In 2010, with the support of the ASA and Population Association of America, former ASA Director of Education Martha Aliaga and other ASA staff members worked with prominent statisticians and statistics educators to launch the U.S. version of Census at School—a free, international classroom project that engages students in grades 4–12 in statistical problemsolving using their own real data. The Census at School project began in the United Kingdom in 2000 and now includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Japan, and the United States.
The ASA is building upon the success of the UK and other countries in using Census at School to enhance statistical problemsolving and interdisciplinary studies using real data of interest to students. Through Census at School, grade 4–12 teachers can enhance their statistics knowledge to better teach the increased statistics content in the Common Core State Standards.
Read the full story »Views and information from the writers of the Amstat News columns: Master’s Notebook, Science Policy, and Funding Opportunities
Here are the highlights of the December issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Graduate students in mathematics and statistics are exposed to real-world problems from industry and government during the Industrial Mathematical and Statistical Modeling (IMSM) workshop, July 16–24.
Here are the highlights of the February 2012 issue of Technometrics.
Faculty in the department of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh developed a scientific communication skills course to strengthen students’ communication skills. Here, Jeanine M. Buchanich describes the course goals and benefits.
Award deadlines and information
The American Statistical Association is seeking a director of programs to report to and work closely with the executive director to execute the ASA’s strategic and short-range plans.
Sastry Pantula, 2010 president of the ASA, looks back on his years of service to the association and enthusiastically views the years ahead.
In the November issue of Math Horizon’s Aftermath column, the essay “Statistics à la Mode,” written by Meg Dillon, discussed the difficulty she experienced as a mathematics professor teaching an introductory statistics course. In response to her essay, several members of the Special Interest Group of the Mathematical Association of America on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education explain how teaching statistics is different than teaching mathematics.
The Statistics and the Environment Section announces a short course, Introduction to Analysis of Extremes: Univariate and Multivariate Cases.
The Biometrics Section begins 2012 with an introduction to this year’s executive committee.
The Midwest Biopharmaceutical Statistics Workshop (MBSW) will be hosted by Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, from May 21–23 for the 35th consecutive year. MBSW was created to meet the needs of U.S. pharmaceutical industry statisticians in the Midwest, but continues to welcome attendees from across the country and around the world.
More than 210 statisticians, methodologists, and health policy experts gathered from October 5–7, 2011, at The Ritz Carlton in Cleveland, Ohio, for the ninth International Conference on Health Policy Statistics.
The 29th ASA Quality and Productivity Research Conference will be held at the Long Beach, California, campus of California State University from June 5–7. The goal of the conference is to stimulate interdisciplinary research among statisticians, scientists, and engineers in quality and productivity, industrial needs, and the physical and engineering sciences.
Proposals for JSM late-breaking sessions should be submitted by April 13. Also, the section’s newsletter editors give 10 reasons why everyone should read the SRMS newsletter.
ASA President Robert Rodriguez explains our need for statistical leaders and offers ways to develop leaders of the future.
A new course on statistical leadership, offered by the department of biostatistics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was launched last fall. Here, Lisa LaVange, William Sollecito, David Steffen, Lori Evarts, and Michael Kosorok discuss the goals and results of the course.
The ASA has joined other leading statistical societies to declare 2013 the International Year of Statistics in order to promote the importance of statistics to the broader scientific community, business and government data users, media, policymakers, employers, students, and the general public. Here, ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein describes the focus of the event.
Chris Barker recently visited Cuba and found that statisticians there need statistics books. Here, he explains how you can help.
COPAFS is the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics and acts as an advocate for the development and dissemination of high-quality federal statistics. Member organizations include professional associations, businesses, research institutes, and others interested in federal statistics. Through COPAFS, members have an opportunity to review and affect issues such as timeliness, quality, confidentiality, and the relevance of data. COPAFS holds quarterly meetings, the last one being on December 2, 2011.
A biopharmaceutical symposium, BASS XIX, will be held November 5–9 at the Mulberry Inn Suites in historic Savannah, Georgia.
Lauren Bailey, a first-year biostatistics PhD student at the University of Illinois in Chicago, shares how she discovered the value statistics plays in the workplace.
The International Workshop in Applied Probability will be held in Jerusalem, Israel, from June 11–14.
News and information about members of the ASA highlighted in the February issue. For a complete listing of news and information about members of the ASA, click here.
Each year, the Myrto Lefkopoulou lectureship is awarded to a promising biostatistical scientist who has made contributions to either collaborative or methodologic research in the applications of statistical methods to biology or medicine and/or excellence in the teaching of biostatistics. Find out how you can submit your nomination.
Amstat News invited Barry D. Nussbaum, chief statistician at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to respond to a few questions so readers could learn more about him and the agency he leads.
