RSS Members' Week: Want to write for Significance Magazine?

Significance editor Brian Tarran explains how members can get involved with writing for the RSS and ASA flagship statistics magazine.

As a member of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), we hope you enjoy reading each issue of Significance. But have you ever considered writing for the magazine?

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RSS Members' Week: 60 seconds with Mario Cortina Borja

Name    
Mario Cortina Borja

How long have you been an RSS member?    
17 years

Volunteer title  
Chairman of the Significance magazine editorial board

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Conference 2018: Our awards ceremony in pictures

Every year, the RSS presents a number of medals, awards and prizes for outstanding contributions to statistics.

The awards are presented at our Annual International Conference, which this year took place in Cardiff. The awards were presented by our current president, Sir David Spiegelhalter.

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Significance magazine October 2018

The October 2018 issue of Significance is out now in print and digital formats. In this issue, we explore the use of statistics in court. Judges and jurors are often asked to make sense of statistics. But data, probabilities and uncertainties are easily misunderstood or misused by those not trained to deal with them. Is education the answer? Or is greater oversight required? Nick Thieme considers the options for the US legal system.

Then, continuing the legal theme, Jonny Jacobsen takes us back to the 1990s, when British miners were fighting for compensation for diseases linked to coal dust exposure. Epidemiology and statistics were essential to the miners’ case, so defendants sought to cast doubt on the data – and it fell to Jonny’s father, the late Michael Jacobsen, to argue that the research was sound. With a high concentration of cases of ‘black lung’ disease recently reported among miners in southwest Virginia, this historical account is a timely tale.

Also this issue:

• Letisha Smith – winner of the 2018 Award for Statistical Excellence in Early-Career Writing – uses machine learning to help streamline her meal plans.
• Andrew Gelman offers five recommendations for dealing with fundamental ethical dilemmas in statistical practice and communication.
• Diana Scarrott presents a brief history of Zachary Macaulay, the 'brilliant statistician’ who fought to end slavery in British colonies in the 1800s.
• And, in an excerpt from his new book, The Perils of Perception, Bobby Duffy argues that our brains are partly to blame for our misperceptions about society.

RSS members can access the digital version of Significance through MyRSS, or download and read the magazine on the go with our iOS and Android apps.

If you are a print subscriber, your October issue will be arriving soon. You can subscribe online.

Significance is online at www.significancemagazine.com.

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RSS endorses regulator’s criticism of DfE stats claims

The RSS has issued a strongly worded statement regarding the Department for Education’s ‘misuse’ of statistics regarding government funding of education.

RSS President, Sir David Spiegelhalter, said: 'The Department for Education has had multiple warnings over the years about misusing statistics. For a Department that is in charge of the nation’s numerical skills, this is getting embarrassing. Ministers need to get a grip and ensure they use numbers in a trustworthy way.

'As the UK Statistics Authority has shown, DfE has recently been using statistics selectively, in a way that can rightly be termed “spinning”.’

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Conference 2018: Rapid-fire talk and poster prize winners

The RSS conference poster exhibition gives early career researchers the opportunity to present their research at conference, and talk about their work with conference attendees.

Last year, we introduced a new rapid-fire talks section for those new to presenting their research, where each speaker had five-minutes to present their research. This section proved so popular we integrated it as a key part of the conference. 

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New partnership to connect RSS volunteers to overseas projects

The RSS has just signed an agreement with the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) to enable RSS fellows to volunteer their time and statistical expertise to help low-income countries develop their statistical systems.

PARIS21 is an international body established by the UN, EC, OECD, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank back in 1999 to promote better use and production of statistics throughout the developing world. The new agreement will allow RSS fellows to provide technical assistance to specific PARIS21 assignments to strengthen statistical systems in developing and emerging economies.

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