And the Survey Says … Few Surprises in Data
Keith Crank, ASA Assistant Director of Research and Graduate Education
L
ast spring, the ASA conducted a survey
of departments of statistics and biosta-
tistics on behalf of the Caucus of
Academic Representatives. A report is now
available with the results of that survey, pro-
viding information about faculty, students,
degrees awarded, and external funding at
PhD-granting departments of statistics and
biostatistics. Both the report and survey form
are available at www.amstat.org/education/car.
From a photo of department faculty,
it would be difficult to distinguish a sta-
tistics department from a biostatistics
department. Both have an average of 21
biostatistics departments. There are very Program at NSF. Gabor Szekely becomes a
faculty members, of whom five are female
few, if any, surprises in the data. But, it is permanent employee; Grace Yang returns to
and almost none are under-represented
a beginning attempt to acquire and dis- the University of Maryland and is replaced
minorities. They range in size from about
seminate substantive information about by David Stoffer from the University
10 to about 50.
our discipline. of Pittsburgh; Dean Evasius moves to
But, looking at students and degrees,
The ASA plans to conduct this type of the Infrastructure Program; and Tomek
the differences begin to be noticeable. Most
survey every year. The data collected will Bartoszynski becomes the program director
statistics departments (75%) offer a bach-
consist of certain items that don’t change for probability. The current program directors
elor’s degree, but none of the biostatistics
from year to year and other items that we in statistics and probability are the following:
departments do. The size of the graduate
will rotate. If there are specific pieces of
programs is also different. Statistics depart-
information you think will be useful, send
Gabor Szekely, gszekely@nsf.gov
ments award more master’s degrees (23 vs.
me an email, and we’ll consider putting
Yazhen Wang, yawang@nsf.gov
nine) and PhDs (six vs. three) than do bio-
questions requesting that information on
David Stoffer, dstoffer@nsf.gov
statistics departments.
future surveys.
Of course, the biggest difference between
Tomek Bartoszynski, tbartosz@nsf.gov
the two departments (based on the data we NSF Program Officers in
To contact me, send an email to keith@
collected) is the amount of external funding Statistics and Probability
amstat.org. Questions and comments about
and where it comes from. Biostatistics depart-
As the new academic year begins, there are this article, as well as suggestions for future
ments receive a lot more external funding,
changes in the Statistics and Probability articles, are always welcome. n
with most of it coming from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). Statistics depart-
ments also get NIH money, but even more
of their external funding comes from the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and
other federal agencies.
Mathematics Education
The report also provides basic demo-
graphic information about those earning
Series Published
degrees, including the percentage of U.S.
citizens, percentage of females, and per-
The presentations at the recent National Conference on Doctoral Programs
centage of under-represented minorities.
For those earning graduate degrees, there
in Mathematics Education have been published by the Conference Board of
is also information about where they went
the Mathematical Sciences. The book, titled U.S. Doctorates in Mathematics
after graduation.
Education: Developing Stewards of the Discipline, was edited by Robert
We received (at least partial) responses Reys and John Dossey and is in the Issues in Mathematics Education
from about 40 departments, which is slightly
Series, published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the
below a 50% response rate. Item nonresponse
Mathematical Association of America. Details are available at www.ams.org/
was a problem for the external funding infor-
bookstore-getitem?item=cbmath-15.
mation and demographic information.
This was the first of what is expected
to be a regular survey of statistics and
OCTOBER 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 15
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