Significance Highlights: December Issue a Statistical Indulgence

The December 2021 issue of Significance is out now and features an assortment of statistical stories and data discussions to indulge in over the festive season.

First, the end of the year brings our History of the Data Economy series to a close, with a look at what the future has in store for data-driven industries.

We also take a deep dive into “risk know-how,” a project to develop a framework for helping communities around the world understand and engage with information about risk.

In our Profiles section, friends and former colleagues reflect on the life and legacy of Chen Wen-chen, a promising young statistics professor who died in tragic and suspicious circumstances 40 years ago.

And in our Notebook section, there is an overview of the work of Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens, two of this year’s Nobel Prize winners whose ideas have helped transform the study of key policy questions in areas including education, immigration, and labor markets.

Also in the December issue:

• Randomized controled trials are often presented as the gold standard for testing new medical treatments. In the early stages of research, however, reports from single trials are likely to show exaggerated effect estimates. Erik van Zwet, Simon Schwab, and Sander Greenland explain why—and propose a remedy.
• Financial investment strategies are often designed and tested using historical market data. But this can frequently give rise to “optimal” strategies that are statistical mirages and perform poorly in the real world, as David H. Bailey and Marcos López de Prado explain.
• The iris data set is one of the best-known and most widely used data sets in statistics and data science. But the origins of at least part of the data has been something of a mystery for decades. Antony Unwin and Kim Kleinman believe they have traced the source.

Access the digital version of Significance through ASA or RSS member portals or download and read the magazine on the go with our iOS and Android apps. Print issues will be mailed to subscribers soon.