Statistics was probably my major failing as a second year engineering student; perhaps because all I can remember was a prof who gave the lectures lying across a very long lecturer's desk. A second attempt while later earning my business degree only went mildly better but I did learn about statistics associated with avocado marketing (or something along those lines). Hey, maybe statisticians are academic theorists, who knows? But if you've had one of those "How did we do?" query windows pop up after a SkypeOut call and you responded, you have contributed to the collection of call quality information that helps to build a database for statistical analysis.

So, if you've got experience working with packages such as SAS, SPSS and/or Matlab Stats and how to use them for data mining with some feeling for IP communications technology, Skype's Audio/Video team is seeking a statistical analyst, based in Tallinn. Responsibilities:

• Root cause analysis for good and poor Skype calls, including suggesting changes to the development team
• Modeling the technical call data for quality metrics.
• Visualizing data and creating reports for different purposes
• Performing special statistical studies of data
• Develop statistical analyzing and reporting methods for Skype use
• Taking part to external co-operations on Call statistics

This team is also looking into "end point" configurations to determine what is required for the best call quality robustness and researching hardware issues such as sound cards, headsets and Skype phone hardware. Skype can provide the best audio codecs but if your headset, sound card and/or Skypephone hardware does not have the audio bandwidth and other properties to support HD voice, it all goes for naught. Performing statistical analysis will provide some insight into the impact of the quasi-quantum physics-like randomness of IP packet transmission.and its role in the overall call quality picture.

Probably a graduate of the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics, which nieghbours one of North America's top engineering schools (my son is a graduate, what can I say?) would represent the ideal candidate. Now back to that root mean square standard deviation calculation.

Tags: Skype, Skype Audio/Video, SAS, SPSS, Statistical Analyst

Powered by Qumana