School of Statistical Thinking
Project for Fostering and Promoting Statistical Thinking
Rapid development of information and communication technology has led to the explosion of data. Now surrounded by "Big Data", everybody is expected to "think statistically". More than ever, there is a need for data scientists who can handle such big data and are able to extract useful knowledge from it. Meanwhile, Japanese higher education is exhibiting a deplorable lack of production capacity in terms of data scientists. This can be accounted for by the fact that, until quite recently, no academic institution other than ISM had a Ph. D. course in statistics and the small number of statisticians in academia are isolated from each other, being scattered over various disciplines. Hoping to gain a little traction on this problem, ISM established the School of Statistical Thinking, into which we integrated all of our educational resources. In FY 2016, ISM established the Managing Committee of School of Statistical Thinking, inviting contributions from outside experts, and in FY 2017 we launched the Leading DAT program by adopting the suggestions by the committee. The following are the principal projects.
Research Collaboration Startup
The Institute had already been providing a consultation service for statistical science, but along with the launch of the School of Statistical Thinking in November 2011, this service was reorganized as a research collaboration startup. This program, being one of the projects to foster and promote statistical thinking, is mainly aimed at supporting applied scientists and other non-experts. Expert statisticians affiliated with the Institute give them advice on statistical modeling, data analysis, and research. Some cases have developed into official research collaborations, which are our primary duty as an inter-university research institute. The Institute accepts more than 30 cases annually, some of which benefit society in diverse ways.
Data Science Research Plaza
Researchers funded by private-sector firms can maintain a desk and phone in the School of Statistical Thinking. This program is subject to fees, and the contract can be renewed annually. A faculty mentor gives advice to the accepted funded researcher so that he or she can freely attend various events, such as seminars, workshops, conferences, and extension courses. After learning the expertise of the ISM research staff, participants in this program are invited to take advantage of paid consultations and funded research collaboration.
Statistical Mathematics Seminar Series
The Institute holds weekly seminar series on statistical mathematics every Wednesday. The seminars are led by in-house and external lecturers to showcase their latest studies. These lectures are free to attend. To view the seminar schedule and learn more about the program, please visit the Institute of Statistical Mathematics website.
Open-type Professional Development Program
This is a spin-out program from ISM cooperative research projects. Establishing a goal is an indispensable element of the proposal of a cooperative research project. On the other hand, such goal setting is irrelevant for a summer school program, study session, or retreat. Since the launch of the School of Statistical Thinking, organizers of such group-oriented study programs can apply to the Open-type Professional Development Program. There are two categories under this program: one is 'workshop' and the other is 'intensive training for young researchers'. For FY 2019, five workshops have been accepted after review.
Leading DAT
In FY 2017, the School of Statistical Thinking launched a program called "Leading DAT" aimed at training data scientists with the knowledge and skills in statistical mathematics required by modern society. In FY 2019, we organized three Leading DAT lectures entitled "L-A Introductory Data Science", "L-B1 An introduction to Statistical Modeling" and "L-B2 Machine Learning and Modern Methodologies in Data Science". Around half of the attendants of L-B1 and L-B2 enroll the Leading DAT Training Course, in which we grant certificates to participants who have fulfilled the course requirements, including attendance in L-B1 and L-B2 lectures and submission of reports. A total of 44 people have been granted the certificate of completion.
Tutorial Courses
The education program at ISM dates back to 1944, the year of founding. The Ministry of Education installed a training center within ISM to foster technicians in numerical computation. After the World War II, this training center was relaunched in 1947 to develop pollsters and census takers. It helped to cultivate professionals in the field of statistical surveys, while a growing number of entries from business and industry coming for various types of training were also observed.
Now the tutorial courses are operated by the School of Statistical Thinking, which was established in 2011.
In FY 2019, 9 lectures and one course (including Leading DAT) were held and the number of participants was 878. The total numbers of lectures and courses held from 1969 to March, 2020 were 382 and 3 respectively, with a total of 27,899 participants. These lectures covered a wide range of fields from basic to applied statistics. The schedule of tutorial courses can be found on the website(Japanese) of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics.
Last Updated: 2020年12月9日