Statistical Significance Award

About the Competition

ASA's Scientific and Public Affairs Advisory Committee (SPAAC) sponsors a Statistical Significance competition at the Joint Statistical Meetings. Started in 2009, the competition is designed to complement the American Statistical Association (ASA) Statistical Significance (StatSig) documents,¹ a series highlighting the contributions statisticians make to society, from health care and economy to national security and the environment.

A JSM Statistical Significance entry is a one-page illustration of the value of statistics to society whose objective is to illustrate to a lay person how the statistical solution to the problem presented in the JSM presentation would help form decisions that improve society in specific areas such as health, agriculture, economy, education, manufacturing, and medicine. The entry should be clearly written to convey the beneficial role of statistics in a concise and unambiguous manner. The most effective Statistical Significance pieces are easy to develop, simple in exposition, enlightening, and fun to read. A call goes out annually in advance of JSM² and entries are judged by members of SPAAC. A prize of $300 is given to the top entry each year.

Participation

All contributed poster authors are eligible to participate.

In addition, participants must (i) notify the competition organizers of their plans to participate using this Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdErXvIQrYUPnzR_amSklkMniGe_5sX40meH006nX2oqW6oqw/viewform (where you will enter presenting author’s name, email address, the presentation title, and the abstract number assigned at the time of submission by midnight, February 29, 2024 (Eastern Time Zone); (ii) upload a pdf of their one-page statistical significance piece to a dropbox to be announced in July, by midnight pdt, the Monday prior to JSM (July 29, 2024). Please title the file with your last name and abstract number, e.g., Pierson2222222.pdf.

Award Criteria / Judging

Entries are evaluated by SPAAC members, who examine the entry and potentially ask questions during the poster session. Entries are judged on five items:

• Significance (a "Significance" write-up is required). Although there is no required format for the write-up, this link to a MSWord version of a past winning entry may help you get started.
• Societal influence/impact
• Layman literacy
• Spatial layout
• Graphics/art
• Technical content

See http://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/POL-StatSigPosterCompGuidelines.pdf for details on each of the above. 


Key Dates / Milestones  

• JSM Contributed Abstract Submission: see JSM website
• Final day to enter competition: February 29
• Deadline for evidence of poster in progress: Follow JSM guidance
• Submission of one-page Statistical Significance entry: Monday prior to JSM
• Judging will take place during JSM SPAAC Poster Competition Session

Past Award Recipients

2023 JSM Statistical Significance Competition Winners

First place: 

• Shinpei Nakamura Sakai, Yale University: Statistics Plays a Crucial Role in Combating Epidemic Diseases.
• Madeline Ward, University of Calgary: Statistics Helps to Mitigate Infection Disease Transmission.

2022 JSM Statistical Significance Competition Winners

1. First place: 
   • Eric D Hixson, Cleveland Clinic: A Machine Learning Solution to Predict Surgical Case Duration in a Multi-Hospital Health System
2. Second place,  two winners:
   • Xiyuan Gao, University of Missouri, Columbia: Regression Analysis of Doubly Censored Failure Time Data with Ancillary Information
   • Federico Veneri Guarch, Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, Iowa State University: Ensemble of SLR Systems for Forensic Evidence
3. Honorable mentions:
   • Eric Gerber, CSU Bakersfield: Competing Risks Analysis of MLB Draft Data
   • Menglu Liang, Penn State College of Medicine: Tackling Dynamic Prediction of Death in Patients with Recurrent Cardiovascular Events
   • Maisha Maliha, Boise State University: Quantifying Post-Wildfire Revegetation Using Satellite Data and Statistical Models: Challenges and Opportunities
   • Junhui Mi, Cleveland Clinic: The Effect of a Rapid Response Team on the Incidence of In-Hospital Mortality

2021 JSM Statistical Significance Competition Winners

1. First place, two winners:
   • Ji Soo Kim, Personalized risk estimates in complex diseases
   • Lingyun Lyu, Multi-stage Treatment Decisions
2. Second place,  three winners:
   • Peng Jin, Susceptible populations and heterogenous effects
   • Sneha Rani, Employment Opportunities and COVID-19
   • Seema Sangari, Statistics and Cyber Risk Quantification
3. Honorable mentions:
   • Adam Elder, Statistics Improves Vaccine Development
   • Tuo Lin, Role of statistics in survey interpretations
   • Emily Luetschwager, Statistics and the Environment: Detecting Natural Gas Leaks
   • Mark Ramos, Statistical testing rises to the challenge of multiplicity in genetic studies
   • Jade Wang, Statistics to improve the treatment of cancerous brain tumors in children

2020 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

The 2020 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition (JSM Session171) was held virtually on Tuesday, August 4. The winning poster was Interim Monitoring in Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials, by Liwen Wu, Junyao Wang and Abdus S Wahed (all of University of Pittsburgh).

2019 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place - Interim Monitoring in Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials by Liwen Wu, Junyao Wang and Abdus Wahed (all of University of Pittsburgh). 

2019 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place - “Strategies for Pooling in Array Testing Configurations with Multiplex Assays”, by Christopher R. Bilder, Joshua Tebbs and Christopher McMahan (of University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of South Carolina and Clemson University, respectively). Here's a link to the Statistical Significance piece.

