Statistical Consulting
Overview
We are a group of graduate students and faculty in the Department of Statistics who assist graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff with statistical analysis for ISU-related research projects. To learn more about our services, see our services and consulting process. Curious about who we are? Meet the people behind Statistical Consulting on our team page.
Consultation Services
Services We Offer
- Aid in articulating scientific questions that can be addressed with your data.
- Provide guidance on experimental and study design including power analysis and sample size calculations.
- Advise on data management and formatting. We can provide guidance on what your dataset should look like and can suggest resources for cleaning your data.
- Suggest appropriate exploratory data analysis from calculating summary statistics to data visualization.
- Recommend statistical methods and models, including model form, selection, and assessment.
- Edit code to analyze data in R, SAS, Python, and JMP. We also offer support in SPSS and Stata.
- Interpret analysis output and address scientific questions.
We Do Not
- Help with statistics homework or class projects. This service is for research projects.
- Teach basic statistical methods or coding. We expect you have taken STAT 5101: Statistical Methods for Data Analysis.
- Provide services on short deadlines. Depending on the complexity of the problem and our current workload, a few weeks may be required.
- Clean messy data. The ISU Library Research Data Services provides resources and workshops. The article Data Organization in Spreadsheets illustrates our expectations for data we receive.
- Provide significant intellectual contribution(s) without appropriate recognition. We aim to give advice, provide sample code, and suggest resources so our clients fully understand the recommended analysis. If you would prefer that we conduct the entire analysis or write manuscript language, further discussion is needed.
Data Privacy and IRB Compliance
We can work with de-identified human subjects' data, including datasets requiring IRB approval, provided individual identities cannot be linked and you have IRB approval to share the data with us. For proprietary data, please anonymize site names or other identifiers before sharing.
Request a Consultant
Fill out the consultant request form. You will be contacted within 2 business days.
Researchers in VetMed have dedicated consultants. Please contact Yangyifan directly at ylu1@iastate.edu.
Before submitting a consultant request, please review our services and consulting process.
In order to fill out the form, your computer must be either on the ISU campus network or connected via VPN.
Upcoming Events & Workshops
- Statistical Consulting offers drop-in hours during Grad Mixer Wednesdays from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm in Student Innovation Center 4237. Spring 2026 dates: January 28; Feb 4, 11, 18, and 25; March 4, 11, and 25; and April 1, 15, 22, and 29. Fall 2026 dates: TBA.
- Statistical Consulting offers weekly drop-in hours for Ivy College of Business clients in 3223 Gerdin on Thursdays from 1:00 – 3:00 pm (Spring 2026).