This is a session of Topic 1: Sustaining strengths and building capacity in statistics education

Building capacity in Statistics majors

Organizers

• Helen MacGillivray (Australia)
• Ian Westbrooke (New Zealand) : Session chair

Abstract

Statistics education has many and diverse roles, but a role of central importance to all is the education of future statisticians. Graduate statisticians have long been in demand across a wide range of workplaces, with many going on to add work-specific skills to their core statistical and quantitative capabilities, and often becoming leaders in business, industry or government. Statisticians may be involved in any or all of consulting, collaboration, research, statistics education. The discipline of statistics itself is constantly developing and expanding in response to the needs of other disciplines, business, industry, government and ongoing growth of technology. How can the existing and ongoing demand for capable graduate statisticians be met for the many and diverse workplaces and needs? How can the preparation of statistical graduates embed development of core statistical thinking and include up-to-date statistical skills within the restrictions of university systems and frequently conflicting views of how to educate statisticians? Although the reforms in statistical education that arose around the world in the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s and beyond, have influenced the training of statistics majors, the penetration is not uniform and is under constant pressure from both ongoing and new tensions and society needs. Tensions between research and teaching; major and service courses; statistics and mathematics; professional and research preparation; applying existing and developing new methodology; increasing student numbers; and decreasing statistics teaching faculty; are exacerbated by society’s increasing needs for technological skills and big data management and analysis. In addition, there is a great need for both specific and general statistics capacity building in developing countries. The presentations in this session identify the challenges and opportunities in both regional and world contexts, including discussion of issues, directions and structural constraints.

Papers