that are readily available on the web. On the whole the papers are didactic in nature.
A companion page on Data Sets may also be of interest
| Type | Topic | Title | Keywords |
COVID19 | |||
| Blog | COVID19 | Heard Immunity | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Sequential Analysis; Vaccines; Pfizer/BioNTech; AZ/Oxford; Moderna |
| Blog | COVID19 | Stimulated to simulate | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Sequential Analysis |
| Blog | COVID19 | A Vaccine Trial from A to Z | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines; Inference; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | A Vaccine Trial from A to Z: with a Postscript | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference;AZ/Oxford;Pfizer/BioNTech |
| Blog | COVID19 | Doubling Up | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines; Inference; Pfizer/BioNTech; Moderna |
| Blog | COVID19 | Infectious Enthusiasm | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines; Inference; Pfizer/BioNTech |
| Blog | COVID19 | Serendipity Dividend? | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Dose Response; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Needlework Guesswork | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines; Inference; Reverse Engineering; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Complicated COVID comparisons | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference;AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Of Weighting and Waiting | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Blind Date | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Blinding |
| Blog | COVID19 | Beta Testing | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Bayesian; Pfizer/BioNTech |
| Blog | COVID19 | Straining for Effect | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; New variant COVID-19; Novavax |
| Blog | COVID19 | Dilly-Dally Delay? | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; AZ/Oxford; Booster shot |
| Blog | COVID19 | Credible Confidence | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Pfizer/BioNTech; Bayesian |
| Blog | COVID19 | A Very Standard Error | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference;Pfizer/BioNTech; Moderna; AZ/Oxford; Concurrent Control |
| Blog | COVID19 | Phase Change | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Hold that Result | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; AZ/Oxford |
| Blog | COVID19 | Youthful Enthusiasm | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Pfizer/BioNTech |
| Blog | COVID19 | Going Viral | COVID19; Clinical Trials; Vaccines;Inference; Pfizer/BioNTech; AZ/Oxford; Moderna; Novavax; J&J Janssen |
| Blog | COVID19 | Screen Test | COVID19; Screening; Bayes theorem; Sensitivity; Specificity; Positive Predictive Value; Negative Predictive Value |
| Blog | COVID19 | Indian Summer | COVID19; Vaccine Efficacy; Viral Strains; Pfizer/BioNTech; AZ/Oxford; Indian variant |
| Blog | COVID19 | Scale Fail | COVID19; Vaccine Efficacy; Measurement; Pfizer/BioNTech; AZ/Oxford; Moderna; J&J Janssen; Novavax |
| Blog | COVID19 | Trials of COVID-19 vaccines: what can be learnt for the development of new antimicrobials? | COVID19; Vaccine Efficacy; Pfizer/BioNTech; AZ/Oxford; Moderna; J&J Janssen; Novavax; Historical controls; Design of Experiments |
Evidence Based Medicine | |||
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | It's publishing, Jim, but not as we know it | Publication bias; open data |
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | Fishing for Fakes with Fisher | Fraud; Randomisation |
| Paper | Evidence Based Medicine | Publication Bias: Editors are not Blameless after all | Publication bias |
| Paper | Evidence Based Medicine | Authors are also reviewers | Publication bias |
| Paper | Evidence Based Medicine | Overstating the Evidence | Meta-analyis; Standard Errors |
| Paper | Evidence Based Medicine | Sharp tongues and bitter pills | Ethics; Pharmaceutical industry; Meta-analysis; Publication bias; Conflict of Interest |
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | Open season | Data-sharing |
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | Is Pooling Fooling | Meta-Analysis |
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | Bad Pharma | Pharmaceutical industry; Ethics; Missing data; Data filters |
| Blog | Evidence Based Medicine | Two Cultures | Pharmaceutical industry; Drug Regulation; Clinical Trials;Statistical Analysis |
Experimental Design | |||
| Blog | Experimental Design | Delta Force | Power; Sample size; Clinical trials |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Rothamsted Statistics meets Lord's Paradox | Causal Analysis; Components of Variation; Analysis of Variance |
| Blog | Experimental Design | On the Level | Causal Analysis; Components of Variation; General Balance;Block Structure; Analysis of Variance |
| Blog | Experimental Design | To Infinity and Beyond | Big data; Clinical trials; Randomisation; Standard Error; Analysis of Variance |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Red Herrings and the Art of Cause Fishing | Causal Analysis; Components of Variation |
