Expert of the Month: 5 Facts About Statistics Author Jill Schmidlkofer

Today, we are rolling out a regular monthly feature on the blog, Five Facts About.... Each month, we'll ask an expert five questions about themselves. They will be known as our Expert of the Month. Want to be profiled? Simply shoot us an email and we'll send over a template for you to fill out. We want a chance to get to know each of you better and for each of you to have a chance to get to know how awesome everyone here is. I believe in the power of random connection, and this is just one more way we can make those connections happen for you. 

Without further ado, I bring you one of our exemplary experts, Jill Schmidlkofer!

FACT 1: What is your area of expertise?

Statistics – I got my M.S. in 1974, when Statistics was practically in its infancy. (I took a Multiple Regression course using a four-function calculator.) Now I feel like a rock star because Statistics has gotten almost sexy. 

FACT 2: What is your workspace like?

A lawn chair in the living room, with a gel pad. There's a big basket under the computer  table for Buttons the Cat. Very cozy. My window looks out on the lake and the golf course. Heaven on earth.

FACT 3: What do you do when you’re not authoring textbook solutions?

Sleep.

FACT 4: Tell us something exciting that has happened in your life this week!

My granddaughter smiled and cooed at me. She is 6 weeks old. There's space in Buttons the Cat's wicker basket for her when she comes for a visit.  I don't think Buttons will like sharing. 

FACT 5: Why do you like working with Chegg?

I like working for a company whose name is recognized by virtually everyone under the age of 25. The company is vibrant, forward-thinking, and its vision is inspiring! Carrie and Ryan do a spectacular job taking care of all of us solutions authors. That is the best part of the job, besides the paycheck.

SOMETHIN' EXTRA: And, because Jill always likes to go above and beyond, she's offering her one top trick for solution authoring: 

I always re-read my solutions just before I send them to Carrie. I look for typos, format errors, delimiter issues (!), hanging indents, boxed answers, and separation of steps in the problem solution. I make sure that, if I did a copy/paste from an earlier problem with a similar solution, that I have changed all the numbers to those in the current problem. I re-read the problem holistically to make sure that the flow of the explanation is good. It takes maybe a minute or two per problem, but it pays off big time. I usually make some kind of change to about 80% of the problems when I do this review.  

Find Jill on both Google+ and LinkedIn. She is an excellent resource for authoring, telling amazing and hilarious stories, and offering encouragement and ideas. I think we all wish we had someone like Jill to teach us statistics (I know I do!).