Susan VanderPlas loved math but didn’t want to be a statistician like her father. To her, what he did looked boring, and she wanted to know how the brain worked. During her master’s project, she became interested in statistical graphics because it reminded her of her first love—psychology and how the brain works. Because she is red-green colorblind, she began investigating how perception differed from the raw data presented in charts and what people took from the visualizations. She also helped organize the 2019 Uncoast Unconference—a workshop and hackathon for R users in “flyover country.” Today, she is an assistant professor in statistics at the University of Nebraska and involved in the ASA Section on Statistical Graphics.

The editor of Significance magazine, Brian Tarran, is inviting early-career statisticians and data scientists to use data and statistics to tell the stories that matter most to them—whether those stories are about politics, health, crime, education, industry, environment, or entertainment.

Although much has changed since the pandemic began, ASA members contributed more than $280,000 in support of ASA programs.

Jing Cao joined the ASA in the middle of her graduate program in 2003. Throughout her journey, she has worked with enthusiastic and talented people and discovered the ASA has her back.

Snehalata Huzurbazar’s family is entrenched in the mathematical and physical sciences, so she tried to avoid anything close to STEM. It wasn’t until the economist Kathy Anderson told her a degree in statistics would be useful for employment that she discovered she passionately enjoyed the discipline and eventually earned a PhD in the field. Though the bulk of her career is as a faculty member in statistics departments, her proudest achievement occurred when, after some campus sexual assault incidents, she initiated and obtained funding to create the Combat Violence Against Women program. This created the University of Wyoming’s STOP Violence Program, which has since been institutionalized.