| Paper | Experimental Design | The Misunderstood Placebo | Ethics; Control; Clinical Trials; Equipoise; Blinding |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Fooling the Patient: an Unethical Use of Placebo? | Ethics; Control; Clinical Trials; Equipoise; Blinding |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Placebos: It's not only the Patients that are Fooled | Ethics; Control; Clinical Trials; Equipoise; Blinding |
| Paper | Experimental Design | The AB/BA Cross-over: How to perform the two-stage analysis if you can't be persuaded that you shouldn't | Cross-over Trial; Clinical Trials; Carry-Over; Testing Assumptions; Inference |
| Paper | Experimental Design | An Incomplete Blocks Trial in Asthma | Cross-over Trial; Clinical Trials;Incomplete Blocks; Dose-Finding; Inference Parallel Assay |
| Paper | Experimental Design | Lessons from TGN 1412 | Clinical Trials; Dose-Finding; Ethics; Trend Effects; Inference; First-in-Man |
| Paper | Experimental Design | Safety First | Clinical Trials; Dose-Finding; Ethics; Trend Effects; Inference; First-in-Man |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Blood simple | Bioequivalence; Two-sided tests; One-sided tests; Clinical Trials; Confidence Intervals |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Making it personal: N-of-1 trials, allowing for individuality but not overdoing it | Clinical Trials; Random Effects; Shrinkage; Mixed Models;Personalised Medicine |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Testing Times | Clinical Trials; Cross-over Trials; Inference; Recogniseable Subsets; Testing Assumptions; Screening |
| Blog | Experimental Design | t for Two | Drug Development; Clinical Trials; Inference; COVID19; meta-analysis |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Designed Inferences | Clinical Trials; Inference; Components of Variation; Cross-over Trials |
| Paper | Experimental Design | Giving and taking: ethical treatment assignment in controlled trials. (With Iain Chalmers) | Clinical Trials; Ethics; Placebos; Blinding |
| Paper | Experimental Design | Confounder Confusion | Confounding; Random effects; Observational studies;History of Statistics |
| Paper | Experimental Design | Studying the Effects of Studies | Concurrent control; Randomised Clinical Trials; Effects of time; Effects of place; Study effects |
| Blog | Experimental Design | The Rule of Three | Block effects; Treatment effects; Randomisation; Factorial designs; Components of variation |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Design of Experiments: a Tentataive Timeline | Block effects; Treatment effects; Randomisation; Factorial designs; Optimal Design; Quality |
| Blog | Experimental Design | More or Less or Not at All | Concurrent control; Placebos; Treatment effects |
| Blog | Experimental Design | A Standard Error | Randomisation; Random Sampling; Inference; Clinical Trials;Graphics |
| Blog | Experimental Design | A Tragedy of Errors | Clinical Trials;Analysis of Covariance; Modelling; Regression Dilution; Errors in Variables |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Design or Model? Which determines the analysis? | Clinical Trials;Analysis of Covariance; Modelling; |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Power to the difference | Clinical Trials;Sample size; Cross-over trials; SAS |
| Blog | Experimental Design | A Dose of Common Sense | Clinical Trials; Bioequivalence; Dose Proportionality |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Unfair Comparisons? | Clinical Trials;Causal Inference;Statistical Inference; Assumptions |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Halls of Fame | Cluster Allocation;Causal Inference;Statistical Inference; Assumptions |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Replication Crisis | Cluster Allocation;Causal Inference;Statistical Inference; Assumptions; Lord's Paradox; Pseudoreplication |
| Podcast | Experimental Design | Ep. 157 Stephen Senn: N-of-1 Trials and Beyond | Accad and Koka Report; N-of-1 Trials |
| Blog | Experimental Design | A Random Trio | Causal Inference; Statistical Inference; Random Effects; History of Statistics |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Lauding Lord | Lord's Paradox; Causal Inference;Statistical Inference; Uncertainty;History of Statistics |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Lauding Lord: a Postcript | Lord's Paradox; Causal Inference; Statistical Inference; Uncertainty; History of Statistics |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Bias Binding | Fixed Effects; Random Effects; Causal Inference; Statistical Inference; Efficiency; Linear Combinations |
| Paper | Experimental Design | The analysis of continuous data from n-of-1 trials using paired cycles: a simple tutorial | Fixed Effects; Random Effects; Causal Inference; shrunk estimates; meta-analysis |
| Blog | Experimental Design | The Main Chance | Linear Models; Interactions; Type III SS; Nelder Marginality |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Beware of Interactions | Linear Models; Interactions; Type III SS; Nelder Marginality |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Twin Piques | Concurrent Control; Historical Data; Digital Twins; Bias; Variance; Blinding |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Be Careful What you Wish for | Clinical Trials;Statistical Significance; Clinical Relevance; Sample Size; Power |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Carry-over Carry-on | Clinical Trials;Cross-over Trials; Balaam's design; Efficiency |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Estimand, Messtimand. Tread carefully | Clinical Trials; Estimands; Type III sums of squares; Weighting; Efficiency |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Estimand, Messtimand. Continue treading carefully | Clinical Trials; Estimands; Type III sums of squares; Weighting; Efficiency |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Bridge Over Trebled Order | Manufacturing; Generics; Fake Drugs; Bridging Studies; SUTVA |
