Professional Organizations and the Learning of Statistics After College

• Activity Number: 310
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): Jorge Luis Romeu*+
• Companies: Syracuse University
• Keywords: industrial statistics ; statistical education ; lifelong learning ; professional societies

Abstract

In ICOTS-7 (Salvador, Brazil; 2006), and FTC (Jacksonville, FL; 2007) statistics conferences, we discussed how engineers learn insufficient statistics during college, and how they later need to learn more on their own. Here, we look at several statistics-oriented professional organizations, research institutes and government agencies that generate educational materials, to help engineers learn statistics, on their own, after college. We overview their products and contents, and discuss how some organizations work together. We discuss their successes and shortcomings. Finally, we propose creating Institutes that would coordinate the use, and advertise the presence of, existing as well as new statistics education materials. Institutes would also organize and coordinate seminars and presentations, assess and sequence web tutorials using student interns, and develop special H.S. programs.