Jana Asher, Committee on International Relations in Statistics Member and Slippery Rock University Assistant Professor

As the world’s largest community of statisticians, the American Statistical Association is an amazingly diverse body of professionals. Between the sections, which focus on particular statistical subfields; the chapters, which provide a regional platform for communication and collaboration; and the committees, which focus on specific ASA initiatives or outreach efforts—not to mention the in-person meetings and online communities—it is easy to believe pretty much everything going on in the statistics profession is represented here.

The world of statistics, however, extends far beyond the membership of the ASA—a fact that has been recognized by the ASA leadership for a long time. To make sure the ASA membership is aware of what happens in the statistics profession in other parts of the world, the ASA formed the Committee on International Relations in Statistics (CIR) in 1979. Briefly, the mission of the CIR is:

To identify goals, develop policies, and plan projects that foster activities involving international communications, exchange, and joint development with professional statisticians, societies, and other organizations in countries throughout the world; to keep ASA members and others informed of these activities and to foster their involvement in them.

Connecting US Statisticians to the World

The CIR helps the ASA membership interact with the international community mainly through the Educational Ambassador Program (EAP). The CIR launched the EAP in 2005 with the following goals:

• Welcome new international members to the American Statistical Association
• Create trust between the ASA and other national and international statistical societies
• Advance lasting collaboration between the ASA and those societies to allow ongoing exchanges of knowledge

Every year, the CIR recruits a number of Educational Ambassadors (EAs) from foreign countries and subsidizes their attendance at the Joint Statistical Meetings. It is the CIR’s hope that ASA members will interact with the EAs at the Joint Statistical Meetings, learning more about the statistical community in their home countries.

At JSM, the chosen EAs attend a continuing education (CE) course or courses in an emerging area of research (unknown in their own country) and receive ASA full membership for one year. Each EA then returns to their home and, within the next year, teaches the subject matter of the CE course(s) taken to a class of no fewer than 10 students at the master’s-degree level. The EA then submits a written report to the Committee on International Relations in Statistics about their experience in the program. Finally, during the following academic year, the EA repeats the class he or she taught at least once, either in person or through webinars.

The EA program allows ASA members to learn about the statistics scene in a few specific countries each year. However, there is also an internationally focused community of statisticians from across the world that connects frequently through international professional societies.

International Statistics Professional Societies

There are multiple international organizations of interest to statisticians and data scientists, the oldest of which is the International Statistical Institute (ISI). Elected membership in the ISI is prestigious and requires letters of recommendation from three current members; regular membership is also available. The ISI produces several publications—including the International Statistical Review—and serves as an umbrella organization for the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, International Association for Official Statistics, International Association for Statistical Computing, International Association for Statistical Education, International Association of Survey Statisticians, International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics, and The International Environmetrics Society. Much like sections of the American Statistical Association, each of these organizations holds meetings at a big ISI convention called the World Statistics Congress that is held once every two years in a different country. The next World Statistics Congress will be in the Hague (The Netherlands), July 11–15, 2021.

You might have noticed there isn’t a Bayesian Association under the ISI umbrella. The International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) is a separate organization, founded in 1992, that focuses specifically on Bayesian analysis techniques. There are chapters of the ISBA in Australia/Oceania, Brazil, Chile, East Asia, India, and South Africa; ISBA also boasts several topical sections, including the Section on Biostatistics and Pharmaceutical Statistics and Section on Economics, Finance, and Business. The ISBA holds world meetings every two years; in 2022, they will be in Montréal (Canada) and, in 2024, they will be in Venice (Italy). ISBA also produces the journal Bayesian Analysis.

If biostatistics is your focus, you might want to check out the International Biometric Society (IBS). Unlike the ISI, the IBS operates primarily through its regional sections, some of which are country based (e.g., Italian, Polish, Japanese) and some of which are larger (e.g., North African). In the United States, there are two regional sections: the Eastern North American Region (ENAR), which includes all the United States and Canada roughly east of Denver, Colorado, and the Western North American Region (WNAR), which includes the rest of the US and Canada. ENAR holds annual spring meetings, and WNAR holds an annual conference in June. IBS, like ISI and ISBA, holds a large world conference every two years; the next one will be in July of 2020 in Seoul (Korea). IBS also produces several top-quality peer-reviewed publications, including Biometrics and the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics.

Maybe you would prefer to become involved with a more field-specific organization. There are two that also fall under biostatistics: The Society for Clinical Trials and the International Genetic Epidemiology Society. Both societies focus on specific applications of biostatistics, both have an annual meeting, and both have an associated peer-reviewed journal. The Society for Clinical Trials will be meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in May 2020, and the International Genetic Epidemiology Society is meeting in Hong Kong in July of 2020 (just prior to the IBS meeting in Seoul, South Korea, that year).

All these international societies serve similar functions for their members (i.e., organize meetings, publish journals, provide training opportunities, and generally build a professional community at an international level). The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) takes on an additional role; they are a credentialing organization for actuaries. As is stated on their website, CAS members are experts in property and casualty insurance, reinsurance, finance, risk management, and enterprise risk management. If you are curious about what is required of an actuary, take a look.

In the Asian region, multiple countries have international statistical associations, including China (International Chinese Statistical Association, ICSA), India (International Indian Statistical Association, IISA), and South Korea (Korean International Statistical Society). Luckily for monolingual Americans, each of these websites is in English or has an English version. The ICSA and IISA co-sponsor the Joint Statistical Meetings and hold their own annual meetings. ICSA’s flagship journal is Statistica Sinica, and while IISA’s flagship journal for many years was Statistical Methodology, the organization is in the process of developing a new journal and publishes an edited book series.

Finally, the Caucus for Women in Statistics deserves to be mentioned here, as the organization has recently developed a more international focus. Founded in 1971 to address discrimination against women in the statistics field, the organization was instrumental in the establishment of the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics in the same year. The CWS provides multiple benefits to members, including access to webinars, mentoring opportunities, access to travel awards, career resources, and a network of committed women and men who will support your career goals.

Regional International Organizations

Several regions of the world have inter-country organizations that allow groups of countries to pool resources. There are multiple professional organizations for statisticians in Europe that are Europe-wide. For example, the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics runs conferences annually in different countries within the European Union. Other Europe-based organizations include Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Statistical Modelling Society.

There is a regional organization for Africa called the African Statistical Association; this organization had gone defunct but was recently revitalized through the efforts of the Ethiopian Statistical Organization. A recent development in this geographic area was the founding of the West African Young Statisticians Association; this organization is also based in Nigeria but provides mentoring and training to statisticians throughout western Africa.

Summary

This is a small taste of what is out there to explore in the worldwide statistical community.

If you are already planning to travel to a different region of the world, the ASA Committee on International Relations in Statistics encourages you to consider attending a local conference or contacting the local statistical organization to learn where your foreign colleagues are working and what they are working on. The Committee on International Relations in Statistics will be unveiling a list of national statistics organizations from around the world shortly. In the meantime, if you are traveling and want to be put into contact with a local statistician, contact Jana Asher.

Even if you are not planning to travel anytime soon to a different region of the world, the CIR invites you to assist us in welcoming future Educational Ambassadors who attend the Joint Statistical Meetings. To start the connection, Educational Ambassadors will be encouraged to directly inform the ASA community about the statistical work being done within their own country through an article in Amstat News prior to their attendance at the Joint Statistical Meetings. So, look for information about the EAP in future editions of Amstat News and come meet us and our EAs at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Philadelphia next year.