Young Statisticians Writing Competition 2017. Attend the Royal Statistical Society International Conference, UK! Application Deadline: 29th May, 2017

The  Young Statisticians Writing Competition gives awards to contestants who are within the first 10 years of their statistical career and can tell complex statistical stories in an entertaining and thought-provoking way. The winning article will be published on Significance and on Significancemagazine.com.

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): Glasgow, Scotland

About the Award: Each year, Significance and the Young Statisticians Section of the Royal Statistical Society hosts a competition to promote and encourage top-class writing about statistics. The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is a learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians, and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good.

The society was founded in 1834 as the Statistical Society of London (LSS), though a perhaps unrelated London Statistical Society was in existence at least as early as 1824. The associations were formed with the object of gathering information about society. It was many decades before mathematics was regarded as part of the statistical project.

Type: Essay Contest

Eligibility: 

• Entrants must be students, or within the first 10 years of their statistics careers.
• Articles should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words long, and can include tables, figures, images and photographs.
• Writing style must be clear and easy to read.
• Avoid the formal layout of an academic report – the article should read like a magazine feature.
• Technical terms and mathematics should be used sparingly, and suitably explained.
• End references are optional, but should be limited to four.
• Only submissions in English will be considered.
• Manuscripts must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere, though we welcome magazine articles based on work in theses or in papers that have been submitted to or accepted by academic journals, provided the two are sufficiently different.
• All articles will be assessed by a review committee. The judges will be made up of representatives from both the Young Statisticians Section and Significance.
• Three finalists will win a one-day registration to the Royal Statistical Society Conference 2015 in Exeter, UK – but please note that travel and accommodation costs will not be covered.
• The winning article will be published in Significance magazine, and online at significancemagazine.com.
• Runner-up articles will be published on the Significance website, or inSignificance magazine, at the editor’s discretion.

Selection Criteria: 

• Articles must be interesting, engaging and easy to read.
• Technical terms and mathematics must be kept to a minimum, and explained clearly where used.
• Readers should finish your article knowing more about statistics, or the application of statistics, than they did before.

Number of Awardees: 3

Value of Program: Three finalists will receive a one-day registration to present at the 2017 Royal Statistical Society International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland – but please note that travel and accommodation costs will not be covered.

Duration of Program: 4–7 September 2017

How to Apply: Please email your submissions in a text/Word file or as a PDF, to significance@rss.org.uk. Make sure to include our competition entry form.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Royal Statistical Society, RSS (Young Statisticians Section); AND

Significance Magazine (Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, a company of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)