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ASA’s Public Education Campaign Showcases the Significance of Statistics to Students

1 November 2016 737 views No Comment
Jill Talley, ASA Public Relations Manager

    From sports to elections, diversity, career guidance videos, and workforce surveys, the ASA’s public education campaign, ThisIsStatistics, has engaged students and teachers in dynamic new ways, all to showcase the value of statistics to society.

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    Aside from hands-on learning in the classroom, one of the most powerful ways students get excited about educational and career opportunities in statistics is by hearing directly from professionals in the field. We continue to produce a series of videos showcasing statisticians and data scientists who have made careers collecting and analyzing data on an impressive array of social and economic issues for high-profile companies, government agencies, academia, and global nonprofit organizations. The latest in this series, titled “Statisticians Making a Difference,” will debut later this month and feature Erik Andrejko of Climate Corporate, Valerie Bradley of BlueLabs, Samantha Lee-Ming Chiu of Booz Allen Hamilton, Jake Porway of DataKind, Megan Price of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and Marlyn Rodriguez of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

    Last spring, news blog entries chronicling diverse opportunities in the field of statistics as well as Facebook and Google advertisements featuring Florence Nightingale’s groundbreaking strides in a male-dominated field were also popular and successful at drawing in younger audiences to the site.

    While political conventions, campaigns, and advertisements were ramping up this summer, we launched Prediction 2016, an election prediction contest for students to use statistics to predict who will be the next president of the United States. Interest has poured in from students and teachers all over the world, who are excited about this unique opportunity to showcase their statistical savvy, as well as media outlets like r-bloggers and the New York Times Learning Network, eager to promote the unique educational activity.

    In September, more than 100 high-school and undergraduate students from across the United States learned first-hand what it’s like to master statistics off the field and in the front office during our Sports Analytics Webinar. Dennis Lock, director of analytics with the Miami Dolphins; Stephanie Kovalchik, senior sport scientist with Tennis Australia; and Scott Evans, senior research scientist at Harvard University and member of the New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports, shared their professional opinions on what statistics is and isn’t, why they enjoy their jobs, and how statistics is becoming one of the hottest careers.

    This fall, we partnered with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to conduct surveys quantifying the presence, demand, and utilization of statisticians and data scientists in the workforce and the significance and levels of college degrees in these fields. Results will be published soon.

    Through these efforts and the use of social media platforms, we’ve been able to connect with students like never before. In August, more than 6,800 web visitors checked out Prediction 2016, and in September, more than 8,000 people visited the ThisIsStatisics website. Around that same time, we generated more than 80,000 impressions on Twitter.

    Conveying the importance of statistical literacy and understanding, however, cannot be accomplished online alone. So, we met with dozens of school counselors at this year’s annual conference of the American School Counselor Association to help them understand and relate the value of statistics to students in both an educational curriculum and their daily lives.

    If you haven’t visited thisisstatistics.org recently, take a look at how these and other resources are helping expand awareness of statistics, and stay tuned as we will continue to educate students, teachers, parents, and others about this expanding field.

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