The International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013)

Statistics2013 Video Contest

The Pinnacle, The Best, The Top Video Is…!

By Jeffrey A. Myers

Finally, after three weeks and four separate announcements, we are ready to reveal the winner of the coveted title of “Best Overall Video” in the Statistics2013 Video Contest sponsored by Wiley.

Before we do, if you haven’t done so already, here’s your opportunity to view the first-place through honorable-mention winners we awarded previously in each of the three contest categories. The three award categories for the contest are:

  • Best Overall Video
  • Best Video by a Person or Persons 18 Years of Age or Less
  • Best Non-English Language Video

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What is Statistics?

What is Statistics?

When many people hear the word “statistics,” they think of either sports-related numbers or the college class they took and barely passed. While statistics can be thought about in these terms, there is more to the relationship between you and statistics than you probably imagine.

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getstatsThumbnail image for Don’t let Statistics be Squeezed Out of Schools

Don’t let Statistics be Squeezed Out of Schools

May 20, 2013

getstats »

John Pullinger, President of the Royal Statistical Society, on why it is vital that our education system provides young people with the statistical skills our economy needs:

The big political question today is where the UK’s future economic growth is going to come from. One area where we are well placed to thrive internationally is in managing the explosion of data. We have produced outstanding firms like Dunnhumby (who manage the Tesco Clubcard), and are a world leader in the market research industry. Across economic sectors, there will be big opportunities for firms – and countries – that are comfortable with big data.

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getstats is a campaign of the Royal Statistical Society.

World Population Clock
Future of the Statistical Sciences Workshop
Activities

Statistics2013 Activities

May 13, 2013

Below are the Statistics2013 events and activities that will be held around the world this week. To see the complete list of activities for 2013, click here.

Statistics2013 BlogThumbnail image for Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning

May 20, 2013

Statistics2013 Blog »

By Stephen Senn

Everybody knows you need a medic to run a clinical trial but a statistician? What’s the point of one of those? The gruesome truth is that to measure what prolongs life we have to count the dead and those who have made a study of counting the dead are biostatisticians. They are crucial contributors not only to the analysis of clinical trials but also to their design, and this contribution, of course, should be noted in the International Year of Statistics.

But how can it be so difficult? In the long run we are all dead, as John Maynard Keynes famously remarked but he was only an economist. Any biostatistician could have told him that’s not the point. We can classify humanity into the dead and the not yet dead. Since, thank goodness, some patients entered onto a clinical trial will survive beyond the point at which the trial ends, we don’t know how long they will have lived when they have died. For example, we may have data from patients who have lived at least two years since they were entered onto the trial mixed together with those whose exact survival, say 13 months, is known.

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ENBIS

Bhogle the Mind
Significance MagazineThumbnail image for Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health by Stephen Senn

Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health by Stephen Senn

May 20, 2013

Significance Magazine »

Reviewed by Graham Wheeler

First published in 2003, Stephen Senn's 'Dicing with Death' received exceptional praise for being a unique addition to 'pop-science' literature. Books on statistics - popular books, that is - are somewhat of a rarity and preceding Senn's book, only a handful of titles managed to permeate outside of academic circles and begin to find their way to the bookshelves of the layman. However, to regard 'Dicing with Death' as purely a 'pop-science' book is a very naïve misclassification.

'Dicing with Death' is a chronicle of statistics through the ages; it is the tale of "Galton meets Pearson meets Fisher", how mathematics lured medical hopefuls away from their plans, how Cambridge and London acted as the bastions of statistics over the last 200 years. The stories of the greats such as the Bernoulli family, Bayes, Laplace, Poisson, Greenwood, Ross, Bradford Hill, Doll, Galton, Kermack, Pearson (both Karl and Egon), Fisher and Cox - to name a few - are retold and connected to paint a wonderful picture of how statistics, mathematics, epidemiology and medicine have interacted and developed over time.

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Significance is a publication of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association.

Statistician Job of the WeekThumbnail image for Statisticians Essential To Success of Clinical Trials

Statisticians Essential To Success of Clinical Trials

May 20, 2013

Statistician Job of the Week »

By Dr. Jennifer Rogers

I have been working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a research fellow in the Medical Statistics department for the last two years. My research is primarily concerned with the planning, statistical analysis and reporting of clinical trials in cardiovascular disease alongside other statisticians, clinicians and industry collaborators.

My involvement in the analysis of clinical trial data is mainly focussed on secondary analyses. These analyses allow us to identify areas where standard statistical practice becomes unsuitable and new methodology needs to be developed in response to interesting characteristics of the datasets with which we are presented.

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