The ASA Committee on Applied Statisticians gives you the experiences of four statisticians who took different paths after their master’s degrees. This month, Mark Otto discusses the path he took after earning his master’s degree.
Census Bureau
ASA Issues Statement on New Political Positions at Census Bureau
The US Census Bureau announced two new political appointments in newly created leadership positions, and the ASA asked the Census Bureau director to provide a justification for the appointments.
COVID-19 and the Federal Statistical Agencies: Effects and Reactions
While all the principal federal statistical agencies have efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic, this article highlights several related to the economy, health, and transportation.
Social Statistics Section Plans Privacy Discussions
The Social Statistics Section will host a JSM 2020 invited session and an associated roundtable about how differential privacy is applied to various 2020 Census data products to help protect the privacy of individuals and what that means for formal privacy.
Privacy Day Webinar 2020: A Summary
On January 28, a webinar sponsored by the ASA Privacy and Confidentiality Committee was presented by Michael Hawes, senior adviser for the Data Access and Privacy, Research, and Methodology Directorate of the US Census Bureau, titled “Differential Privacy and the 2020 Decennial Census.”
Cynthia Zang Facer Clark
Cynthia Clark’s mother was a chemist prior to WWII and her father was an agricultural loan officer and bank director, so studying mathematics and science was not unusual for a girl in her home. She pursued mathematics until it was clear to her there were better career opportunities in statistics for a woman. A longtime leader in the official statistics community, she is the executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics.
June CNSTAT Workshop Focused on Privacy
The Committee on National Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences held a workshop June 6–7 to discuss new approaches to protecting data confidentiality, with a focus on methods that offer formal guarantees of privacy protection such as differential privacy.
Differential Privacy: What Is It?
The ASA’s Committee on Privacy and Confidentiality discuss statistical disclosure control and how to preserve the confidentiality of sensitive data.
Nancy Potok
Nancy Potok couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a forest ranger or a librarian when she grew up. Eventually, it was her love for reading that led to an interest in research, analysis, and data. She has since worked as a statistician for the public, private, and non-profit sectors and has experience in all three branches of the federal government—including being the first female deputy director at the US Census Bureau.
Census-FNS-ERS Partnership Delivers Unique Products by Leveraging Data
Two statistical agencies—the US Census Bureau and US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Economic Research Service (ERS)—have formed a strategic partnership with USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), which administers USDA’s food and nutrition assistance programs.