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The Department of Statistics
Alumni Newsletter - January 2020
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|  | Team of undergraduate students Ben Schweitzer, Alexis Morris, Abbie Klinker, and Alex Erisey, who consulted with FC Cincinnati as part of a Center for Analytics & Data Science (CADS) project (faculty mentor: Tom Fisher)
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- provide the latest software tools and the servers to host them, including the server-based desktop used in our hybrid classroom,
- underwrite the activities of student organizations such as the Miami StatHawks and Actuarial Science Club, and
- support the participation of our students at professional conferences.
Your gifts of time help our students see how their careers might evolve after completing their studies at Miami.
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Stories / Topics in This Newsletter...
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Chair Reflections
Curriculum Changes - B.S. Data Science and Statistics and B.A. Data Analytics
JSM 2019 Miami Alumni and Friends
Fall Statehouse Visit
Student News
Faculty News
Stats+Stories - Year in Review
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Greetings from Upham Hall.
Happy 2020! (So, is this the first year of the new decade or the 10th year of the last decade?) Last Fall was BIG for the Department of Statistics. We celebrated the 10th anniversary of our department in November. It was great fun to see many of our alums come back to campus, and I want to thank all of the alumni participants for the short courses, panels and posters. I particularly want to thank the two alumni who developed and presented short courses: Heather Mathews ("An Intro to Analyzing Network Data") and Matt Wheeler ("Statistical Smoothing: How to Analyze Data Like the Fonz"). The conference also provided a Stats+Stories podcast first - alumna Vicki Hertzberg and ASA President-Elect Wendy Martinez participated in a live (to tape or digital equivalent) recording with audience questions.
Two new colleagues joined us in August 2019: Donghyung Lee (tenure-track assistant professor with specialty in methods for bioinformatics data), and Jeff Messinger (new assistant lecturer and Miami MS grad). In addition, the new Provost, Jason Osborne, has ASA PStat® accreditation and has a tenure home in our department. We are searching for a new assistant professor now, and look forward to welcoming a new colleague in August. The figure below provides a roster of statistics faculty over the years.
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The increase in the number of statistics faculty is strongly connected to the growth of statistics as a major. In the figure below, you can see that the number of BS in Math and Statistics majors has increased a little in the last 20 years, but that the number of BS Statistics majors has exploded. In addition, the number of MS Statistics students has increased from 10 to more than 30. By the way, these increases don’t capture the increasing demand from other majors that would like students to take upper level statistics coursework.
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I am proud to be part of a vibrant department that is effectively preparing students for success in business, industry, and academia, and I’m proud of our alumni who continue to contribute to these sectors.
During times when budgets grow tighter, your support has been important and much appreciated. I hope you will enjoy the newsletter that follows, and I invite you to submit news items for a section of alumni news that we’ll include in future newsletters.
As always, thank you for your support!
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B.S. Data Science and Statistics and B.A. Data Analytics
Preparing for entering the workforce of today requires computational skills along with the statistical skills that were already embedded in our B.S. in Statistics degree. In recognition of this, the department reframed our degree as a B.S. in Data Science and Statistics. This new major has two tracks - data science and statistics. Both tracks now include courses on the fundamentals of programming and statistical programming as part of the foundation of both concentrations. The Data Science track essentially has a computer science minor embedded in it, while the Statistics track requires experimental design and data practicum.
The Department of Statistics provided leadership in developing the new B.A. in Data Analytics. This major has a foundation of 18 credit hours and advanced coursework of an additional18 credit hours in a particular concentration. The advanced concentrations include bioinformatics, geospatial analytics and sports analytics. Other concentrations are being developed. The foundation includes a math-for-analytics course, a data ethics course, a technical communication course and three courses in statistics, including the STA 363: Introduction to Statistical Modeling course and two courses that are being developed now: STA 308 ( Introduction to Programming and Scripting for Data Analytics) and STA 309 (Building, Managing and Exploring Data Sets in Analytics).
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JSM 2019 Miami statistics alumni and friends
Our traditional JSM Monday lunch with students, alumni, faculty and friends continued in Denver. It was fun to catch up with folks from around the country. Mark your calendars to join us in Philadelphia for the Miami Monday lunch at JSM 2020.
