This upcoming Tuesday (Oct. 20), the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), who our very own Dr.听Eric Vance directs,听will be celebrating LISA听2020 Day alongside the World Statistics Day and the International Year of Women in Statistics (#IYWSDS) and Data Science via a symposium.听
In a statement, LISA explains that "Data Science is crucial for enabling and accelerating research and informing policy decisions. The LISA 2020 program trains local statisticians in developing countries to collaborate with researchers and policy makers to transform evidence into action for development ...听We seek to organize the 3rd LISA 2020 Symposium, a hybrid event held remotely via Zoom with dozens of locally organized in-person events from 27 September to 24 October 2020." The symposium is organized by a mix of LISA 2020 Network (see below figure) members听from developing countries, alongside leaders in the field of interdisciplinary data science, community leaders, and other experts from a breadth of fields. LISA emphasizes that their goal is to "build statistical analysis and data science capacity to transform evidence into action," while听celebrating听the International Year of Women in Statistics and Data Science.听
"The Symposium will feature remote technical sessions, workshops, and working group meetings for the LISA 2020 Network to complement locally organized, in-person Symposium events aimed at wider audiences. All activities will be recorded, archived, and publicized on the website so that they become a widely used resource for statistical capacity building."
There are a few components to the symposium, including technical plenary sessions, plenary workshops, working group meetings, and locally organized events.
The technical plenary sessions and workshops 听"will feature 2-3 talks presented live via Zoom or previously recorded. All technical sessions will include live Q&A and discussion via chat or video," and "will help LISA 2020 Network members build their technical, non-technical, leadership, and administration skills so they can better direct, coordinate, and administer their statistics and data science collaboration laboratories (鈥渟tat labs鈥�)."
The working group meetings "will facilitate the work of LISA 2020鈥檚 four Action Teams focused on the LISA 2020 Edited Volume, Climate Change, MOOCs, and creating a LISA 2020 Certificate for students."
On top of the remote sessions, there are in-person components at the locally organized events, which听are organized all over the world.听The goal of these in-person sessions is "to connect participants from several, geographically close stat labs." These events have four main goals:
1.听Build statistical capacity of the 鈥減ast鈥�, i.e., teach statistics and data skills to non-statisticians for whom it is 鈥渢oo late鈥� to become data scientists.听
2. Build statistical capacity of the 鈥減resent鈥�,听i.e., teach statisticians (current statistics students and faculty/staff) new skills such as how to code in R.
3. Build statistical capacity of the 鈥渇uture鈥�, i.e., inspire young people to study statistics and data science and pursue it as a career.听
4. Celebrate the听International Year of Women in Statistics and Data Science. "The goals of #IYWSDS are to celebrate women鈥檚 (past) contributions to statistics, to upskill current women (and men) in statistics so that they can have even more impact in applying their statistics and data science skills to benefit humanity."
A full explaination of events upcoming and an outline听for听the coming months听can be located on the .