Dear Mr. Pippins -
Perhaps I or one of my colleagues could be of assistance. I lead an all-volunteer, Not For Profit statistical organization called Peace-Work. Peace-Work volunteers do pro bono statistical analysis for good causes, much of it in issue-driven advocacy in poverty, education, homelessness, human rights, and other areas. You can learn more about Peace-Work's activities by internet searches and visiting out web site at www.peace-work.org.
Peace-Work's reliance on unpaid volunteers for statistical analysis may meet the needs of your internship program. If this interests you, it is essential that you talk to your advisor, university faculty, or other staff members who administer your internship program to be sure Peace-Work qualifies. I would be happy to work with your university to provide information, paperwork etc. needed to fulfill the needs of their program. It will be required to have written confirmation (email is fine) from your university program that they will accept your working with Peace-Work: it's their program and they set the rules. I won't let you end up in a situation where you think you are doing an internship but your university won't accept the work.
To apply for an internship, please contact me by email or responding Privately to Sender on this posting. I will need to learn more about your background, and discuss the possibility of an internship with your university and with the Peace-Work board.
One thing should be mentioned, wherever you seek an internship. Please allow me to offer a word of advice, if I may. Given your present situation, you might be thinking of working in analytics related to prisons and related issues. I must strongly advise against this as a possible conflict of interest. As statisticians, I must advise that we generally seek to avoid analyzing questions where we find ourselves in the data we are analyzing. As this is an ethical issue, others may see this differently. As the Director at Peace-Work, we do seek to apply this in all but the most general of populations. As an example, a Master's Degree student I had mentored for several years once asked for help with a project on deadbeat dads and the impact of their families. As a child of a deadbeat dad myself, I declined to assist with the project: I saw it as a possible conflict of interest. By contrast, I am now working on a project on the impact of gerrymandering in the State of Michigan, despite being a Michigan resident: this is a very large, general population.
If you are interested, please have a look at some of our work and talk with your university. If our activities appear to meet their needs, let me know and will be happy to work with them.
Thank you! I wish you well in whichever internship program you choose.
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David J Corliss, PhD
Director, Peace-Work
www.peace-work.orgdavidjcorliss@peace-work.org------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 12-18-2018 15:59
From: Johnny Pippins
Subject: Internship with a Twist
Hello All,
I have been a student-member of ASA for a couple of years now but have not been particularly active. I am reaching out in hopes of finding a friendly statistician to help a soon-to-be-statistician, me.
I have to find myself an internship to fulfill one of the requirements for the Master's in Statistical Science that I am earning at present. I am planning on doing said internship for the Summer Semester of 2019, thus my department desires that my paperwork be submitted early in the Spring of 2019 term which starts in a couple of weeks. At present, my current "environmental inconvenience" presents a dilemma for me; I am a distant student who is at the moment incarcerated in the state of Iowa. I will not bore you here with details, but if you want to read about how a former street kid turned wannabe statistician, you can read part of my story at http://www.arrestedscholarship.com under the tab Petition in Support of Author's Clemency or the essay Of plantation, slaves, and overseers.
Given my situation I realize that we are presented with a unique challenge but not an impossible one, were someone willing to assist--I will be prohibited from intern work such as coffee runs and picking up dry cleaning, but I think that we can pull off the required analysis part. My department chair says, "For students pursing the MS degree at a distance, most student do an internship, where they work with someone willing to supervise them on some projects related to statistics." He states further, "…they just need to be able to help you learn about some aspects of statistical practice which could include data collection, data management, data analysis, etc."
Looking for any help or advice I can get. Thanking you in advance.
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Johnny Pippins
Master's Candidate in Statistical Science
University of Idaho
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