The International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013)

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.

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.

• June 3-21, 2013 — University of Kansas Summer Institutes in Statistics (Stats Camp), University of Kansas, Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis; Lawrence, Kansas, United States
• June 19, 2013 — Breaking Local Stories with Economic Data, Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, Washington, D.C., USA
• June 19-20, 2013 — Bayes 250 Conference, Royal Statistical Society, London, United Kingdom
• June 19-20, 2013 — Analytics 2013 Conference, SAS, London, United Kingdom
• June 19-21, 2013 — SIS2013 Statistical Conference: Advances in Latent Variables—Methods, Models and Applications, Italian Statistical Society, Brescia, Italy
• June 19-21, 2013 — "R, Beyond the Basics"—38th Annual Summer Institute of Applied Statistics, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
• June 20, 2013 — Talking Data SouthWest, Select Statistics and The University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
• June 20, 2013 — “Putting life into numbers—how statistical science has transformed health care,” International Year of Statistics Series of Public Lectures, MRC Biostatistics Unit and the University of Cambridge Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
• June 20-22, 2013 — 20th Annual Spring Research Conference on Statistics in Industry and Technology, UCLA Department of Statistics, Los Angeles, California, USA
• June 20-22, 2013 — ARS'13 International Workshop: Networks in Space and Time: Models, Data Dollection and Applications; University Roma Tre, University of Salerno, University of Macerata, University of Napoli Federico II, University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore—Milano, University of Trieste; Rome, Italy
• June 20-29, 2013 — Data and Statistic Weeks; Analitico UI, Biostatistics and Population Study Department, Public Health Faculty, University of Indonesia; Depok (West Java), Indonesia
• June 22, 2013 — General Assembly of Spanish Asociation of Health Statistics (Asociación Española de Estadística para la Salud), Granada (Spain)

By Ola Awad

As Mahmoud Jaradat prepares to retire next year from the post of assistant of president for Statistical Affairs at the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), a number of us--including me--have mixed emotions about his pending departure. Mr. Jaradat has contributed greatly to put in place the very foundations that have made PCBS such a success.

His name is printed in almost every statistical publication that PCBS has produced. Mr. Jaradat has played a vital role in accomplishing the first-ever Population, Housing and Establishment Censuses in 1997 and 2007, in addition to the first-ever agriculture census in 2010.