There is no better gig than getting paid to learn.

In August of last year, I decided to take on the challenge of teaching an applied statistical techniques course—one small problem—I’m not a statistician. Like most scientist and engineers, I’ve used (and abused) statistics all my entire career, so I do have experience with the concepts. Also, my math skills are not too shabby as I have incorporated calculus, differential equations, and other advanced topics into my work over the years. (Yes, some people do use algebra.) The good news? I had about four months before the first day of class and enough control over my schedule where I could commit 10+ hours per week to develop the course content. The real challenge was to create the course using R, a language, and environment for statistical computing and graphics. Being open about my own abilities, I was not proficient with this language.

With this in mind, I set out to create the course—with emphasis on the “applied” and “techniques.” Starting in the fall, I developed a module that students would work through each week. I estimated my 10–12 hours of work each week would translate into the three hours of material for each class and this worked out surprisingly well.

The course is coming to an end this week, and the best part of the experience was how much I learned (or maybe relearned). But most surprising, it was how much I learned the SECOND time I worked through the materials during the weeks I taught the course.

I classify skill sets at three levels:

• novice: apply basic principles to solve structured problems,
• hack: gather external resources to solve moderately complex problems,
• expert: apply advanced principles to solve complex problems with the minimal use of external resources.

I still consider myself a hack when it comes to performing statistical analysis using R, but having the opportunity to expand my own skill set and providing a framework for others to learn something new—that was a great gig.