The Tuesday evening awards ceremony at this year’s Joint Statistical Meetings in Portland, Oregon, was filled with palpable excitement and joy. We returned to celebrating awardees on stage—including hugs, handshakes, and happy faces—after a few years off due to the pandemic.
Celebrating the accomplishments of statisticians and data scientists helps ASA members see what’s possible for them, too. And awards offer many other benefits, including the following:
- Awards establish new benchmarks for innovation and excellence.
- Professionals learn from each other’s successes and become inspired to improve practices and raise standards.
- Awards broadly recognize areas of expertise, service, and leadership.
- Recognition helps instill a growth mindset and culture of lifelong learning in members.
- Sharing the profiles of leaders in our field inspires others—members, early-career scientists, and students—to excel in their work, improve their performance, and set aspirational goals so they can be recognized and walk across that stage one day.
- Award programs have the capacity to promote equal opportunity by ensuring a fair and open nomination process. Perceptions of fairness and equity are critical to the maintenance of the advantages of using an award system.
Recognizing Excellence and Innovation
It is a historical fact (and common source of aggravation) that there is no Nobel prize in statistics (though notable statistical achievements have been recognized with Nobel prizes in other related disciplines). To increase awareness and visibility of our field and its impactful contributions, our professional societies and eminent statisticians (leaders) have worked tirelessly to establish a few grand prizes. The ASA, Royal Statistical Society, International Statistical Institute, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and International Biometric Society established the International Prize in Statistics, which is awarded every other year. Awardees to date include the late Sir David R. Cox (2017), Brad Efron (2019), Nan Laird (2021), and the late C.R. Rao (2023).
Another grand prize, awarded every two years, is The Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics. This award recognizes outstanding statistical innovations with societal impact and promotes awareness of the profound effect of statistical thinking on human endeavors. When interviewed about his motivation to create such a prize, Peter Rousseeuw said, “As a graduate student, I was disappointed with the lack of recognition for statistical research. Part of this is due to the typical modesty among statisticians, and our field is wedged between more abstract disciplines and more lucrative ones.” He continued, “But the existence of prestigious awards also has an effect. The fact that some disciplines have Nobel prizes has certainly helped them, as the visibility of such awards sparks the imagination, which attracts students, good researchers, funding, and so on.”
The 2022 award was for causal inference with applications in medicine and public health, while the 2024 award was for false discovery rate and methods to control it. Both topics have had a great impact on science and society.
The David Cox Medal is the newest international statistical award commemorating the life and work of Sir David Roxbee Cox (1924–2022). Jointly awarded by the Royal Statistical Society, American Statistical Association, Bernoulli Society, International Biometric Society, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and International Statistical Institute, the award will recognize original research that moves statistical theory, methodology, or applications substantially forward. Three medals will be given every three years to persons under 50 years of age. The awards will be made for the first time in 2025. In this first round, Andrea Rotnizky and Thomas Belin are serving on the Search and Prize Committee on behalf of the ASA. My sincerest appreciation for their service and leadership.
Most people reading this column understand the immense value statistics brings to the world. I hope these relatively new prizes help convey that value to a broader worldwide audience.
From Innovation to Impact
One credible reason for the lack of a Nobel prize is that mathematics was not considered a practical science from which humanity could benefit (a chief purpose for creating the Nobel Foundation). This is no longer true. In recent times, statistics has made countless contributions to real-world problems—connecting innovation with impact. In a continuation of the interview I mentioned earlier, Rousseeuw commented on why this is the right time to establish a grand prize. He said, “Statistical work on the pandemic has been covered extensively in the media. Also, a lot of statistical research is being done by people who do not necessarily identify as statisticians and under different flags such as data science, big data, and so on. Creating a large prize for statistics, defined broadly to encompass all those endeavors, will hopefully encourage a more unified view of the various strands.”
In a separate commentary, one of our greatest statisticians Xiao-li Meng said, “The most compelling reason for having highly visible awards in any field is to enhance its ability to attract future talent. Virtually all the media and public attention our profession received in recent years has been on the utility of statistics in all walks of life. We are extremely happy for and proud of this recognition—it is long overdue.”
The importance of awards for attracting future talent cannot be overstated. We are all responsible for ensuring nominations reflect the full range of individuals working in the field. We all have a role to play.
Ensuring Fairness, Increasing Representation
In the United States, November is a month in which to express gratitude. Gertrude Stein said, “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.” One important expression of gratitude is recognition through nomination and ultimately selection of an award. In this spirit, I would like to call attention to other awards within our society (with deadlines in February or March 2025) that are powerful representations of our gratitude. I encourage you to consider making a nomination.
- The ASA Pride Scholarship was established to raise awareness for and support the success of LGBTQ+ statisticians and data scientists and allies. The scholarship will celebrate their diverse backgrounds and showcase the invaluable skills and perspectives these individuals bring to the ASA, statistics, and data science.
- A scholarship established by Westat to honor its co-founder and chair emeritus, Edward C. Bryant, is awarded to outstanding graduate students in survey statistics to help support their graduate education.
- The ASA Founders Award recognizes members who have rendered distinguished service to the association.
- The Harry V. Roberts Statistical Advocate of the Year Award recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of those who have successfully advocated appropriate and effective uses of statistics and data-analytic approaches in business and the public sector. Unlike other awards, this award recognizes the promotion of statistical reasoning by individuals who may or may not be statisticians.
- The Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society, established in 2012, recognizes statisticians who have made substantial contributions to the statistical profession and society in general. The award was established by Christopher K. Peace, son of Karl E. Peace, on behalf of the Peace family to honor the life work of his father.
- The ASA Mentoring Award is given each year to a member who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership in developing the careers of statistics students, statisticians, or statistical researchers early in their careers.
- The Wilks Award was established to honor the memory and distinguished career of Samuel S. Wilks by recognizing outstanding contributions to statistics that carry on in the spirit of his work.
By nominating colleagues for these and all awards, you support not only them but the profession. By making the effort to nominate our colleagues, we help ensure a fair and open nomination process, one in which not just those “in the know” are nominated. By creating deep and wide pools of nominees; by carefully listing selection criteria; by thoughtfully selecting award committee members; and by maintaining careful, unbiased evaluation and selection of recipients, we ensure the fairness and equity that are critical to maintaining these advantages of giving awards.
So please do your part by nominating colleagues and by saying “yes” when you are invited to serve on an awards committee.
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