International Year of Statistics 2013 

The ISI invites your organization to participate in a partnership among societies and organizations around the globe to celebrate 2013 as the International Year of Statistics. The website is now launched. (http://www.statistics2013.org/)

The purpose of this International Year, which we are calling Statistics 2013, is to promote the importance of Statistics, through the combined energies of societies and organizations worldwide, to the broader scientific community, business and government data users, the media, policy makers, employers, students, and the general public. The goals of Statistics 2013 include:

• increasing public awareness of the power and impact of Statistics on all aspects of society;
• nurturing Statistics as a profession, especially among young people; and
• promoting creativity and development in the sciences of Probability and Statistics

To get connected with the planning for the International Year of Statistics, please send us the name and contact information of the individual who will serve as the liaison between your organization and the Statistics 2013 Steering Committee. (Steering Committee members are listed at the end of this article.) The liaison will help the Steering Committee know what kinds of activities you might be considering for 2013, and the Steering Committee will keep your liaison informed of activities being planned elsewhere across the globe. Please contact us. To see who else is participating, visit http://www.statistics2013.org/participants.cfm.

There are a wide variety of ways organizations and societies might choose to recognize an International Year of Statistics:

• conferences
• workshops
• symposia
• career fairs
• outreach fairs
• public service announcements
• videos
• op ed pieces in local and national media
• blogs
• weekly “featured statisticians”
• special editions of magazines or journals

are just some of the possibilities.

We hope many groups will place special emphasis on activities to engage students and potential students of statistics, helping them to become more aware of statistics as a key scientific discipline. Some organizations might consider special foci, such as a broad statistical literacy outreach or promoting the ways in which statistics advances science and improves the human condition.

Some may wish to join the Bernoulli Society in capitalizing on the fact that 2013 will be the 300^th anniversary of the publication of the Ars Conjectandi, written by Jakob Bernoulli (and published after his death), which is considered a foundational work in probability. The Bernoulli Society has already planned a rich variety of activities in 2013 to celebrate this anniversary. Others may care to note that 2013 is the 250^th anniversary of the first public presentation of Thomas Bayes’ famous work.

The point of the previous paragraphs is simply to stimulate thinking about possibilities, not to limit it in any way.

The ISI joins four other societies (RSS, IMS, IBS, and ASA) to form the organizing group for the International Year of Statistics. The Steering Committee for the organizing group consists of:

Richard Emsley, International Biometric Society

Denise Lievesley, Royal Statistical Society

Vijay Nair, International Statistical Institute

Ada van Krimpen, International Statistical Institute

Adam Jakubowski, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland

Sastry Pantula, American Statistical Association

Ron Wasserstein, American Statistical Association

Ron Wasserstein, Executive Director of the ASA, is providing staff support to the Steering Committee.