| Blog | Experimental Design | Illegible Eligible | Sampling Theory; Design of Experiments; Eligibility Critera;Representativeness Fallacy |
History | |||
| Paper | History | Cushny and Peebles, optical isomers, and the birth of modern statistics. | Student; t-test; n-of-1 trials |
| Paper | History | A century of t-tests | Student; t-test; n-of-1 trials |
| Paper | History | The t-test tool | Student; t-test; n-of-1 trials |
| Paper | History | Francis Galton and Regression to the Mean | Genetics; Correlation |
| Paper | History | Tea for three. | Fisher; Randomisation; Blinding; Experimental Design; Inference |
| Paper | History | Student and the Lanarkshire Milk Experiment | Experimental Design; Randomisation; Components of Variation; Nutrition |
| Paper | History | An Early 20th Century Handbook on 'Meta-analysis': David Brunt's The Combination of Observations | Meta-analysis; Least squares; Measurement |
| Blog | History | Stepping Back in Time | History of Biostatistics; Book Review ; Daniel Schwartz; Causality |
| Blog | History | Knowing ANOVA | R.A. Fisher; Analysis of Variance; Agricultural Experiments Standard Errors; Apatial Correlation |
Inference | |||
| Blog | Inference | Automatic for the people | Bayes Factors; Two Trials Rule; Significance |
| Blog | Inference | Dawid's Selection Paradox | Bayesian; Conjugate Prior; Hierarchical Model |
| Blog | Inference | A Paradox of Prior Probabilities | Bayesian; Conjugate Prior; Hierarchical Model |
| Blog | Inference | Fisher's Alternative to the Alternative | History of Statistics; Significance Test |
| Blog | Inference | Also Smith and Jones | Bayesian; Sequential Analysis |
| Blog | Inference | The irrelevance of stopping rules in meta-analysis | Sequential Analysis; Meta-Analysis; Weighting; Evidence |
| Blog | Inference | The Pathetic P-value | Bayesian; Frequentist; Significance |
| Blog | Inference | Double Jeopardy | Bayesian; Frequentist; Significance |
| Blog | Inference | When relevance is irrelevant | Additivity; Statistical Analysis; Survival Analysis; Numbers Needed to Treat; Personalised Medicine |
| Paper | Inference | Bayesian, Likelihood,and FrequentistApproaches to Statistics | Tutorial; Bayesian; Frequentist; Clinical Trials; Drug Development |
| Paper | Inference | Invalid Inversion | Regression to the Mean; Error of the Transposed Conditional; Bayesian |
| Paper | Inference | You may Believe you are a Bayesian but you are Probably Wrong | Bayesian; Jeffreys; Fisher; De Finetti; Neyman-Pearson |
| Blog | Inference | The nuisance parameter nuisance | Cross-over trials; Testing assumptions; Pre-testing; Carry-over |
| Blog | Inference | The importance of knowing how much you don't know | Standard Errors; History of Statistics; Meta-analysis; Confidence Intervals; Experimental Design |
| Blog | Inference | Of Amazons, Martingales, Rogue Traders and Sequential Analysis | Meta-analysis; Sequential Analysis; Martingales; Clinical trials |
| Blog | Inference | Dichotomania | Measurement; Efficiency; Information; Clinical trials |
| Blog | Inference | Being Wrong about Efficacy Probabilities | Clinical trials; Randomisation; Causal Inference; Prediction |
| Blog | Inference | Cause for Concern | Causal Inference; Mixed models; Design of Experiments; Lord's Paradox |
| Video | Inference | What is your question? Causal and predictive purposes of clinical trials and the implications for analysis | Causal Inference; Mixed models; Prediction |
| Blog | Inference | The Many Halls Problem | Causal Inference; Mixed models; Lord's Paradox; Design of Experiments |
| Blog | Inference | Margins of Error | Significance testing; Replication; P-values |
| Blog | Inference | Trends towards non-significance | Significance testing; P-values; Fragility Index |
| Blog | Inference | The mean side of the force: How regression to the mean can fool us | Inference; Concurrent Control; Bias; Causality |
| Blog | Inference | Being Just about Adjustment in Clinical Trials | Inference; Likelihood; Modelling; Bias; Causality; ANCOVA |
| Blog | Inference | Tensions over Testing | Inference; Evidence; Modelling; Multiplicity |
| Blog | Inference | A Sense of Proportion | Survival Analysis; Proportional Hazards; Log Rank Test; Cox Regression; Pre-testing |
| Blog | Inference | Sum Difference. Random and Fixed Block Effects | Mixed Models; Recovering Inter-Block Information; Cross-over Trials; Incomplete Blocks |
Miscellaneous | |||
| Paper | Miscellaneous | Comets, Contagion and Contingency | Infectious diseases; Stochastic Processes; Cometary Hypothesis |
| Paper | Miscellaneous | A Pronounced Mistake | Language; Grammar; English;German; French; Basle; Switzerland |
| Paper | Miscellaneous | May the fourth be with you | Statistical vocabulary; quartiles; quarters;deciles;tenths |
Personalised Medicine | |||
