Alexandra M. Schmidt, McGill University, and Sloka Iyengar, American Museum of Natural History

Carolina Franco

After the creation of the ASA Nigerian Student Chapter last year, the Committee on International Relations in Statistics began promoting an initiative to engage and connect statisticians from different corners of the world. CIRS is a multidisciplinary team of global statisticians and data scientists who are leading shared initiatives with the goal of linking statistical professionals, societies, and other organizations.

Shirin Golchi

To reach statisticians and data scientists at all career levels, CIRS launched a bimonthly webinar series to introduce statistical topics of broad interest to an international audience. Although registration is required, the webinars are free. Each session is planned to last one and a half hours and the statistician leading the session provides an overview of the topic, currently used software, and suggestions for further reading.

For added visibility, CIRS partnered with Statistics Without Borders to advertise the first webinar. SWB aims to improve decision-making and knowledge in efforts that promote welfare through the proper application of statistical principles and best practices where access to such resources is limited. In the recent past, SWB has started to use networking and knowledge-sharing sessions to increase engagement between its members.

The idea to collaborate on the webinar series emerged from a meeting between CIRS chair Carolina Franco and SWB chair Matthew Brems to discuss ways in which CIRS and SWB can work together toward their common goals of international outreach and education. SWB joined CIRS in promoting the initiative to more than 10,000 people. ASA support was provided by Director of Strategic Initiatives and Outreach Donna LaLonde, who helped set up the registration page and provided a Zoom link that supported a large audience.

The first webinar took place May 11. Franco, principal statistician at NORC at the University of Chicago, gave a lecture titled “An Introduction to Small Area Estimation (SAE).” She explained what SAE is and provided examples and applications.

More than 150 participants attended from Armenia, Brazil, Costa Rica, France, Mali, Peru, Turkey, and other countries. They were engaged, asking questions and raising good points for discussion. For instance, attendees asked about future trends in SAE, what makes for good auxiliary data, how to handle the sampling weights in the presence of informative sampling, and what to do about missing data. The recording of the session and slides are available on CIRS’s website.

The second webinar will be on July 20 at 12 p.m. EDT. The session—led by Shirin Golchi, assistant professor in the department of epidemiology, biostatistics, and occupational health at McGill University—is titled “An Introduction to Bayesian Inference.” Register to reserve a spot.

The third webinar, “An Introduction to Bayesian Disease Mapping” led by Alexandra M. Schmidt from McGill University, will be in September.

Suggestions for potential topics can be sent to Alex Schmidt, Carolina Franco, or Sloka Iyengar.

To become a “friend of the ASA Committee on International Relations in Statistics,” contact Franco. Friends of the committee receive occasional emails about topics of international interest such as webinars, job opportunities, volunteer opportunities, and news.

Become part of SWB for free by filling out the SWB volunteer intake form.