The 2022 Young Statisticians Prize
For over ten years, the International Association of Official Statistics has been running a Young Statistician Prize competition.
The competition awards prizes for three papers judged by an international judging panel as having strategic and scientific merit, practical applicability, originality and are written well. The competition also awards a special commendation to a paper from a developing country.
The winners are invited to submit their papers to the journal and it is my pleasure to introduce the 2022 prize-winning papers which all appear in this edition.
First place was awarded to Dr. Erin Lundy for her paper on Predicting the quality and evaluating the use of administrative data for the 2021 Canadian Census of Population. The 2020 round of Population Censuses was the first to be undertaken during a global pandemic. Many countries looked to administrative data to assist, in a variety of ways, to meet their obligations, often legal obligations, to deliver a Population Census which met the quality standards National Statistical Office brands rely on. Dr. Lundy’s paper was judged as meeting all criteria for the prize. Dr. Lundy works for Statistics Canada and her award is the third time in a row that first place was awarded to Statistics Canada. Congratulations to Dr. Lundy and Statistics Canada for investing in young statisticians and leaders of tomorrow.
Second place was awarded to Mr Juan Carlos Galvez Sainz de Cueto, Mr Jorge Fernandez Calatrava and Mr Lasai Barrenada Taleb for their paper Timeliness reduction on industrial turnover index based
on machine learning algorithms. This was the first time Statistics Spain had won a prize in the competition and the strategic importance and practical applicability to official statistics improving the timeliness of a key official statistic using modern machine learning techniques should be enough to encourage reading their paper.
Third place was awarded to Dr Andreea Luisa Erciulescu for her paper Statistical data integration models to reconcile health official statistics. Andreea works for Westat in the USA and her prize is the first for someone from the United States. Statistical data integration continues to be of strategic importance to our statistical profession, and here during a global health pandemic, its application to reconciling statistics was very timely.
The special commendation for a paper from a developing nation was awarded to Ms Atika Nashirah Hasyyati from BPS Statistics Indonesia for her paper Imputation for subsampling in Indonesian National Socioeconomic Survey. This is the second time Indonesia has been awarded a special commendation and continues to demonstrate their commitment to their staff and their statistical system.
The Young Statistician Prize would not be possible without the support of the entire official statistics family. The 2023 competition will close in February 2023 and I encourage all young statisticians to start preparing their submissions now. More importantly, I ask all of us to encourage young statisticians to make a submission. Mentor them and help them be successful. They are the future of our profession. Young is under 35 years so it’s very inclusive. Please support them and the IAOS.
