About me

My name is Antoine Soetewey. I am a PhD researcher in statistics at UCLouvain (Belgium) within the Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences. My research interests focus on survival analysis and bio-statistical procedures applied to cancer patients.

In parallel with my doctoral thesis, I am teaching several courses in statistics and probability at bachelor and master’s level at UCLouvain and UNamur. I also provide trainings/workshops and consulting in data science, statistics and R programming as part of UCLouvain’s technology platform for Statistical Methodology and Computing Service. See my CV for a more detailed overview of my academic and professional background.

Given my experience, I also support:

Students and academics in their studies through the success of their exam or the statistical part of their thesis or research project, thanks to tailor-made courses and personalized support in statistics and probability. See more information at easystat.be (website in French).
Professionals and companies in their research, data analysis and informed decision-making by bringing a statistical dimension to their projects, regardless of the sector, core business or size of the company. See more information at datanalyze.be.

If you need help in statistics, data analysis or R, feel free to contact me (here if you are a student, and here if you are a professional)!

Blog - What?

This blog is, as its name suggests, about statistics and R. More specifically, it aims at helping academics and professionals working with data to grasp important statistical concepts using examples and plain English.

When possible, for all statistical concepts covered in this blog, I try to write an article on how to apply them in R (and share the code). I also occasionally present some work related to data science & data visualization using R, news about my research and, to a smaller extent, my journey in the blogging world.

(For the interested reader, see reviews of the blog—and some thoughts about the future plans. In these reviews, I track its performance in R by analyzing page views, sessions, users and engagement using the {googleAnalyticsR} package.)

Why?

Stats and R was launched in December 2019. Friends, family, colleagues and even some readers often ask why I started this blog.

I really enjoy learning new things. I learn (and I am still learning) a lot by teaching statistics to students from diverse backgrounds.

So far, I believed that I understood a statistical concept as soon as I was able to teach it to my students. If I was not able to explain it in a clear and understandable way, it meant that I needed to study it more thoroughly because I actually did not fully understand it.

Throughout this blog, I actually realized that in order to learn and fully understand something new, one must:

be able to clearly communicate it and teach it in simple terms,
but also be able to write it down in a precise and concise manner

So although this blog was first launched to share statistical concepts I am most familiar with (hoping that it would be useful to some people), I now also use it to learn by writing. I think that this additional way of learning is actually as powerful as teaching because writing allows me to consolidate my understanding.

Also, I launched this blog to make statistics accessible to everyone! Statistics is often seen as a challenging course and many students struggle with this subject. Via this blog, I hope that the most common statistical concepts will become more clear so that both students and scientists dealing with data can use them appropriately.

Last but not least, getting valuable feedback from people all over the world makes the whole journey even more interesting and enriching.

If you are interested in learning more why I launched this blog, see the article about the main benefits of maintaining a technical blog.

Contact

Thanks in advance for reading. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions, remarks or inquiries.

You can also reach me out on:

Note that this is a personal site. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer(s).