Jay Harrison

Title

Principal biostatistician

Company

AFB International

The true meaning of the p-value in pet food research – Jay Harrison, principal biostatistician for AFB International, discusses how, in the pet food industry, business decisions about product advancement and inferences about pet and consumer behavior are based on comparative assessments using data. Often, these hinge on the p-value, a statistic that indicates whether a hypothetical situation seems reasonable after collecting and analyzing the data; yet misinterpretations of statistical summaries due to oversimplification of the p-value are common. Harrison uses examples from pet food research to illustrate common misconceptions about p-values and their interpretations in order to explain their proper application.

Harrison has extensive experience with statistical consulting in pet food manufacturing and veterinary medicine, with additional experience in agricultural biotechnology, clinical trials and social media analysis. He has co-authored over 40 publications in refereed journals. His professional interests include Bayesian statistics, multivariate statistics and statistical graphics. Harrison has presented at numerous agricultural, metabolomics and statistics conferences, including in the US and Australia.