From coordinator's desk

Today, statistics tools have become indispensable for many disciplines such as medicine, psychology, education, sociology, engineering and physics, just to name a few. Statistics is also important in many aspects of society such as business, industry and government. Because of the increasing use of statistics in so many areas of our lives, it has become desirable to understand and practice statistical thinking. This is important even if you do not use statistical methods directly.

In the present era vast information about statistics is available on internet dealing with statistical concepts, tools and their application in different contexts and their application in classical and Bayesian setup. Application of tools on different platforms in the form of statistical software such as SPSS, STATA, SAS, Excel, SAS, S PLUS to name a few has extensively dealt on internet. Along with above, numerous training kits about statistical concepts in the form of applets are available on net. Although available information is very useful to users, but in most of the cases it is incomplete deals only one or two aspects of statistics detailed above. At the same time the way of presentation just like class room teaching without discussions. How the things evolved is unknown to users and it is sure that if a place for discussions is kept that would enrich the things further.

Group will work with aim to coordinate useful information available at internet in such a way so that it can fill in the gaps between different stakeholders of subject so that statistics may be perceived in comprehensive way by users of statistics.

Core activity of the group is exploring ‘Statistical Tool’ (in place of mathematical outcome). On the group instead of the term `Statistical Methods’ the term `Statistical Tool’ will be used. Generally `Methods’ are referred as a set of procedures to do something and `Tool’ is an entity used to interface between two or more domains that facilitates more effective action of one domain upon the other. Statistical tool works between context sphere (subject) and data sphere for enriching context sphere. In fact to change mental setup from `Method’ to `Tool’, the aptitude of `Statistician’ is to be changed from old one to new one. These statistical tools may be applied on different platform like Excel, SPSS, STATA, SAS, etc.. Statistical Tool will be presented by group in different dimensions like in setup of classical as well as in Bayesian; context of census; survey and experimental data; from the angle of a teacher, a student and a user, etc. Here it is pertinent to mention that it is not necessary that only teachers will from teacher’s perspective, any registered user can write but way of presentation should help in developing skill of training of particular tool. For getting confidence on some statistical idea, simulation (in place of proof) will be used. Thus focus will be on concept, reasoning, thinking and application. Such technique will be possible due to availability of vast computation facilities. group will also make efforts to create an environment for proper use of statistical tool (knowing its limitations).

Statistics has its social value. I lot of social conflict arises due to statistical illusion. Major part of socio economic data is being collected by government (or sponsored by government). Group will provide a platform to evaluate methodology and data collected by these agencies. Expanding statistical literacy is one of the aim of group.

Main aim of statistics group is to increase objectivity in thinking by exploring gaps between experts, students and user of statistics.