Opinions

The American Statistical Association launched a new website thisisstatistics with general information on what being a statistician really means today. I often meet fearful looks when I meet people and present myself as a “biostatistician” (the key word being statistician here). Up to the point that I now generally say I work in “applied mathematics in medicine”, before I drop the magical “big data” keyword in the necessary explanation following this title.

Yesterday I attended a conference on the Horizons of Statistics at the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris, organized by the French Statistical Association. As it was broadcasted on youtube, this reminded me of the Future Of Statistics unconference organized by the simply statistics blog earlier in 2013 fall. By the way I really enjoyed Daniela Witten talk from this unconference: check it out ! The Horizons of Statistics turned out very interesting, and I really enjoyed Emmanuel Candès talk on randomized computing algorithms, as well as Emmanuel Todd talk which was very refreshing at the end of the day.

At the end of august 2013, I was lucky enough to attend the Rencontres des jeunes statisticiens (young statisticians meeting). It is organised every other year by the Société Française de Statistique (French Statistical Society). It was thrilling to meet all these fellow statisticians in the making! A lot of the talks were very interesting. In particular, one made me think of a recent post from Roger Peng on the famous Simply Statistics blog.

Earlier this month, results of the baccalauréat came out. It is the French examination you have to pass to graduate from high school. B. Coulmont, a professor in sociology at Université Paris 8, made this plot representing the number of mention Très Bien (highest honors) according to the first name. He insisted that first name do not determine academic success, but instead are a good proxy to one’s social class.