Committees have long been a vital component of the ASA organization, and many of our members serve on one or more committees. But you might be surprised to learn that the ASA has 70 committees—an extraordinary number compared to similar societies—and that the president-elect makes more than 160 committee appointments annually.

You are about to begin applying for your first job post-PhD. Do you have a strategy? That is, are you going to do anything that singles you out from the scores of others in the market? Or, are you going to proceed as the vast majority of entrants into the job market do, which is to apply to many places and let the market decide?

In the opening words of his preface to Studies in American Demography, published in 1940, Walter Willcox said, “During the last half century, demography, or the statistical study of population, has grown from infancy into lusty youth.” During the same half century, Willcox published what he called “fragments” of an Introduction to American Demography, but found himself handicapped by the then inadequacies of American birth and death statistics. Nevertheless, he pursued his goal and published more than 100 of his “more important writings.”

In 1967, W. Edwards Deming wrote a personal biography on Walter Shewhart for The American Statistician. The following is taken from that article.

Morris Howard Hansen has been referred to as the 20th century’s most influential statistician when it comes to the evolution of survey methodology. He also influenced and inspired others. What’s interesting is that he didn’t start out wanting to be a statistician.