RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Past president David Hand reflects on his recently completed two-year term of office.

Statistics is a hugely important discipline, which impacts on almost all walks of life. Since the readers of this newsletter will presumably mostly be statisticians, you will already know this, but it is really brought home to one when one serves a two-year term of office as president. The breadth of activities in which the Society is engaged and its involvement with other organisations and people is simply vast. With my term of office at an end, I thought it would be interesting to enumerate some of this vast range: if nothing else, it can be used to demonstrate to non-statistical friends and colleagues just how widely statistics does impact on everyday life.   

But before I get to the details it is important to acknowledge just how the Society manages to have such a wide impact. It achieves this through the efforts of two groups of people. On the one hand there are the members and fellows themselves, and especially those who so willingly organise the Society’s activities – who chair and serve on the Society’s many committees, who set the examinations and guide the professional development process, who interact with government and the media, who organise the meetings (up to 150 a year) and conferences, who run the sections and local groups, who run and teach on the professional development centre courses and the Centre for Statistical Education, who edit the journals and other publications, who advise the president about the far too many things on which he (in my case) was far too ignorant, and so on. And then, on the other hand, there are the wonderful staff at the Society’s head office in Errol Street, who work so extraordinary effectively as a team despite the many different demands on their time.   

Two things, in particular, shaped my presidency. The first was the establishment, in 2008, of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), and the second was the 175th anniversary, in 2009, of the founding of the Royal Statistical Society itself.   

The UKSA was set up following extensive discussions and negotiations over many years, in which the Society played a major part. The aim was to distance the objective collection of facts describing the country from any possible distortion arising from vested interests. The Society has continued to play an important role, serving as the third leg of the national statistical stool, and an unquestionably independent one at that, with the Office for National Statistics and the UKSA as the other two legs. Over the past two years, I have had many meetings with the National Statistician and the chair of the UKSA, discussing a variety of issues. I have also interacted with politicians, parliamentarians and senior civil servants, promoting the fundamental role of statistics as providing measurements of the state of society and the economy, and, when it proved necessary, drawing their attention to the guidelines on how statistics may be used and reported. It is clear that this involvement will continue in the future, and it is important that the Society should continue to be engaged in this way.   

The occasion of the 175th anniversary provided an excuse for the Society to engage other people and organisations where we wished to raise awareness of our activities. A President’s Dinner, involving presidents and officers from other learned societies and professional bodies with which the Society might fruitfully interact, allowed the exchange of ideas and strategies. I hope that this will be repeated in future years. An afternoon of presentations, and the Founders Day reception, in March, held in the remarkable Barbican Garden Room, marked the establishment of the Society. Exceptionally, in recognition of the anniversary, four honorary fellows were elected, these being people who were not themselves statisticians, but whose work had materially advanced statistics or its practice.   

The Society’s annual conference also marked the anniversary. Technically a special theme conference, the chosen theme was ‘175 years of progress’, enabling it to range over the full breadth of statistics as well as the Society’s historical depth. It was a great success, with a record-breaking number of attendees, and many fascinating talks. Partly as a result of this success, Council decided that in future the annual conferences should be general, rather than alternating between general and special themes, with special themes being catered for by a series of shorter conferences held at other times during the year. 

The conference also enabled us to strengthen our links with other statistical societies, with invited talks from the presidents of the ISI and the French, Swedish, Italian and American statistical societies and from Eurostat. The discussions after these presentations demonstrated the potential for such interactions in helping the societies to learn from each other. In general, in an increasingly globalised world, I consider such relationships to be very important, and I took part in further meetings in Sweden, France, and at the ISI meeting in Durban and the JSM meeting in Washington to discuss inter-society collaborations. I was also invited to give a short speech prior to Sally Morton's presidential address to the American Statistical Association last summer. The links the Society has established with the ASA hold considerable promise for mutually beneficial activities in coming years.   

The Society’s Centre for Statistical Education had been based in Nottingham for some ten years, but its contract with its host organisation came up for renewal in 2009, so we took advantage of this to invite tenders from around 50 universities. An extensive winnowing procedure was followed, including site visits and interviews with vice chancellors, and the University of Plymouth was finally chosen. The final move took place in July, and the Centre opened on 1 August. I spoke at its formal opening in November, at a meeting attended by the Mayor of Plymouth (see lead article in this issue).   

Early in my presidency I decided that the way the Society made plans for the longer term future needed revising. Previously an ad hoc approach had been followed, which failed to take account of overall Society issues and did not relate proposals to economic and financial considerations. With this in mind, I established a long term strategy group to explore such issues. This has now reported and its recommendations are in the process of being adopted (see article on the findings from the long term strategy group). It is planned that this group (not all the same people) will revisit things on a three-year rolling cycle.   

Other very exciting initiatives which have occurred during my presidency include:  

• the launch of the Young Statisticians Section (with their marvellous practice of having a tutorial talk before the Ordinary Meeting read papers – if only such things had happened early in may career)  
• the launch of the statistical literacy campaign  

• the establishment of the obituaries panel 

• formalisation of the honours panel  

• the launch of RSSeNEWS, as well as the members database and significant progress on other IT aspects of the Society  

• the recording of more talks and presentations 

• an upgrading of the presentation facilities in the Council Chamber 
• the launch of the book restoration fund   
• the recognition that Chartered Statistician status makes one eligible for Chartered Scientist status  
• the initiation of awards for contributions in official statistics paralleling our awards for statistical excellence in journalism.    

As a frontsperson for the Society, I have taken part in many meetings with the Council for Mathematical Sciences, the EPSRC and ESRC, the HEFCE  and other funding organisations, promoting the unique role and importance of statistics. I believe this has borne fruit – as, for example, in the announcement of funding for MSc places in statistics. 

I have tried to visit as many local groups as possible during my presidency - but to my regret found it simply impossible to get to all of them - there simply weren’t enough days in the week. My apologies to those which I was unable to visit.   As will be obvious, it has been a very busy two years. 

I have tried to do my best for the Society and to promote what I referred to in my presidential address as the ‘brand’ of statistics – and I do believe I see a glimmer of indications that the image of statistics is changing for the good. But I am aware of the large number of things left undone. In a certain sense, though it has to be said, the president does very little – just talking to people, sitting in meetings, chairing meetings, and so on. The actual work, the actual achievement, and the actual success is that of the two groups I mentioned above: the members and the staff.   

Too many of you have been of invaluable help to me to name individually, but there are two whom I must name. These are the past and current executive directors. Ivor Goddard guided me in, briefing me during the year before my presidency while I was shadowing my predecessor Tim Holt, and tutoring me in the intricacies of the Society (about many of which, despite my service to the Society in other roles, I was all too ignorant). Ivor retired in 2008, and Martin Dougherty took over, and has proved a worthy successor to Ivor, driving the Society to increased strengths in the face of very challenging economic conditions. Barely a day passed during my presidency in which I did not interact with Ivor or Martin. It has been a tremendous pleasure to work with these two, and indeed with all the fellows and staff. I owe you all a debt of gratitude.