Michael Larsen, CHANCE Editor

New Developments
Did you know you can sign up to receive email notifications about the table of contents (TOC) for CHANCE? In August, there were more than 350 people with TOC subscriptions.

The ASA has decided to make the online version of CHANCE a member benefit for K–12 teacher members of the ASA. Earlier this year, it was made a benefit for student members. This means a critically important segment of the ASA (typically with a limited budget) can access CHANCE without additional charge. This is a great opportunity for these ASA members and authors who wish to communicate their interest in probability and statistics to a wide audience. Thanks to the ASA for making this possible.

In February, the ASA will launch a new blog called “The Statistics Forum, brought to you by the American Statistical Association and CHANCE Magazine.” The founding editor is Andrew Gelman of Columbia University. This development has great potential to extend the mission of CHANCE. In particular, it will give all of us opportunities to participate in discussions about probability and statistics and their role in important and interesting topics.

CHANCE starts out with an article by Jason Crowley, Brenna Curley, and Dave Osthus that analyzes results from the game show “Jeopardy” from 1984–2009. Graphical analysis is used to depict trends across the show’s history.

Necip Doganaksoy, Gerald Hahn, and Bill Meeker describe issues involved in validating product liability with limited budgets and testing timeframes. Several illustrations from real applications are presented.

Janice Lent discusses the role of statistical models and statistical insight in forecasting and understanding energy supply and demand. She explains the role of the U.S. Energy Information Administration in developing the statistical National Energy Modeling System.

Terry Allen, Amber Thom, and Glen Buckner present multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) as a tool for summarizing several categorical variables. In this article, MCA is used to interpret factors related to infant homicides, a rare but terrible event. Data come from the Uniform Crime Report, the oldest continuing and updated database in the United States for recording crimes known to the police.

A group of authors provide us their insight into statistical consulting with limited resources. And who ever has unlimited resources? Mark Glickman discusses short-term consulting and the idea of approximating the most principled approaches. One of his illustrations comes from consulting about multiplayer online games. Sarah Ratcliffe and Justine Shults, biostatisticians in a medical school, share their insight regarding methods research on a limited budget, where the limiting factor is often time. Their suggestions of planning and allocating time are relevant to statisticians in academic and research careers in general. Todd Nick and Ralph O’Brien focus on developing grant proposals on a limited budget, which again often means limited time. They encourage developing a task checklist and planning ahead. Richard Ittenbach outlines the process of scale—or composite measure—development, and how it can be approached on a limited budget. He emphasizes that some costs, such as the need to acquire new knowledge, can be difficult to quantify.

A different group of authors wrote about consulting in university centers in Volume 21, Number 2. The current articles and the ones from 2008 are available on the CHANCE website and, together, give a lot of useful advice.

Are you a fan of bodybuilding champion, movie actor, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Whatever your opinion of him, you’ll enjoy the statistical analysis by Phil Stark of the text of a veto by Schwarzenegger in 2009.

Michael Huber reanalyzes a famous homerun hit by baseball legend Mickey Mantle in 1963. Using a combination of mathematics, physics, and statistics, can we accurately predict the distance the ball would have gone if not impeded?

Trent McCotter addresses expected maximum length of hitting streaks in baseball using permutations of actual hitting streaks. Read the article to learn how computations were done and what conclusions can be reached.

Howard Wainer, in his 20th year as a columnist for CHANCE, gives us his 93rd article (according to his count), which is titled “Pies, Spies, Roses, Lines, and Symmetries.” The Visual Revelations column focuses on common topics: graphical display and history.

Finally, Jonathan Berkowitz brings us a new puzzle in his Goodness of Wit Test column. Solving the puzzles involves pattern recognition and looking beyond the obvious. His 10th puzzle is titled “Once Is Enough.”