La revue canadiennede statistique statistical science: Concepts,opportunities and challenges

Advances in computing and information technology have had a profound impact on many areas of human activity. Statistical tools are ever more widely used, often in new and unconventional environments. Opportunities for statisticians have never been greater, and at the same time, the use of statistics by others is increasing. The author discusses challenges which arise from these conditions, with emphasis on the identity, activities and education of statisticians.     

Using student projects in an introductory course for liberal arts students

This talk, given at the IMS Regional Conference honoring Bob Hogg (Iowa City, May 16, 1995), discusses the assigning of student projects in an introductory statistics course for liberal arts students. We discuss several examples by way of motivation, discuss the educational reasons one might use student projects, and finally give some practical guidelines to help the project assignment run smoothly.     

In Memoriam: Simon Kuznets, 1901-1985

The profession of statistics has adopted too narrow a definition of itself. As a consequence, both statistics and statisticians play too narrow a role in policy formation and execution. Broadening that role will require statisticians to change the curriculum they use to train and develop their own professionals and what they teach nonstatisticians about statistics. Playing a proper role will require new research from statisticians that combines our skills in methods with other techniques of social scientists.     

Statistics for Quality and Productivity: A New Graduate-Level Statistics Course

The growing popular realization that American product quality and productivity are no longer without challenge for world leadership presents an opportunity for the American statistical community to make stronger contributions to sound industrial practice than it has in the past. Management consultants, such as Deming and Juran, are promoting philosophies that contain strong statistical components and are being heard by top U.S. executives. There are thus growing opportunities for industrial statisticians. Upon reviewing the content of typical graduate-level statistical quality control courses and books in the light of the present situation, we find them to be inadequate and in some cases to suffer from inappropriate emphases. In this article we discuss our perceptions of what is needed in the way of a new graduate-level course in statistics for quality and productivity (SQP). We further offer for discussion a syllabus for such a course (which is a modification of one used at Iowa State in the 1983 spring semester), some comments on how specific topics might be approached, and also a partially annotated list of references for material that we believe belongs in a modern SQP course.     

The Mean is within One Standard Deviation of Any Median

Statistics education is often restricted to teaching the mathematical equations and theories that form the foundation of statistical analysis. It can be argued, however, that the interpretation of the analysis and the communication of the results are equally important. The interdisciplinary role of statisticians requires us to examine real-life problems critically and communicate analytical results to nonstatisticians in a clear and concise manner. This article discusses the importance of including writing assignments as a routine part of statistics courses and presents benefits of the increased use of writing.     

Three-Factor Cartographic Representation

Statistics and statisticians have contributed to industry. Attention has been given to the appropriate training of statisticians for careers in industry. Statistics is used with benefit to industry in quality control, experimental design in research and development, and management decisions. Statistics can benefit from industry's assistance, the subject of this article. Five premises are set forth, three of them suggesting problems for statistics and industry. They relate to public understanding of statistics, the recruitment of students to statistics, the recruitment of statisticians to industry, and the relevance of research in statistics to the needs of industry. Thirteen recommendations are made on what industry can do for statistics and suggestions are made on how the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality Control can provide leadership in meeting the problems posed with the help of industry.     

Theory & Methods: Why do we do it? Statisticians and the Practice of Statistics

There has been no work done on why statisticians have chosen their particular profession. With the increasing emphasis on the development of biotechnology, it seems important to encourage people to take up statistics and to offer the perspective that the study of statistics brings. This paper is an attempt to develop a preliminary understanding, by open-ended in-depth interviewing, of the personal backgrounds that have encouraged present practising statisticians to move into this field, and to see how they experience their work.     

Teaching statistics to clinical research staff in a pharmaceutical company

Education of clinical research staff in understanding statistical concepts is an area of importance for pharmaceutical companies. This understanding is needed to help them communicate with statisticians using a common language, in designing clinical trials and interpretation of clinical trial results. Such staff has little time for a one-semester or even a one-week continuing education course in statistics. Faced with this reality, we developed a 3-module course,for a total of 1.5 days, which was taught over a period of one month that addresses the needs of this audience. We describe the format and content of the course and provide references that can serve as a resource for teaching such a course.     

Print Magazines for American College Libraries

Abstract

This paper opens discussion about the periodicals that are left behind in the debate over the transition from print to electronic journals in academic libraries, particularly college libraries. The author annotates 100 English-language print magazines titles that support a liberal arts curriculum and the leisure reading of an American college community. These titles should be maintained in print versions for browsing and usefulness, even if online availability exists. Magazines, with their mix of articles, illustrations, sidebars, tables, charts, graphs, lists, and short features, still have an important place in college libraries.     

Bill Cochran: His Contributions to Medicine and Public Health and Some Personal Recollections

There is a tremendous need in our technological society to train statisticians for all sectors of education, government, and industry. Because statistical training has largely been restricted to graduate schools, the profession is losing many good students to other fields of study. Members of the statistics community are encouraged to reach out to high-school students and undergraduate students to increase the awareness of statistics as a scientific field of study and as a professional career. The ASA Council of Chapters has recently completed a slide presentation entitled “Statistical Science: The Profession,” which was professionally developed to aid this endeavor. In addition, high-school teachers, high-school counselors, and professors of mathematics and science education are identified as important audiences for hearing this message and for broadening general public awareness of what our profession has to offer.     

