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 from around the world that will be held this week. To see the complete list of activities for 2013, please click here

• February 11-15, 2013 — 2013 NCES Winter Forum and 26th Annual Management Information Systems (MIS) Conference, National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, D.C., USA
• February 13, 2013 — More than a number: Is opinion-based medical research a good idea?, Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
• February 14-15, 2013 — National Conference on Quality, Reliability and Optimization, Padmabhushan Vasantraodada Patil Mahavidyalaya and Department of Statistics, Shivaji University, Kavathe Mahankal, Dist-Sangli (MS), India
• February 15, 2013 – The Most Important Lecture in the History of Statistics by Stephen Stigler, North Carolina State University Department of Statistics, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

by Altea Lorenzo, Hèctor Perpiñán, Pilar Cacheiro, Silvia Lladosa, Urko Agirre

FreshBiostats

Unbelievable as it might sound, there is a particular role even more often misunderstood than Statistics, Biostatistics!

In our experience, this is what we frequently have to face when asked what we do for a living:

In order to get a better picture, we carried out a pilot study based on a very short survey (find it

Statistics researcher Iain Johnstone became immersed in the world of statistics like so many young people do, as a sports fan. He is a native of Australia, so in his case, an enthusiasm for sports had him following the stats of cricket stars such as Donald Bradman. Today, he deals with weightier topics, and is drawn to the field of statistics for its blend of theory and application, what he calls “an ideal combination of the concrete analysis of data with the opportunity to use