Statistics: It’s Essential … and So Was Your Participation at JSM 2017

Kathleen Wert, ASA Director of Meetings

 
WATCH: Plenary session webcasts are available.

A program packed with intriguing talks and fun social events in a convention center set up for networking … how could JSM 2017 be anything less than exceptional?

Held at the Baltimore Convention Center and the Hilton Baltimore, JSM brought more than 6,500 people to the city. Many sessions focused on the JSM 2017 theme, “Statistics: It’s Essential,” on which ASA President Barry Nussbaum also presented his address.

This year’s program included 671 sessions, including the President’s Invited speaker, Jo Craven McGinty of The Wall Street Journal; Deming Lecturer, Fritz Scheuren of NORC-University of Chicago; and Fisher Lecturer, Robert E. Kass of Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, the Late-Breaking sessions—“National Governments, Coerced Narratives, Creative Language, and Alternative Facts” and “Hindsight Is 20/20 and for 2020: Lessons from 2016 Elections”—highlighted current issues in our profession.

For those interested in sessions with a broad scope, the introductory overview lectures did not disappoint. Sessions about computer-age statistical inference, data science, network data, and quantile regression proved an excellent place for JSM newcomers to begin.

There were a number of named lectures and memorial sessions, including the following:

• IMS Medallion Lecture I – Edoardo M. Airoldi, Harvard University
• IMS Blackwell Lecture – Martin J. Wainwright, University of California, Berkeley
• IMS Medallion Lecture II – Emery N. Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• IMS Medallion Lecture III – Subhashis Ghoshal, North Carolina State University
• IMS Medallion Lecture IV – Mark Girolami, Imperial College London
• Wald Lecture – Emmanuel J. Candes, Stanford University
• IMS Medallion Lecture V – Judith N. Rousseau, Université Paris Dauphine
• Memorial Session for Ted Anderson
• Memorial Session for Norman E. Breslow
• Memorial Session for Emanuel Parzen
• Memorial Session for John A. Cornell

Members of the program committee worked hard to develop these special sessions, along with preparing a diverse program with topics of interest for everyone. They continued the expansion of the speed sessions with a record of 315 speed presentations in 18 sessions. This new format continues to be popular with speakers and attendees, and we look forward to its continued growth.