STATISTICAL CHALLENGES OF AIDS: (The 1990 Knibbs Lecture, Canberra, 27 November 1990)

Issues that are central to the understanding and management of the HIV epidemic have generated numerous statistical challenges. This paper considers questions concerning the incubation period, the effects of treatments, pre diction of AIDS cases, the choice of surrogate end points for the assessment of treatments and design of strategies for screening blood samples. These issues give rise to a broad range of intriguing problems for statisticians. We describe some of these problems, how they have been tackled so far and what remains to be done. The discussion touches on topical statistical methods such as smoothing, bootstrapping, interval censoring and the ill-posed inverse problem, as well as asking fundamental questions for frequentist statistics.     

Statistical challenges of AIDS

"This paper considers questions concerning the incubation period [of HIV infections], the effects of treatments, prediction of AIDS cases, the choice of surrogate end points for the assessment of treatments and design of strategies for screening blood samples. These issues give rise to a broad range of intriguing problems for statisticians. We describe some of these problems, how they have been tackled so far and what remains to be done. The discussion touches on topical statistical methods such as smoothing, bootstrapping, interval censoring and the ill-posed inverse problem, as well as asking fundamental questions for frequentist statistics." The geographical scope is worldwide, with some data for selected developed countries used to illustrate the models.     

欧美经济统计面临的新问题及其启示

 在人类跨入21世纪的时候，欧美国家的社会经济正经历着深刻的变化。很多经济学家和统计学家发现传统的、以物质产品的投入和产出为中心的实物经济在经济体系中的统治地位正在动摇甚至消失，经济进入了一个非物质的时代。现行的经济统计核算与分析方法在这种形式下面临着一系列新的问题。本文将对此作一些介绍，并结合我国实际探讨对我国统计工作的借鉴和启示。     

关于进一步促进我国统计学发展的几点思考

本文回顾了统计学发展的历史,展望了统计学的发展前景,评介了国内外有关专家对统计学科发展的论述。在此基础上,提出自己的看法。文章认为：应当求同存异、和谐共生、加强交流、互相欣赏,才能做大做强我国的统计学。     

网络技术下统计的变革和统计教育面临的任务

网络经济的发展使现行的统计信息生产方式和统计制度发生深刻变革,使统计人才的知识结构发生重大变化,从而对统计教育的着力点和培养目标、培养方式提出了新的要求。如何培养大量优秀的复合型统计人才,极大地提高统计人员的素质,是统计教育面临的艰巨任务。     

Meeting the statistical needs of 21st-century science

Kanti Mardia and Walter Gilks consider the future role of statistics in scientific explanation and prediction, through views expressed by eminent scientists, philosophers and statisticians and through their own experience, particularly in the field of bioinformatics.     

Data quality: A statistical perspective

We present the old-but-new problem of data quality from a statistical perspective, in part with the goal of attracting more statisticians, especially academics, to become engaged in research on a rich set of exciting challenges. The data quality landscape is described, and its research foundations in computer science, total quality management and statistics are reviewed. Two case studies based on an EDA approach to data quality are used to motivate a set of research challenges for statistics that span theory, methodology and software tools.     

Coup de Grâce for a Tough Old Bull: “Statistically Significant” Expires

ABSTRACT

Many controversies in statistics are due primarily or solely to poor quality control in journals, bad statistical textbooks, bad teaching, unclear writing, and lack of knowledge of the historical literature. One way to improve the practice of statistics and resolve these issues is to do what initiators of the 2016 ASA statement did: take one issue at a time, have extensive discussions about the issue among statisticians of diverse backgrounds and perspectives and eventually develop and publish a broadly supported consensus on that issue. Upon completion of this task, we then move on to deal with another core issue in the same way. We propose as the next project a process that might lead quickly to a strong consensus that the term “statistically significant” and all its cognates and symbolic adjuncts be disallowed in the scientific literature except where focus is on the history of statistics and its philosophies and methodologies. Calculation and presentation of accurate p-values will often remain highly desirable though not obligatory. Supplementary materials for this article are available online in the form of an appendix listing the names and institutions of 48 other statisticians and scientists who endorse the principal propositions put forward here.     

SPC—a team effort for process improvement across four Area Control Centres

This paper describes an innovative application of statistical process control to the online remote control of the UK's gas transportation networks. The gas industry went through a number of changes in ownership, regulation, access to networks, organization and management culture in the 1990s. The application of SPC was motivated by these changes along with the desire to apply the best industrial statistics theory to practical problems. The work was initiated by a studentship, with the technology gradually being transferred to the industry. The combined efforts of control engineers and statisticians helped develop a novel SPC system. Having set up the control limits, a system was devised to automatically update and publish the control charts on a daily basis. The charts and an associated discussion forum are available to both managers and control engineers throughout the country at their desktop PCs. The paper describes methods of involving people to design first-class systems to achieve continual process improvement. It describes how the traditional benefits of SPC can be realized in a 'distal team working', and 'soft systems', context of four Area Control Centres, controlling a system delivering two thirds of the UK's energy needs.     

中国官方统计数据质量问题调查研究——基于结构方程模型

利用多个指标来分别测量官方统计数据质量及与其有关的统计人员综合水平、统计调查技术水平和统计信息利用度,在此基础上研究四者之间的关系,分析构成中国官方统计数据质量不高的成因.结果表明:统计人员综合水平、统计调查技术水平和统计信息利用度之间存在很强的相关关系;统计制度而非技术是造成当前中国官方统计数据质量不高的主要原因.