# Update from the statistics education committee

The statistics education committee (SEC) is a continuing committee of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and its general objective is to "advise SSC members on statistics education related matters, and assist in the development and implementation of initiatives intended to improve statistics education in Canada." This year, the SEC is sponsoring two awards at the Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF-ESPC). The CWSF-ESPC is a national science fair event where Grade 7–12 students showcase their STEM projects. The SEC is sponsoring a senior award (valued at \$1,000) and an intermediate award (valued at \$750). The event will be held virtually from May 17–21, 2021 with projects eligible for SEC awards being judged on May 18, 2021. SEC members Bingrui (Cindy) Sun, Wei Xu, and Harsha Perera have volunteered to serve as judges. In addition, this year’s SEC agenda includes service to teaching institutions in the form of compiling useful statistics computing resources. The Curriculum Guidelines for Canadian Undergraduate Programs in Statistics (recognized by the SSC board in October 2018) recommends undergraduate curriculums that include "Computing with Data." In particular, the guidelines state, "Statistics graduates need to be adept at statistical computation and be conscious of new developments and able to adapt accordingly." The guidelines recommend a "solid foundation in computer science training" to achieve this goal. The SEC would like to compile resources for undergraduate instructors that enhance students’ computing with data skills from a statistics perspective. An example would be to compile a list of books or weblinks on data wrangling and visualization in R that go beyond the basics. These resources would then need to be updated over time to keep pace with new developments. The SEC welcomes suggestions for statistics computing resources.

Sincerely,

Melody Ghahramani & Wei Xu (Chairs, SEC)

Friday, January 22, 2021