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Personal Perils | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | 30 Years of Numbers Needed to Treat | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Painful Dichotomies | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; Exponential Distribution; Counterfactual |
| Program | Personalised Medicine | NNT Simulator and Calculator | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; Exponential Distribution; Counterfactual |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Responder Despondency | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; Exponential Distribution; Counterfactual; Zombie Statistics |
| Paper | Personalised Medicine | Statistical pitfalls of personalized medicine | Numbers Needed to Treat; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; Exponential Distribution; Counterfactual; Zombie Statistics |
| Paper | Personalised Medicine | Three Things Every Medical Writer Should Know About Statistics | Regression to the Mean; Invalid Inversion; Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; |
| Paper | Personalised Medicine | Mastering Variation | Responder fallacy; Personalised Medicine; Components of Variation; Quality; Counterfactuals |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Evidence Based or Person-centred? A Statistical debate (Guest Post) | Precision Medicine; Personalised Medicine; Bioequivalence; n-of-1 Trials |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | The Power of Negative Thinking | Clinical Trials; Personalised Medicine; Power;Subgroups;Responders;Critical Care |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Finding excuses | Clinical Trials; Personalised Medicine; Power;Subgroups;Responders;Critical Care |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Invisible Statistics | Clinical Trials; Personalised Medicine; Subgroups; Responders; Bioequivalence; Sex inequality |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | Fair Shares: Sexual Justice in Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials | Clinical Trials; Personalised Medicine; Subgroups; Sex inequality; Ethics |
| Blog | Personalised Medicine | It's harder than you think | Clinical Trials; Personalised Medicine; Responder Analysis |
Professional | |||
| Blog | Professional | On Being a Consultant (Medical) Statistician | Consulting; Pharmaceutical Industry |
| Podcast | Professional | Effective Statistician podcast with Alexander Schacht | Consulting; Pharmaceutical Industry; Career Advice;Medical Statistics |
Randomisation | |||
| Blog | Randomisation | Randomisation, Ratios and Rationality | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation |
| Paper | Randomisation | The Well-adjusted Statistician | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Covariance; Randomisation |
| Blog | Randomisation | Being a statistician means never having to say you are certain | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation; Causal Analysis |
| Blog | Randomisation | Indefinite Irrelevance | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation; Causal Analysis |
| Paper | Randomisation | Baseline Balance and Valid Statistical Analyses | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation |
| Blog | Randomisation | Stop Obesessing about Balance | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation |
| Blog | Randomisation | Being Just about Adjustment | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Covariance; Randomisation; Baselines |
| Interview | Randomisation | 70 Years and Still Here: The Randomized Clinical Trial and its Critics | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation |
| Blog | Randomisation | Randomisation is not about balance, nor about homogeneity but about randomness | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation, Incomplete blocks, Confidence Intervals |
| Blog | Randomisation | Balance is not the issue | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation; Incomplete blocks; Confidence Intervals |
| Blog | Randomisation | Losing control | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation; Concurrent Control; Historical Controls; COVID-19 |
| Video | Randomisation | Being wrong about randomisation | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation;Uncertainty;Standard Errors |
| Blog | Randomisation | Balancing the view on Balance | Clinical Trials; Analysis of Variance; Randomisation;Uncertainty;Standard Errors;Balance |
| Blog | Randomisation | Random, yes, but sampling or isation? | Clinical Trials; Randomisation; Experiments;Surveys; Random sampling |
| Blog | Randomisation | Pair Shaped | Clinical Trials; Randomisation; Experiments |
| Blog | Randomisation | Shaped Pairs | Clinical Trials; Randomisation; Experiments |
| Blog | Randomisation | Second Things First | Clinical Trials; Randomisation; Experiments; Causal Inference; Propensity Score |
| Blog | Randomisation | Match Fit | Clinical Trials; Randomisation; Experiments; Causal Inference; Uncertainty |
Teaching | |||
| Blog | Teaching | On thinking and learning | Universities; Undergraduate Education |
| Program | Teaching | Logistic exam mark rescaler | Examinations; Assessment; Logistic Regression |
This page last updated 3 November 2025
Page maintained by Stephen Senn stephen@senns.uk