While I am enjoying the Joint Math Meetings in Baltimore, I am looking forward with great anticipation to the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Boston. The meetings have been a significant part of my life. JSM 2014 will be my 30th consecutive JSM. There are others with much longer records of JSM attendance.
This JSM, of course, will be the central place for the ASA to celebrate its 175th anniversary. But JSM is a celebration itself, a testimony to the power of partnerships. JSM was formally created forty years ago. But for nearly forty years before that, the ASA met with other societies in an “allied meeting,” so partnerships have been a part of the annual meeting for nearly 80 years.
These days, five societies form the core of JSM: the American Statistical Association, the Eastern North American and Western North American Regions of the International Biometric Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Statistical Society of Canada. These societies are the founding partners of JSM, and have collaborated for decades to host the largest meeting of statisticians in the world.
Beginning in 2009, JSM became an even broader partnership, when the International Chinese Statistical Association and the International Indian Statistical Association became special JSM partners. “Special JSM partners” are not formally a part of the “JSM Agreement,” the document which governs JSM and is signed by the five founding partners, but they are professional partners in every way, contributing to the life and vitality of JSM. In 2013, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis and the Korean International Statistical Society became special JSM partners, and in 2014, the Royal Statistical Society has become the tenth partner. The Joint Statistical Meetings are truly an extraordinary and increasingly diverse partnership, the big tent for statistical societies!
From a business standpoint, the JSM is conducted by the ASA. That is, the ASA provides the resources and staffing to handle the logistical arrangements for JSM. From the standpoint of content, all partners contribute vigorously. The annual JSM Program Committee oversees the intellectual content of the meeting. All partners have representatives on the Program Committee.
In future blogs, we’ll have more to say about the other ways the ASA works in partnership with statistical societies. In its 175th year, the ASA is deeply networked with other societies to promote the practice and profession of statistics.