About this journal

Are you looking for general-interest articles about

• current national and international statistical problems and programs,
• interesting and fun articles of a general nature about statistics and its applications, or
• the teaching of statistics?

Then you are looking for The American Statistician ( TAS ), published quarterly by the American Statistical Association. TAS contains timely articles organized into the following sections: Statistical Practice, General, Teacher's Corner, Statistical Computing and Graphics, Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials, Letters to the Editor, History Corner, and Interdisciplinary.

Statistical Practice
This section contains articles that are interesting or useful with regard to the practice of statistics, such as:

• case studies that illustrate important lessons and issues involved in the practice of statistics, or that deal with applications having broad appeal;
• discussions and comparisons of modern statistical methods, focusing on their usefulness in practice;
• articles that address practical problems at the interface between statistical methodology and areas of application; and
• articles that present statistical solutions to current industrial problems, with emphasis on methodology.
  

General
The following list illustrates examples of topics for articles in this section:

• national and international statistical problems and programs, and public policy matters of direct interest to the statistical profession;
• the history of statistics and probability;
• commentaries, or informative essays, that provide viewpoints and perspective on statistical topics of general interest (these are similar in spirit to Letters to the Editor but involve longer discussions of background, issues, and perspective);
• methodological developments that are both of broad interest to statisticians and generally not highly technical; and
• expository or tutorial state-of-the-art surveys of the discipline.

• statistics and probability topics for high school students, including Advanced Placement Statistics;
• introductory college courses in statistics for all audiences;
• applied statistics courses at all levels;
• industrial and continuing education outside the framework of standard academic courses; and
• mathematical statistics courses at the undergraduate and first-year graduate level. An article for this section should state clearly the type of course in which the material is useful and it is desirable to discuss student reactions to the ideas presented.
  

Statistical Computing and Graphics
This section includes articles about statistical computing and statistical graphics that are of broad interest to statisticians. For example, topics can include new graphical procedures or comparisons and evaluations of existing procedures; proposals of computational algorithms or assessments in terms of speed or numerical stability; and computational methods for simulation and approximation.

This section also includes a special component, Statistical Computing Software Reviews, which contains reports in the style of book reviews, generally extensive and comparative, on selected computer software systems.

Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials
The American Statistician publishes reviews of materials related to the teaching of undergraduate and service courses in statistics. This includes textbooks for such sources; special volumes and conference proceedings concerning statistical education; software, videotapes, organized sources of data, and internet resources intended for purposes of statistical education. While only professionally published materials are typically considered for review, high-quality self-published resources that are of broad interest to the statistical community may be considered on a case-by-case basis. All reviews are coordinated with the Journal of the American Statistical Association through the Reviews Editor, who handles both The American Statistician and JASA and selects reviews for The American Statistician according to the above criteria. Items are not reviewed in both journals. Book publishers and developers of other items who wish to have their products reviewed in this section should contact: Jay Breidt [email protected]

Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor are confined to discussions of papers that have appeared recently in The American Statistician and to discussions of important issues facing the statistical community. Letters discussing papers must be received within three months of publication of the paper; the author of the paper will then be given an opportunity to reply, and the letters and reply will be published together. All letters to the editor are refereed.

History Corner
Articles relating to the history of statistics, from very old to somewhat recent history, are welcome. Examples may include archival research on the early days of the ASA showing some interesting new facet; papers displaying historical trends in the use of statistics in teaching, research and practice; re-interpretations of history in modern light (e.g., as changed by modern technology); unearthing of little-known contributions by historical statistical luminaries; and recollections of general interest. "History" is interpreted fairly broadly: technology has rendered much of the latter part of the 20th century "historical."

Interdisciplinary
This section has a character somewhat like JASA Applications and Case Studies, as well as Statistical Science, but with perhaps greater subject matter emphasis, and certainly with greater accessibility and clear exposition characteristic of TAS. Papers in this section should:

• bring more domain-specific application knowledge to statisticians; and
• make TAS and the ASA in general more attractive to people who are "on the fringes" of statistics, but housed in various "nonstatistics" academic, professional, and scientific disciplines. Types of papers in this section include surveys of uses of statistics in fields that are considered primarily not statistics, descriptions of important problems in particular disciplines in need of statistical methods, and critical reviews of statistical methodologies that are in common use outside of the statistical core.

Data Science
Papers in this section would normally include either novel developments in classifications, clustering, predictive modeling, or alternatively, would utilize these statistical tools to creatively solve applied problems, potentially via inter-disciplinary teams, that have a significant impact. In either case, papers for the data science section should reflect an expository writing style.

Tutorial
This section is designed to provide an entry point to professional statisticians to modern statistical methods. It differs from Teacher's Corner because papers in the Tutorial section are not written with teaching students in mind. It differs from a Review Paper because the aim is not for an up-to-date bibliography of related research and/or articulation of a vision for future work. Instead, the Tutorial section calls for expository papers that explain the basics and provide a gentle introduction to areas of statistics that are fairly recent, or even on the cutting edge, and that include revealing examples and an indication on how the area impacts statistical practice.

The American Statistician is indexed by MathSci Online, ISI Web of Knowledge, the SRM Database, and Current Index to Statistics; it is also reviewed in Mathematical Reviews and abstracted in Research into Higher Education Abstracts, as well as by Information Access Group.

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ASA Statement on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)

The leadership of the American Statistical Association commits to strengthening our professional community by making it more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive. We affirm that our mission, Promote the Practice and Profession of Statistics, can be realized only by fully embracing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusivity in all of our operations. Individuals embody many traits, so the leadership will work with the members of ASA to create and sustain responsive, flourishing, and safe environments that support individual needs, stimulate intellectual growth, and promote professional advancement for all. We commit to these objectives:

• Learn from our members and others how to identify and overcome systemic racism and hindering biases of any kind
• Critically reappraise and improve the effectiveness of our JEDI efforts
• Identify and develop resources for individuals and organizations in our professional community to enable growth and appreciation for cultural humility
• Share openly our diversity and inclusion efforts and the solutions we have implemented

Editor
Min-ge Xie
[email protected]

Past Editor
Joshua M. Tebbs
University of South Carolina
[email protected]

Editorial Coordinator
Janet Wallace
[email protected]

News, offers and calls for papers

News and offers

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The American Statistical Association (ASA) is a leading professional organisation for statisticians, dedicated to the research and practice of statistics and statistical analysis. It focuses on the development, application, and dissemination of statistical science and operates at the interface of academia, policy, and practice.

Members of ASA are eligible to receive online access to each of the society’s subscription-based journals, online access to Math Horizons and other Taylor & Francis statistics and mathematics journals.

The association publishes the magazine CHANCE and ten journals:

Journal of Nonparametric Statistics
Journal of the American Statistical Association
Journal of Business & Economic Statistics
Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics
Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (an open access journal)
Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research
Statistics and Public Policy (an open access journal)
The American Statistician
Technometrics
Data Science in Science

Explore the American Statistical Association’s portfolio of journals.

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