Dr. Steve Figard

Steve received his Bachelor’s (neurobiology) from Cornell University, a Master’s (chemistry) from Northern Illinois University, and was finally ejected with a Ph.D. (biochemistry) from Florida State University. After a two year post-doc at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he escaped to Abbott Laboratories in Chicagoland, where he hid for nearly 26 years developing automated in vitro diagnostic immunoassays. In 2012 he deserted to the warmer climes of South Carolina where he heads up Bob Jones University’s Cancer Research Lab mentoring undergraduate biology majors through a research experience using cancer biology.

When asked to propose a course on biostatistics for biology majors, he, of course, chose JMP to use as the software with which to share his basic expertise in this subject. He quickly discovered that biology majors really don't want to learn statistics despite it being very necessary for their future success as scientists. In fact, a very high percentage were scared of the topic and expected to fail miserably. In the ensuing years of teaching, his efforts to figure out how to best communicate the subject to his students in a way that "stuck" ultimately crystallized into the content featured in this book. Even now, the desire to serve his students leaves him open to a continual process improvement mindset regarding his teaching. The ride may be bumpy, but we can still have fun on it!