Our Credentials
Dr. Dennis Helsel (PhD, Environmental Science and Engineering, Virginia Tech) has 33 years of experience applying statistics to practical issues in environmental sciences. He is the owner and lead scientist of Practical Stats, an environmental statistics training and consulting firm. He is the lead author of two textbooks, Statistical Methods in Water Resources (USGS, 2002), and Statistics for Censored Environmental Data using Minitab and R, 2nd ed. (Wiley, 2012), as well chapters in two handbooks and over 50 journal articles.
Full list of publications (pdf)
Dr. Helsel was a 2003 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Statistical Association's section on Statistics and the Environment, and of the Dept. of Interior's Distinguished Service Award in 2007. He has been invited to conduct training classes on environmental statistics to the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources; to the Umweltbundesamt (German Environment Agency); to students at the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland; and in the United States through the American Statistical Association. Dr. Helsel is our primary instructor. Download a list of Dr. Helsel's publications
Practical Stats also subcontracts with other instructors who hold PhD's in Statistics or Mathematical Statistics, who have extensive experience in environmental statistics, quality control processes, load (mass transport in streams) estimation, statistical methods for groundwater contamination, and have set up technical training programs. Together, we have conducted training courses in the US and overseas since 1990. More information is available upon request.
Who Else Has Taken Our Courses?
".An excellent class overall which I will recommend to others"..."I really appreciated your explanations of some common concepts that were previously explained to me in 'foggier' ways"....."I enjoyed the class. Thank you!"......"I learned a lot. This course was very informative and a great refresher." -- students in our October 2001 AES course
The list of agencies and organizations sending students to our classes has become quite long. Below is just a sampling of some of them. Several agencies have had us back multiple times, a testimony to the value they have gotten from our work.
International Training
Health Canada
Singapore Ministry of Water and Environment
Umweltbundesamt (German Environment Agency)
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Chinese Ministry of Water Resources
State and Regional Agencies
Southwest Florida Water Management District
Oklahoma Secretary of the Environment
California Dept. of Water Resources
LA Dept. of Environmental Quality
Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality
Kansas Dept. of Health and Environment
Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment
Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Washington State Dept. of Ecology
Montana Bureau of Mines
Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality
Utah Division of Water Quality
Federal and Tribal Agencies
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National Park Service
US Army Corps of Engineers
US Bureau of Reclamation
US Environmental Protection Agency
US Fish and Wildlife Service
US Geological Survey
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Sac and Fox Nation
Pawnee Nation
Eastern Shawnee Tribe
Companies and Corporations
Norwest Corp.
Larry Walker Associates
S.S. Papadopulos and Associates
Apogen Technologies
URS Corporation
NCASI
Exponent, Inc.
Brown and Caldwell
Tetra Tech
Local Government Agencies
New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection
New Jersey Pinelands Commission
City of Austin
City of Portland
City of Tulsa
City of Riverside, CA
Boise (ID) Environmental
Orange County, CA
Olmsted County, MN
King County, WA