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Fall Statehouse Visit
The Department of Statistics had 2 alumni (Brian Sampsel, Bri Clements), four current students (Lydia Carter, Ben Schweitzer, Dan Cirkovic, and Alison Tuiyott) and three faculty members (John Bailer, Tom Fisher, and Karsten Maurer) participate in the Fall visit to the statehouse.
Teams of students and faculty went to visit state representatives during the day to discuss how Miami students can impact society. This was a great opportunity to meet with representatives and to describe that outstanding work that Miami students and faculty contribute to the state.
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|  | L to R: L. Carter, B. Schweitzer, D. Cirkovic, A. Tuiyott, J. Bailer, T. Fisher, and K. Maurer standing in front of the statehouse.
| |  | A. Tuiyott, D. Cirkovic and B. Clements speak with representative Riordan McClain.
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We are blessed with outstanding students who often pursue independent research work outside of the classroom. We have had multiple students present at the Joint Statistical Meetings in recent years and 2019 was no exception. (Alumni gifts helped support the travel of these students to the JSM. Thank you for your generosity!) Faculty mentors Tom Fisher and Karsten Maurer collaborated closely with the DataExpo teams. Kudos to all for their successes.
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 | A. Tuiyott, B. Schweitzer, ASA President-Elect Wendy Martinez, and D. Cirkovic
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| JSM 2019 presenters
Alison Tuiyott, a combined BS/MS student, presented her research at Joint Statistics Meetings in Denver in August 2019. She finished tied for third place in the DataExpo competition. In addition, she submitted a paper to Ohio Journal of Public Health with Butler County coroner and health commissioner as co-authors (see app here).
Ben Schweitzer, a BS student, presented research at the Joint Statistics Meetings in Denver in August 2019. He finished in second place in the DataExpo competition.
Daniel Cirkovic, also a combined BS/MS student, is conducting methodological Mathematical Statistics work as part of his MS project. He presented preliminary results at the Joint Statistics Meetings in Denver in August 2019.
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Graduate Research Forum
STA was well represented at the Fall Graduate Research Forum with presentations by:
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|  | Daniel Cirkovic (Faculty Mentor: Tom Fisher)
| |  | Mark Miller (Faculty Mentor: Jing Zhang)
| |  | Zhiyuan Li (Faculty Mentor: Qingcong Yuan)
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 | Lynette Hudiburgh, pictured with CAS associate dean Renee Baernstein, was named CAS Distinguished Lecturer
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| Lynette Hudiburgh:
- Named College of Arts and Science Distinguished Lecturer. She presented a talk last Fall titled "Statistics: Confused, Misused, and Abused, or How to Avoid Being Swept Away in the Data Deluge" to a full house.
- Promoted to Senior Lecturer, the highest level for Teaching, Clinical Professors and Lecturers (TCPL) faculty. Impressive accomplishment to be fully promoted after only a single year at the second level - congratulations to Lynette!
- Currently organizing the 6th Careers Involving Quantitative Skills (CIQS) Day - an event to promote quantitative study to high school women
John Bailer:
Tom Fisher:
- Mentored a Center for Analytics and Data Science (CADS) project for FC Cincinnati marketing team (see header photo)
- Co-chair of ASA President's 2020 TEDx Initiative
Seonjin Kim:
- Promoted to Associate Professor and assumed role as Graduate Director
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Stats+Stories - Year in Review
The 120th episode of Stats+Stories was released on January 2, 2020, and this episode featured the statistics of the year AND the statistics of the decade. Listen now to find out what 8.4M football pitches (aka soccer fields) represents.
Other firsts this year for S+S included:
- a roving reporter (Brian Tarran at the JSM and RSS meetings) and the first recording of S+S before a live audience at our November conference.
- speaking with the Pearson Prize winner, Yoav Benjamani, about False Discovery Rates and with Xiao-li Meng, founding editor of the new Harvard Data Science Review.
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College of Arts and Science
311 Upham Hall • 100 Bishop Circle • Oxford, OH 45056
513-529-7828 • Fax: 513-529-0989 • statistics@MiamiOH.edu
Copyright © 2020 Miami University.
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