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We are living in strange times. These last months have changed the way we see the world and as a consequence, a lot of people seem to be looking for significant changes in their life. Clearly, I am no exception, since after having worked at Stats4SD for nearly three years, I have decided to leave and make the leap at being an independent… something.

Image 1: picture from the prologue of crish

I say ‘something’ because I’m not really sure what I will become exactly. Some kind of artist, but also still a statistician, and maybe a bit of a writer? I don’t know yet. But I know what I will be doing, in order to get to that ‘something’. I will develop the several project ideas I’ve had over the years, that have the aim of mixing art with Statistics and Mathematics education, with a bit of philosophy, and sometimes stories. So, it won’t be directly related to the work of Stats4SD, but if things go as planned in my head, the results of those projects should hopefully peak the personal interest of some people in the team and maybe even some of the clients of Stats4SD. The two ‘flagship’ projects that I will be working on at the beginning of this exciting journey are a webcomic called crish, and an online book on Statistics.

Image 2: Current home page picture of crish

The webcomic idea is actually well underway. I started drawing it towards the end of 2019. It will be 4 chapters long (and a short prologue) and will follow the adventures of Alex* and Nicole, after the former decides to prove the existence (or inexistence) of God using a survey questionnaire! ODK is not part of the plot, but one will find bits of statistical concepts explained in each of the chapters. The first chapter is close to being finished (well it’s been something like 9 months that it’s at this stage!), and I hope that it won’t take more than 2-3 more years to finish it all. It’s in French for now, but I definitely intend to make an English version of it. You can access it here: https://crish.fr/ . The illustrations used in this blog post come from it.

Image 3: picture from 1^st chapter of crish

The online book on Statistics is not at the same degree of advancement. But it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for about 10 years now! So, I’ve had time to refine the idea, and hopefully the end result will be useful to people. The specificity of this online book is that it will explain Statistics neither mathematically, nor practically. Instead, it will be an attempt to bring a deep understanding of Statistical concepts and theory to the reader through intuitive associations, connections with related topics and heavy reliance on the bigger picture. I will also add some art to accompany the text and make it more attractive.

Image 4: picture from 1^st chapter of crish

How will I make money? That I don’t know ?. I mean, I know that I won’t be making money at first, but I have plenty of ideas for related projects. Hopefully, some of them will be appreciated and increase my odds to get grants, find editors, patrons, sell art, run successful crowd funding campaigns, teach, generate advertising revenue … As you see, I can picture quite a few independent sources of revenue. All of them are a bit unlikely. But the sum of many independent unlikely events make-up an event that is a lot less unlikely. Probability 101 here! So I’m optimistic. Let’s see…

Image 5: picture from 1^st chapter of crish

I am very grateful to Stats4SD for having given me the opportunity to work on many different interesting projects and to be part of a wonderful team. I know it’s time for me to have a go at working full-time on my projects, but that doesn’t mean it’s a definitive ‘Au revoir’. It can’t be. It Is more an ‘A+’, which is a shorthand for ‘A plus’, itself shorthand for ‘A plus tard’ whose literal translation would be ‘To later’. In French, ‘A+’ is therefore a sort of ‘See you later’, but without having to commit to a specific verb describing the type of interaction that will happen ‘later’. There’s a lot of English expressions that I miss when I speak French. This time I can show you one that I’m missing when I speak English. Plus, it’s nice to end with a bit of Maths ?.

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Image 6: picture from 1^st chapter of crish

* It is funny that there are two Alex’s at Stats4SD, but that the name of the main protagonist in crish had already been chosen a year before I joined the team!

Author: Nicolas Greliche

Nicolas has a PhD in biostatistics and 10 years’ experience in conducting research, analysis, support and teaching in Statistics. He has worked widely in the field of Statistical science, in areas such as Economics, Genetic Epidemiology, Psychology and Medical Statistics. Nicolas has a passion for Statistics education and is determined to explore new ways to disseminate Statistical knowledge to the general population.