Statisticians promote contributions to society during the International Year of Statistics

NC State University is among more than 1,400 organizations in 111 countries that are combining energies in 2013 to promote the International Year of Statistics, or Statistics2013, a worldwide initiative that will highlight the contributions of the statistics field to finding solutions to global challenges.

The goals of this awareness campaign are to increase public understanding of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society and to nurture statistics as a profession, especially among high-school and college students.

Statistics2013 participants include national and international professional societies, universities, schools, businesses, government agencies and research institutes. These groups will help millions of people understand the value of statistical science through seminars, workshops and outreach to students and the media.

Statistics – the science of learning from data and of measuring, controlling and communicating uncertainty – is much more than numbers on sports pages. Statistical science has powerful and far-reaching effects on everyone, yet most people are unaware of how it improves their lives, says Dr. Montse Fuentes, professor and head of the Department of Statistics at NC State.

“For most people, statistics is an invisible science,” continues Fuentes. “Through this yearlong, worldwide awareness campaign, we hope to highlight the fundamental role of statistics in science and society.”

For example, statistics predicts weather and other natural hazards, powers Internet search engines and marketing campaigns, discovers and develops new drugs and makes the world secure and sustainable. Throughout the last two centuries, statistics was indispensable in confirming many of humankind’s greatest scientific discoveries and breakthroughs, such as the Higgs-Boson particle and the agricultural Green Revolution.

NC State has a long tradition of excellence in statistics, beginning with the founding of the Department of Experimental Statistics by Gertrude Cox in 1941. Faculty and students in the department have made countless contributions to the discipline and profession of statistics in the decades since. Notably, the department was the birthplace of SAS, which is today the largest privately owned software company in the world. NC State now ranks among the top 5 programs in the nation in competitive research and development funding in the mathematical and statistical sciences.

More about Statistics2013

Central features of the Statistics2013 campaign are its website and an informative two-and-a-half-minute video that explains how statistics improves the lives of the world’s 7 billion people. The website includes the following:

What Is Statistics?
An explanation in layman’s language

Stats2013AtSchool
A statistics quiz for students

Statistics as a Career
Information about the work of statisticians and careers in statistics

Teacher Resources
Primary and secondary school resources, a downloadable flyer and posters

The founding organizations of Statistics2013 are the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, International Biometric Society, International Statistical Institute (and the Bernoulli Society), and Royal Statistical Society.