New William Guy Lecturer 2018-2019

We are delighted to announce that the new RSS William Guy lecturer for the coming academic year is Dr Lee Fawcett, following an open call and a competitive selection process. Named in honour of William Augustus Guy, an early medical statistician and past RSS president, this prestigious volunteer role recognises fellows with a successful track record in undertaking school outreach activities.

Over the coming year, Lee will be delivering lectures to school students in the UK on the topic of ‘The Storm of the Century! Using data to anticipate extreme climate events’, which looks at what insights statistics can provide for extreme weather events.

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Mathematics the most popular choice at A level

Mathematics is the most popular subject to study at A level, having risen by 2.5% on the previous year, according to the 2018 exam results. Most of the students taking these exams will have sat the pre-reform A level Mathematics this year; the new reformed A level started being taught in September 2017. Meanwhile, in Scotland, A-C attainment at Higher went up slightly (0.5%) on the previous year.

At GCSE/National 5 level, where Maths is compulsory, results remain stable. The Department for Education (DfE) reported that in England, 71% of GCSE Maths entries got a grade 4 (or C under the old system) or above - up from 70.7% last year. The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) reported a slight increase in Maths National 5, with an A-C attainment rate of 64.7%. In Northern Ireland, the percentage of Maths entries achieving A* - C grades has increased by 1.7 percentage points to 68.1% and in Wales, the figure was 44.2%.

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Nominations for 2019 Professional Affairs Committee vacancies

The Royal Statistical Society’s Professional Affairs Committee (PAC) is changing its chair and some of its committee members for 2019. PAC oversees the Society’s work for professionally qualified fellows and those seeking professionally qualified status. Amongst its duties, it is responsible for: establishing and maintaining standards and criteria for education, professional training and experience, including accreditation of university courses and the Society’s professional examinations; assessing applications for CStat, CSci and GradStat status; and overseeing the revalidation process for CStats and CSci’s.

Vice president nomination for 2019

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RSS helps preserve independence of Puerto Rican stats agency

The RSS has played a significant role in helping to turn around plans to dismantle the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics (PRIS).

Significance, the RSS and American Statistical Association (ASA) flagship magazine, published two articles earlier this year regarding proposals by the Puerto Rican government that were likely to have led to the dismantling of PRIS as an independently controlled entity.

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RSS Series A journal scores highly in 2017 Impact Factor figures

The Royal Statistical Society’s journals continued to perform well in the 2017 Impact Factor scorings, which were released in late June.

The RSS Series A journal increased its Impact Factor from 1.852 to 2.473 and jumping from 21st to 11th in the rankings in the Statistics and Probability category.

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Significance August 2018 issue out now!

The August 2018 issue of Significance is out now in print and digital formats. In this issue we tell the story of R – the statistical programming language that became a subcultural phenomenon. On its 25^th anniversary, we explore R’s history, community and culture – and consider what the future might have in store.

We also mark the upcoming centenary of a paper by RA Fisher in which he first introduced the statistical term ‘variance’. What followed was a whole new field of statistical analysis.

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