2018 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place - Identifying Morphologies of Precancerous Cells, by Theresa Gebert. Affiliation: Carnegie Melon University.

2nd Place (tie)

• A Functional Anova Approach to Detecting Changes in Soil Moisture and Temperature, by Manju Johny. Affiliation: Iowa State University.

• Estimation and Inference for Cluster-Randomized Test-Negative Design Trials, by Suzanne Dufault. Affiliation: University of California at Berkeley.

2017 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place - Agents of Change: a Spatial Multivariate Bayesian Test to Identify Factors That Shape a Microbiome (http://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/POL-Singh-Statistical-Sig.pdf), by Susheela Singh,Brian Reich, Eric Laber, Ana-Maria Staicu and Robert Dunn Affiliation: North Carolina State University.

2nd Place (tie)

• Dynamic Outlier Detection for Functional Data, by Meredith King*, Ana-Maria Staicu, Luo Xiao and Ciprian M Crainiceanu. Affiliation: North Carolina State University, North Carolina State University, North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University.
• Spatial Wishart Process and Its Application on Diffusion Tensor Images (http://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/POL-Statistical-Significance.pdf), by Zhou Lan*, Brian Reich and Joseph Guinness. Affiliation: North Carolina State University

2016 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners 

1st Place: Statistics Drives Efficiency in Healthcare (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/SPAAC2.pdf), Grace Shrader, University of Wisconsin

2nd Place: Statistics and Evidence-Based Medicine (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/DAgostinoMcGowanGreevySPAAC.pdf),  Lucy D'Agostino McGowan, Vanderbilt University

2015 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place: Statistical Evaluation of Surface Metrology Data in Firearm Identification (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/SignificanceArticle.pdf), Tracy Morris, University of Central Oklahoma

2nd Place:

• Effect of Data Transformations on the Interpretability of Principal Component Analysis Results (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/JSM2015-Significance_Edwards.pdf),  Author: Melanie Edwards, Exponent, Inc.
• Metric-Based Boxplots for Functional Data in the Presence of Time-Warping Variability (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/WeiyiStatSigposter.pdf), Author: Weiyi Xie, Ohio State University

2014 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place: Can biomarkers be combined to guide treatment? (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/significanceVS.pdf), Veronika Skrivankova, University of Washington

2nd Place:

• Celebrating Statistics on ASA's 175th Anniversary - Optimal Normality Transformation Methods for the Analysis of Biomarkers (http://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2014/onlineprogram/AbstractDetails.cfm?abstractid=311935), Kelly H. Zou, Ching-Ray Yu, Martin O. Carlsson, and Ye Tan; Pfizer Inc.
• Spatial Statistics Guide Population Health, (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/SpatialStatisticsGuidePopHealth.pdf), Authors: Kathryn A. Williams, Boston Children's Hospital/University of Ottawa

2013 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place (tie): Statistics Untangles Complex Diseases (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/SignificancePiece.pdf), Miranda Kroehl, B. Frederiksen, J.M. Norris, A. Baron; Colorado School of Public Health

1st Place (tie): Statistics Improves Data Extraction (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/SignificancePiece2.pdf), Shemra Rizzo (Biostastics department, UCLA), Robert E. Weiss (Biostastics department, UCLA), Raj R. Makkar (Heart Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles)

2012 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place: The Optimal Thresholds of Biomarkers by Maximizing Various Metrics (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/JSM2012-Significance-Piece-KHZ-Abstract305374-Final.pdf), Authors: Kelly H. Zou (Pfizer Inc, NY, NY), Martin O. Carlsson (Pfizer Inc, NY, NY), Kezhen Liu (Rutgers University) and Ching-Ray Yu (Pfizer Inc, NY, NY); 1Pfizer Inc, NY, NY.

2nd Place:

• Oncology Phase I Dose-Finding Study (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/BoHuangStatSig.pdf) , Author: Bo Huang, Pfizer Inc
• Data Monitoring Committees Improve Clinical Trials (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/DavidKerrStatSig.pdf), Authors: David Kerr, Susan Moon and Shannon Grant, Axio Research

2011 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winners

1st Place: Statistical Models for Cropland Cash Rental Rates (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/JSM2011_SignificancePosterWriteup.pdf), Authors: Emily Berg (National Agricultural Statistics Service), Will Cecere (National Agricultural Statistics Service), and Malay Ghosh (University of Florida)
2nd Place: Modeling of Smoking Cessation (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/JSM2011_Significance-Piece-KHZ-JPM-RJW-Abstract301993-Final.pdf), Authors: Kelly H. Zou, Jeno P. Marton, Richard J. Willke; Pfizer Inc.

2009 JSM Statistical Significance Poster Competition Winner

Richard A. Forshee and Mark O. Walderhaug, both of the FDA, were named named winners of the Statistical Significance Poster competition for their entry, titled "Statistics Helps Protect the Blood Supply" (http://ww2.amstat.org/misc/pdfs/2009StatSigPosterWinner.pdf) during the 2009 Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC.