INSTRUCTIONS PAGE
PROMOTIONAL ITEM:
PRESS RELEASE ANNOUNCING THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF STATISTICS AND YOUR ORGANIZATION’S PARTICIPATION
Instructions:
Complete the press release with the prompted information, place it on your organization’s news release letterhead (if available) or letterhead, and then email it to reporters at newspapers, magazines, web-based news services, television stations, and radio stations in your country or community. If you work at a college or university, also send the release to the student-run paper and radio station. Then, follow up with calls and emails to the reporters at these news outlets to ensure they have received the release and to answer any questions they may have.
Also, post the press release and the International Year of Statistics “participant” logo in a prominent location on the homepage of your organization’s public website, ideally so it appears on the screen when the homepage first loads.
NOTE: Replace text in yellow-highlighted brackets with prompted information. Be sure to delete all the yellow-highlighted text (including the brackets) after you have added the prompted information and before you distribute the release to the media and post it to your organization’s website.
For assistance or answers to your questions, contact ASA Public Relations Coordinator Jeff Myers at jeff@amstat.org or (703) 684-1221, Ext. 1865 (United States).
[Place on Your Organization’s Letterhead]
STATISTICIANS PROMOTE CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY
DURING THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF STATISTICS IN 2013
1,400 groups, 111 countries participate in global awareness campaign
[INSERT YOUR CITY, COUNTRY, JAN. [Insert Date], 2013—The [Insert Your Organization Name] and more than 1,400 organizations in 111 countries are combining energies in 2013 to promote the International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013), a worldwide initiative that will highlight the contributions of the statistics field to finding solutions to global challenges.
The goals of this awareness campaign are to:
•Increase public understanding of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society
•Nurture statistics as a profession, especially among high-school and college students
Statistics2013 participants include national and international professional societies, universities, schools, businesses, government agencies and research institutes. These groups will help millions of people understand the value of statistical science through seminars, workshops and outreach to students and the media.
Statistics—the science of learning from data and of measuring, controlling and communicating uncertainty—is much more than numbers on sports pages. Statistical science has powerful and far-reaching effects on everyone, yet most people are unaware of how it improves their lives, says [Insert First Name, Middle Initial, Last Name, Title of your organization spokesperson].
“For most people, statistics is an invisible science,” continues [Last Name of spokesperson]. “Through this yearlong, worldwide awareness campaign, we will remove the veil that cloaks statistics from the public consciousness.”
Examples of the impact of statistics abound in our society. For instance, statistics predicts weather and other natural hazards, powers Internet search engines and marketing campaigns, discovers and develops new drugs and makes the world secure and sustainable. Throughout the last two centuries, statistics was indispensable in confirming many of humankind’s greatest scientific discoveries and breakthroughs, such as the Higgs-Boson particle and the agricultural Green Revolution.
[Change the following fact from your continent to an example from your country.]
Today, statistics is improving the quality of human life on the world’s major continents:
•Africa—Statistical analysis is reversing the cycle of poverty by improving literacy.
•Asia—Transportation infrastructure is being improved based on statistical models of people flow.
•Australia—Statistics was key in catching drug cheats during the 27th Olympic Games in 2000.
•Europe—Statistical science is a critical tool in planning efficient recycling systems.
•North America—Statistics is synthesizing evidence that improves treatments for heart conditions.
•South America—Statistical methods are helping to feed the world by identifying new crop varieties in breeding experiments.
“Our world is increasingly data-rich and data-dependent. Statistical analysis extracts information from this voluminous data to form the basis for decision-making in all types of organizations,” explains [Insert Last Name of Spokesperson]. “Without statistics, life would be very different.”
Central features of the Statistics 2013 awareness campaign are its website—www.statistics2013.org—and an informative two-and-a-half-minute video—Why Statistics Is Important to You—that explains how statistics improves the lives of the world’s 7 billion people. The website includes the following:
•What Is Statistics?—An explanation in layman’s language
•Stats2013AtSchool—A statistics quiz for students
•Statistics as a Career—Information about the work of statisticians and careers in statistics
•Teacher Resources—Primary and secondary school resources, a downloadable flyer and posters
[Insert a short paragraph here about your organization’s plans to promote Statistics2013, i.e., meetings, seminars, workshop, student outreach, etc. and invite the public to attend]
The founding organizations of Statistics2013 are the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, International Biometric Society, International Statistical Institute (and the Bernoulli Society), and Royal Statistical Society.
About [Insert Your Organization Name]
[Insert one or two sentence descriptive of your organization]. For additional information, please visit [Insert your organization’s web address] or call [Insert phone number].
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For more information:
[Insert media contact’s First Name, Middle Initial, Last Name]
Office: [Insert contact’s phone number]
E-mail: [Insert contact’s e-mail address]