Ingram Olkin Forum Series

The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) presents Statistics Serving Society, a series of forums to honor the memory of Professor Ingram Olkin. Each forum focuses on a current societal issue that might benefit from new or renewed attention from the statistical community. The S³ Forums aim to bring the latest innovations in statistical methodology and data science into new research and public policy collaborations, working to accelerate the development of innovative approaches that impact societal problems. As the Forum will be the first time a particular group of experts will be gathered together to consider an issue, new energy and synergy is expected to produce a flurry of new ideas and approaches.

Goals for the S³ Forums include:

Providing statisticians with an understanding of the societal problems and stimulating their interest in working on related statistical issues.
Developing an agenda of statistical action items that are needed to better inform public policy and to generate reliable evidence that can be used to mitigate the problem. For example, action items might focus on data availability, data collection methods, causal inference, data science, designed and natural experiments, quality control, trend assessments, and the evaluation of preventative and restorative initiatives.
Leading to new collaborations among statisticians and those working to understand and mitigate the problem.
Leading to funded grant proposals that works to bring the detailed action items to life.

S³ Forums are intended to be participatory. In every forum, all participants will have a role such as discussant, moderator, recorder or note taker. There will be discussion time at each session and roundtable discussions at the end of each day, and a final time before the forum closes for reporting, syntheses, and writing.