International Prize in Statistics to Sir David Cox

Prominent British statistician Sir David Cox has been named the inaugural recipient of the International Prize in Statistics. Like the acclaimed Fields Medal, Abel Prize, Turing Award and Nobel Prize, the International Prize in Statistics is considered the highest honor in its field. It will be bestowed every other year to an individual or team for major achievements using statistics to advance science, technology and human welfare. 

This inaugural prize recognises Sir David’s seminal 1972 paper in which he developed the proportional hazards model that today bears his name. The Cox Model has been applied in many fields of science and engineering, from disease risk assessment and treatment evaluation to product liability, school dropout, re-incarceration and AIDS surveillance systems.

His mark on research is so great that his 1972 paper is one of the three most-cited papers in statistics and ranked 16th in Nature’s list of the top 100 most-cited papers of all time for all fields.

Read further details at:

http://www.statprize.org/pdfs/Press-Release-International-Prize-Winner.pdf

https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3052-sir-david-cox-honoured-with-first-international-prize-in-statistics

Eureka with a Probabilist and a Statistician

Good at Math? Now you are no more a nerd, you are actually cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfjY9C6UpiA

The Magical Mind of Persi Diaconis

When Diaconis first came to Stanford, he planned to keep his magic background a secret from his academic colleagues.. fearing they wouldn't take seriously a man of hocus-pocus who did research on card shuffling.

Then he stumbled upon a book that described an experiment by the French mathematician Paul Lévy, analyzing the phenomenon known as perfect shuffling - in which a standard deck of cards is carefully shuffled eight times and ends up returning precisely to its starting arrangement. Diaconis says. "I thought, If Paul Lévy can study perfect shuffling, I can say I study perfect shuffling. So I wrote up my work on perfect shuffling, and it got on the front page of The New York Times."

https://chronicle.com/article/The-Magical-Mind-of-Persi/129404/

Modelers' Hippocratic Oath

For those who make a living by building some kind of Analytical models... Here comes a modelers' Hippocratic Oath, from the book "The Quants"

1. I will remember that I didn't make the world, and it doesn't satisfy my equations

2. Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by Mathematics

3. I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.

4. Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.

5. I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension

Banknotes featuring Scientists and Mathematicians

One can find a collection of currency featuring scientists and mathematicians from all over the world at the link below:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbourj/money.htm

Interview with Kanti Mardia

Statistics provides a challenge somewhat akin to Sherlock Holmes’ task: how to find hidden truth in any data, from small to big.
- Kanti Mardia

Read the complete interview with Samuel S. Wilks Award winner Kanti Mardia, at:

http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/5809361/Statistics-provides-a-challenge-somewhat-akin-to-Sherlock-Holmes-task-how-to-fin.html

An interview with Sir David Cox

Sir David Cox is arguably one of the world’s leading living statisticians. He has made pioneering and important contributions to numerous areas of statistics and applied probability over the years, of which perhaps the best known is the proportional hazards model, which is widely used in the analysis of survival data. In this interview, he says, "I would like to think of myself as a scientist, who happens largely to specialise in the use of statistics”

Read the complete interview at:
http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/5770651/I-would-like-to-think-of-myself-as-a-scientist-who-happens-largely-to-specialise.html

Solving water resource problems using Statistics

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Upmanu Lall, Director of Columbia Water Center discusses how he uses Statistics and an understanding of climate, agriculture, commerce, engineering, technology, and politics to solve some of the world’s most pressing water problems:

http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/5758681/Columbia-Professor-Uses-Statistics-and-Data-Science-to-Solve-Global-Water-Resour.html

An Interview with Larry Wasserman

Professor Larry Wasserman is currently Professor in the Department of Statistics and Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include nonparametric inference, machine learning, statistical topology and astrostatistics. Here is a link to his interview where he talks about statistics and his career in statistics.

http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/5740681/Making-valid-inferences-under-the-weakest-possible-assumptions-An-interview-with.html

Timeline of Statistics

Check out this precise yet detailed "timeline of statistics" published by Significance magazine to celebrate its 10th anniversary..

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00707.x/abstract

Hidden History

A modern statistician needs to appreciate the historical roots of the profession, argues Terry Speed:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37320965/Hidden%20History.pdf

So look to your statistical roots!

Statistics and The War

We all agree that wars are terrible and to be avoided to the greatest extent possible, yet it is hard not to concede that wars can bring scientific, technological, industrial, cultural, political, even economic benefits. This is one of the many paradoxes of war. Statistics is no exception. Not only was there extremely rapid development of some areas of statistics, especially industrial statistics, but also a large proportion of the leaders in our subject in the 40 years following the World War 2 met it for the first time during the War. Most of them, would not have become statisticians but for the War. 

http://bulletin.imstat.org/2013/08/terence%E2%80%99s-stuff-statistics-and-the-war/

Dennis Lindley 1923 - 2013

We are very sad to learn of the death of Professor Dennis V. Lindley. Lindley was one of the founding fathers of Bayesian statistics, who celebrated his 90th birthday earlier this year. 

http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/news/5655391/Eminent-Bayesian-statistician-Dennis-Lindley-passes-away.html

You may read his recent interviews at: http://uncertainstuff.uncertainaffairs.com/2013/09/dennis-lindley.html

Colleagues pay tribute to the late Professor Dennis Lindley: http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/news/5785791/Colleagues-pay-tribute-to-Dennis-Lindley.html

Celebrating Statisticians

In celebration of the International Year of Statistics, here are articles about some celebrated Statisticians

http://blogs.sas.com/content/jmp/tag/celebrating-statisticians/

Richard Price, Bayes’ theorem, and God

Bayes’ theorem is 250 years old this year. But did the Rev. Thomas Bayes actually devise it? Martyn Hooper presents the case for the extraordinary Richard Price, friend of US presidents, mentor, pamphleteer, economist, and above all preacher. And did Price develop Bayes’ theorem in order to prove the existence of God?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00638.x/pdf

Why Statistics?

Ever met with people who ask what do Statisticians exactly do?
Here is a video of a talk given by Dr. Anil Gore at IUCAA @InnoVidya. Don't miss to enjoy..

http://innovidya.kpoint.com/kapsule/gcc-487cbc02-d5a2-472c-a029-2e2ef8012ebd/t/why-statistics

Statistics, your friend in daily life

..whether you like it or not. As we are 88% through the Celebratory year, here is a report on Statisticians partying:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303559504579197942777726778

How much a Statistician earns?

If you are planning to go to USA, which job would be most rewarding:

http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2013/11/01/salarysurveyspaig/

Predict your h-index

The "scholar" package provides functions to extract citation data from Google Scholar. In addition to retrieving basic information about a single scholar, the package also allows you to compare multiple scholars and predict future h-index values. Here are some quick highlights:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/new-r-package-scholar/

Statistics making the impact

The list of 17 equations that changed the World includes:

• The Normal distribution
• Shannon's information theory
• The logistic model for population growth
• The Black Scholes model

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-17-equations-that-changed-the-world-2012-7?op=1&IR=T