David Morganstein

A Happy New Year to all and a special thanks to the hundreds of members who contribute their time supporting our chapters, sections, committees, meetings, and other ASA activities. Point of fact, since ASA must report annually to the IRS regarding our 501(c)(3) status, we estimate that almost 1,800 members provide considerable volunteer time that benefits the association. I’d like to speak specifically about five such volunteers for a moment.

As 2014 came to a close, the ASA Board gave a round of applause to these outgoing board members who served the association with their energy and creativity: Marie Davidian, past president; Martha Gardner, vice president; David Banks, publications representative; Nick Horton, Council of Chapters representative; and Janet Buckingham, Council of Sections representative. You’ve been wonderful colleagues to learn from, work with, and laugh with while on the board! I suspect we’ll all continue to hear about future efforts you undertake on behalf of the membership and the profession.

Overview of Initiatives

I’d like to use this month’s column to give you an overview of four new initiatives for 2015: expanding and recognizing mentoring, providing docents at JSM to offer guidance for first-time attendees, establishing a Stat 101 toolkit for instructors in non-stat programs, and providing a blog on all things statistical. The first two are inward looking, aimed at providing value directly to members. The second two will improve our professional visibility.

These four ideas were developed with valuable input from ASA Board members and former ASA presidents, for which I’m appreciative. As with previous years’ initiatives, they align with the ASA’s strategic plan, as I’ll describe below.

Mentoring (which supports Membership Growth under the theme “The ASA as ‘The Big Tent for Statistics’”). Many of us were fortunate to have at least one person who affected our career or professional development. This happens organically in many ways. Some of us had professors who took a special interest in us and continued to do so after we graduated. For some, a more experienced colleague at work has shown an interest and provided important guidance at critical points in our growth. Beyond these, however, I believe the ASA can increase opportunities to find a mentor, as well as to be one, serving many of our members in the process!

We are fortunate to have the creativity and energy of Eric Vance, assistant research professor and director of LISA (Virginia Tech’s Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis), to help expand mentoring within our association. Serving on both the Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP) steering committee and the Committee for Applied Statisticians (CAS), he has helped form mentoring pairs in the ASA via the CAS Clearinghouse, as well as at the 2014 CSP and JSM. He’s already hard at work planning similar activities for the 2015 CSP and JSM! Eric and I will talk more about mentoring, both creating mentoring pairs and honoring notable mentors, in a future President’s Corner.

JSM Docents (which supports Meetings under the “Big Tent” theme). Fortunately, JSM continues to grow! More members are attending, with a record 6,800+ in attendance during JSM 2014 in Boston. If you’re a regular attendee, you may feel comfortable coming to such a large event with so many activities and simultaneous sessions and networking with familiar faces. However, can you remember what it was like the first time you attended? Did it seem a bit formidable?

Mary Kwasny, associate professor in preventive medicine-biostatistics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, remembers. She agreed to create a docent program that identified dozens of volunteer members who had only been to a few JSMs. She located colleagues who were very much in touch with feeling overwhelmed and who wanted to help make JSM more inviting for some of the more than 1,000 first-time attendees! Her team of volunteer guides was identifiable by a new purple badge and introduced at the first-timers’ mixer on Sunday afternoon. In an upcoming column, we’ll talk with Mary about how the pilot worked in 2014 and her plans for the docent program in Seattle.

Stat 101 Toolkit (Education under the theme “Increasing the Visibility of the Profession”). How many people have you met who, upon learning what you do, replied with something like, “Oh, yes, I took a stat class once and it was terrible, very boring, all formulas!”

Dick De Veaux, C. Carlisle and Margaret Tippit Professor of Statistics at Williams College, has spent much of his career trying to understand how statistical concepts are best communicated. Along the way, he’s developed exciting and innovative ways of teaching statistics. Now, at my request, he’s taken up the challenge of building a toolkit for instructors of Stat 101 in nonstatistics departments such as psychology, engineering, and economics. In these areas, it’s often the least senior, most recent hire who is given this task. These individuals may be faculty who are not well equipped for the assignment and who would appreciate stimulating and current teaching tools.

While teaching a recent workshop for high-school AP Statistics teachers, Dick realized most had never actually done a statistical analysis. They had simply learned statistics from a textbook. So, Dick pulled together a few like-minded instructors (including Nick Horton, Deb Nolan, Julie Legler, and Dave Bock) to identify a variety of data sets, create notes with stimulating ways of presenting statistical concepts, and possibly generate a few videos that can be woven into a course. With these building blocks, the hope is that any instructor will be able to teach a more interesting and current introduction to our field. We’ll hear from Dick and his team in a future article.

Blog on All Things Statistical (Public Awareness under the theme “Increasing the Visibility of the Profession”). There is much that occurs in the world that has statistical content, events of great effect that would be more clearly understood by the public if viewed through a statistical perspective. Our profession might be served if we can quickly connect with journalists on important matters of the day. We should endeavor to provide a statistical, data-driven perspective and work with them so their reporting reflects the science we have to offer. Think of a blog on all things statistical not just for statisticians, but for the widest possible readership.

The ASA is in the process of implementing an agreement with Sense About Science USA and STATS.org that we hope will improve our opportunities to meet this need. Our statisticians would provide the background and statistical science, and their writers would provide connections to journalists, as many journalists subscribe to their websites. We believe they present quantitative concepts in a readable, easily understandable form. By working together, our profession can be visible to the public quickly, especially when contributing information about important topics of the day.

Let me end with a reminder about the fourth annual Conference on Statistical Practice, to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 19–21. The conference will provide opportunities for you to learn new statistical methodologies and best practices in statistical analysis, design, consulting, and statistical programming through courses and sessions with papers, panels, and posters. The conference provides opportunities for attendees to further their career development through courses and sessions on effective communication, management, and leadership skills in addition to career placement activities. If you are starting in your career, you’ll have the chance to find a mentor. If you would like to connect with someone early in his or her career and share your experience, you can serve as a mentor. I hope to see you there!