Our Students Enlightened by Dr. Zeger of Johns Hopkins

We welcomed Dr. Scott Zeger of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health on Friday to give his presentation titled "Quantitative Reasoning to Advance the Public's Health." As the first seminar of the Passport Program, requiring students of the School of Public Health to attend seminars of varying public health tracks, the Healthy Turtle found students from each department and asked them how they benefited from an Epidemiology and Biostatistics seminar. Judging by their responses, the Healthy Turtle thinks that the Passport Program is off to a solid start.

Thank you, Dr. Zeger, for the visit! As you can see below, we learned a lot.

Enjoy some photos from the event! A list of upcoming Passport Events can be found here. If you're a students of the SPH, remember to register for credit!

Katherine Cole

Public and Community Health

Undergraduate Student

“I thought Dr. Zeger's explanation of what biostatistics is was easy to understand especially for students who may not know much about it. His example with the coin with two heads help provide an real life example of how statistics can be applied. I thought his analogy of how biostaticians are like the trim tab of a rudder was most interesting. The trim tab is the part of the rudder that begins to turn first before the rudder can turn to change the direction the boat is headed. This explained that biostaticians can change how the public perceives something and begin to shift their view of it with help of other public health professionals.”

Brian Baum

Kinesiology

Graduate Student

“Dr. Zeger gave an excellent presentation on biostatistics. He has the skill to simplify explanations of complex concepts so they can be understood by anyone regardless of their background in statistics. One of the most valuable points that Dr. Zeger made was the reiteration that the goal of statistics is to simply 'find the truth' based on available evidence. In essence, we use statistics to determine (as closely as possible) the answer to a problem when we do not have all of the information available to state the absolute truth.

Kranti Vora

Family Sciences

Doctoral Student

“It was an interesting lecture. I liked the part where he compared public health schools with 'trim tabs', highlighting the role of faculty and students of public health schools in shaping the health of people. I also appreciated the way he simplified practical application of biostat by citing Nepal project.”

Lynn Scully

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Graduate Student

“Dr. Zeger presented the field of biostatistics in a manner that was exciting and that students could relate to. He discussed the gap between learning for the sake of knowledge and learning to solve problems in public health and his emphasis on bridging the gap inspired me to apply this idea to my own work.”

Kathleen Ruben, M.S.

Health Services Administration

Doctoral Student

“I enjoyed Dr. Zeger's presentation for several reasons: The first was because of his own enthusiasm for the topic and his field of study. He kept the presentation light and fun! Secondly, I could sense that the students (especially the new students who have not yet had Biostatistics and may be concerned about it) were paying close attention and were relieved to see that this can be a very interesting and exciting topic. The most valuable things that I took away from the presentation were the reinforcement of learning from the evidence that is presented to help update prior beliefs. Also, that small changes over time can really make a difference in advancing the public's health. I think Dr. Zeger did a great job (with the coin toss) of showing us how we make inferences based on limited samples.”