Art Kendall: Very comfortable. I was a senior mathematical statistician. I did congressional oversight of things like the census bureau and other federal statistical activities. I was an “expert” in the stat research division of the census bureau where I brought methods from psychometrics to social indicators and data mining. I learned statistics as a means rather than an end and have an abiding interest in the utility of statistics. I’m a methodologist.

King Douglas: What are your thoughts about "Instant Statisticians," as made possible by desktop statistical packages?

Art Kendall: You’ve probably often seen me write about the GUI as a way to write the first draft. My experience has taught me that you never create a finished product the first time. You go back and refine things depending on what you’ve found out, or you’ve found a better way to put it. Much of the purpose of statistics is about communicating with data. Analysis is a continuous improvement process. When you write a program with the GUI, you very seldom do it right the first time. It’s a continuous process of successive approximation.

King Douglas: What is the motivation behind your willingness to help others solve SPSS problems without seeking compensation? (i.e., the SPSSX-L e-mail list).

Art Kendall: It keeps me from getting rusty and many times you learn new ways to do things. When you think of a way to solve a particular problem, you may never have faced that problem before. It’s like a language to a large extent. By using the language, you keep up with it and you find new ways to express things. And I’m the kind of person who likes to help people.

King Douglas: Say we are coming to you for help with an SPSS problem. What's the best way for us to frame our question?

Art Kendall: In almost every consulting field, the presenting question is very seldom the actual question. A great deal of the job of the consultant is to find out what the questions really are. If you look at my style on the SPSSX e-mail list, I commit that terrible Irish sin of answering a question with a question. People are not necessarily sure what their question is.

King Douglas: What applications other than SPSS do you use when reporting the results of SPSS analysis?

Art Kendall: Quatro Pro and Word Perfect. Word Perfect is to Word as SPSS is to SAS. Word Perfect is a lot more user friendly than Microsoft Word.