NSF NSF Division of Mathematical Division of Mathematical

Sciences Sciences Statistics ProgramStatistics Program

Gabor J Szekely Statistics Program Director

ASA Chairs WorkshopAlexandria, VA, August 1, 2009

What does Statistics What does Statistics support?support?

Individual Investigators & Small Groups Focused Research Groups (FRG); CMG, Joint

DMS/NIGMS activity; etc,

Institutes SAMSI

WorkforceNSF- and MPS-wide Initiatives Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI),

DTRA, etc.

Funding Rate Funding Rate

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

FY97 FY98 FY99 FY00 FY01 FY02 FY03 FY04 FY05 FY06 FY07

0%

5%10%

15%20%

25%30%

35%40%

45%

Actions Awards Rate

Sir Winston Churchill: Sir Winston Churchill:

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.“

2009 was difficult and extremely volatile

20% budget cut? 50% stimulus?

Long delaysLong delays

in processing awards

many email exchanges about the nature of ARRA and about the length of delay

Life is Good (?)Life is Good (?)

2009: financial problems everywhere

2009: NSF ARRA $3 billion (50% of NSF budget)

Statistics received a fair share?

Statistics Program Statistics Program Budget???Budget???$ ???? Lower bound, upper bound

Interagency programs: NIGMS, DTRA

Interdisciplinary program within NSF: CMG, CDI, …

Many new areas, few unifying Many new areas, few unifying theoriestheories

Statisticians are more flexible in their research areas than most scientists

This is good (many important applications, good grant opportunities)

This is bad (statistics becomes too thin, there are too many seemingly unrelated methods)

Where are the unifying theories?

We cannot fund proposalsWe cannot fund proposals

… NOT submitted !!! Trivial but …

This is where you can help:

Please encourage submissions of great ideas:

NOT true : if the PI is not an international star ORif the PI’s institute is not in the top tier

then the proposal is almost surely declined.

WE NEED NEW WE NEED NEW TRANSFORMATIVE IDEAS TRANSFORMATIVE IDEAS

In case of many International Stars of Statistics (ISS) we know what we get:

high quality, deep proposals, many hot topics that were

transformative a few years/decades ago

Please encourage new researchers to submit new transformative ideas

Transformative … ?Transformative … ?

RA Fisher Statistical Methods for Research Workers … cited by 7900

A Wald Sequential Analysis cited by2669

JW Tukey Exploratory Data Analysis-5620

ARRA (stimulus money)ARRA (stimulus money)

Who received ARRA money from the Statistics ARRA budget?

1. New researchers

2. Outstanding PhD advisors

What do we support?What do we support?

Everything that is `transformative’Outstanding collaborations with other disciplines, important applicationsUnifying theories

A crises is a terrible thingA crises is a terrible thing

to waste