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Looking back at 2016, I think statistics had a very good year in terms of the recognition our scientific discipline received. We on the ASA staff continue to make the case for how statistics makes the science (and government, business, policy and much more) better and look forward to continuing to promote the practice and profession of statistics in 2017.

Here are some of the highlights I identified but I'd love to hear your thoughts. (Please send them to pierson@amstat.org or add them to the comment space below or both!)

1. The Inaugural International Prize in Statistics was awarded to Sir David Cox. I really liked Susan Ellenberg's compelling video announcement of Sir David Cox as the winner. I look forward to the announcement of the next winner in 2018.
2. The ASA's Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose has been viewed a whopping 161,000 times (as of December 28) since its early March 2016 release. The American Statistician article also earned an Altmetric score of 1839, making it #71 on Altmetric’s Top 100 articles of 2016 list, was widely covered in the media, and continues to be mentioned often in social media. The many articles provided as supplementary materials to the article have also been well-read and downloaded.
3. Ten Simple Rules for Effective Statistical Practice, published by Robert E. Kass, Brian S. Caffo, Marie Davidian, Xiao-Li Meng, Bin Yu, and Nancy Reid, in PLOS Computational Biology has been viewed 131,000 times (as of December 28) since being published 09 Jun 2016 and is the fifth most viewed "Ten Simple Rules" piece out the the roughly sixty since the series started a decade ago. In its June 30 Washington Update, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), included this Ten Simple Rules in its Statistics in the Life Sciences: A Summer Reading List, an article that was one of most popular summer newsletter articles.
4. The NIH Center for Scientific Review (CSR) published Statisticians Share Insights for Applicants and Reviewers in the September issue of its quarterly Peer Review Notes, which has a circulation of 70,000-80,000. The article was a result of an ASA visit to CSR leadership in July at the urging of the ASA Committee of Funded Research (which is putting together its own document, Statistical Issues Seen in Non-Statistics Proposals.)
5. Statistics and Biostatistics continues to be a hot degree. Fortune Magazine named statistics and biostatistics master’s degrees as the two Best Graduate Degrees For Jobs in 2016. Forbes also biostatistics and statistics master’s degrees as the two best master's degrees for jobs right now. Careercast ranked statistician #2 on its list of The Best Jobs of 2016 with the closely related data scientist being #1. This continues a good run for statistics and biostatistics over the last few years: The 25 Hottest Skills That Got People Hired in 2014; Careercast names Statistician one of 2015 top jobs for millennials; The Importance of Data Occupations in the U.S. Economy; Statistician Projected As Top 10 Fastest-Growing Job; U.S. News Rates Statistician as Best Business Job and #3 STEM Job; Forbes: Data Scientist Among Top Jobs in Engineering and IT; Statistician Among Top Three Jobs for Millennials.
6. JSM breaks attendance record for third consecutive year. (Related to meetings, it was also great to see the second Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference was attended by 400 enthusiastic participants, the reports of Statisticians Speaking Data Science Conferences, and the ASA sponsorship of the Data Science and Advanced Analytics Conference (DSAA) in Montreal.)
7. CMU Dean of Science Andrew Moore says statisticians are often the heroes of artificial intelligence (AI) in a U.S. Senate Hearing on Artificial Intelligence. He stated, “The really good ideas of the moment in machine learning and deep learning came out of mathematics and statistics. Without the fundamental work going on by the mathematicians and statisticians around the world, we wouldn’t be where we are. Statisticians, who are often the heroes in AI, need help to progress their field forward as well.” See 1:18:54 of this Senate Commerce Committee Hearing.
8. More great progress with the ASA PR Campaign, This is Statistics. The 2016 Election Prediction contest attracted lots of traffic to its website, on social media, and in the media. The Sports Analytics webinar was also very popular. Adding to their collection of videos that have been viewed more than 100,000 times, two more were just added: Employers Discuss The Demand For Statisticians and Statisticians Discuss Making a Difference through Their Work. A new survey with the Society for Human Resource Management shows the Growing Demand for Data Analysts. The This is Statistics Twitter followers surpassed 4100 and its Facebook page has 8900 likes. (Let me take this opportunity to share This is Statistics with your students, colleagues, relatives, and networks.)
9. It will happen in 2017 but the commitments were made in 2016: Top leaders from NIH and the Nature and Science Editors-in-chief have agreed to be part of this 2017 JSM Invited Session in Baltimore, How funding agencies and journals are encouraging reproducible research; the role of statisticians. The speakers are Jeremy Berg, Science magazine; Michael Lauer, NIH Director of Extramural Research; Philip Campbell, Nature magazine; and Richard Nakamura, Director of NIH Center for Scientific Review. Organized by CFR Chair Ming-Wen An, the session will be chaired by Marie Davidian. Put it on your calendar!

What have I missed? To reiterate, please send me additions to pierson@amstat.org or add them to the comment space below or both.

[Here are some items that have come up since I pushed "publish" on this blog (Sorry to have missed these!):

1. More Statisticians Becoming Senior University Administrators (and the related emphasis on Statisticians Talking About Leadership through the book Leadership and Women in Statistics.)
2. ASA members and role of federal statistics on Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking
3. UC Berkeley's Michael I. Jordan determined to be most influential computer scientist by Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
4. Biostatistics Competencies Maintained in Public Health Accreditation Criteria, thanks to push from biostatistical community leaders.]

I’d like to think the items above, especially items 2-4 and 8, show a growing recognition of the importance of statistics to science overall and a receptiveness to more engagement of statisticians.

There’s also a few items from past years for which it was nice to see recognized in 2016. Foremost is the ASA Statement on the Role of Statistics in Data Science. The Amstat News version of it has more than 6500 views (there is also a pdf version linked from the ASA Board Statement page) and the ASA statement was a topic of a breakout discussion on the agenda of the 2016 Computing Research Association (CRA) Conference in Snowbird and seems to have partially influenced the CRA statement, Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science. Further it was mentioned numerous times in the December National Academies Data Science Education Workshops (here and here), which were sponsored by the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. I’m also encouraged to see continued citations and references to the 2014 ASA Whitepaper, Discovery with Data: Leveraging Statistics with Computer Science to Transform Science and Society, and the 2014 ASA Board statement on using value-added models for educational assessment.  

There are many ASA activities from 2016 that my colleagues and I are proud of—from another professional society requesting statistical editing help with their journals from ASA members to ASA Receiving NSF Grant to Establish Series of REUs; the NSF sponsorship of a statistics and biostatistics department chairs workshop this summer and Christine Franklin Being named first ASA K–12 Statistical Ambassador; ASA’s sponsorship of the Roundtable Meeting: Data Science Post-Secondary Education and the Board’s endorsement of the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degrees in data science; ASA Board approving creating position of Science Policy Fellow and Amy Nussbaum filling it and ASA exhibits for first time at School Counselors conference—but that will have to wait for another blog entry.

Happy New Year!

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