JULY 27: DAY OF STATISTICAL
Hugo Oscar Ambrosi
again threatens us
disordered thinking that is expressed in a tone and a background of tension.
"He who the gods would destroy, first
him crazy. "
A little past half year, in late July, Statistics Day celebrated as a tribute to Carlos Dieulefait, born July 27, 1901 founder of the career of Mathematical Statistics, University of Litoral in 1948.
In this Bicentennial year, we reach that date in the middle of hectic days. Since January 2007, Official Statistics, going through a dark era marked by the subjugation of the institutions and the lack of professional independence. Under these conditions, the anniversary may not be celebratory, but to be testimonial.
All knowledge contains a commitment, ethical and social, in defense of values \u200b\u200band expectations that society places on practitioners of these arts. In each field: health, education, law, statistics, engineering, people trust their champions. In those who carry on the fight, holding up the badge of all: the truth.
The Statistics are in the midst of the most thunderous conflict in our country ever produced, surpassing any other historical event to remember. It is a trance that shakes the whole structure of our thought and action. The challenge forces us to come outside, leaving the safe haven cabinets, laboratories or libraries, and open to the people, taking charge of what happens, warning of the resulting damages and, above all, restoring hope.
We force our language, accustomed to speak in guild chat, to make sense and meaning for ordinary people. The subtle and complex algebraic chains have to be converted into terms that are meaningful in the lives of people, rather than in the surreal world of mathematics.
Something new and better will emerge after this painful labor. The Congress works and discuss the contents of a new Law on Statistics. Although they lack a lot of projects to be considered a guarantee and action plan on the way forward, are the first steps in a march that will undoubtedly be long and involved.
to provide service requires more than a mediocre atmosphere, dark and reactionary primitivism plunges avoiding radical and sectarian.
But not only is a new activism, in which we participate. Our discipline is also a kind of renaissance after decades of self-absorption. The look has become the data, leaving the rapt contemplation of the theorems. But it also leaves the fundamentalist belief in that the data always contain the answer.
By one of those coincidences that are beyond our linear logic, July 26 recalls the death of John Tukey, a giant of statistics, largely responsible for the new face that it has begun to show in recent decades .
is appropriate to mention an extraordinary document that he published in 1986 under the title "Sunset Salvo" (Save the evening). There are 5 pages that summarize 4 decades of central role in statistical theory and practice while projecting into the future, anticipating the circumstances of today, a quarter of a century later.
If we to summarize their ideas in that statistic will, we could say that is an argument against the arrogance, the hubris that the gods punished, as reflected in the phrase:
"Give me the data (or more likely," Give it to me assistant), and I will tell you what the answer is real! "
Instead he proposes a call to humble willingness to cooperate with people who have problems, so they can make better use of data to solve them.
I would add to these recommendations, the report of another threat that manifests itself in our times.
comes from the manipulation and intellectual obedience imposed by the power, so that our work serves interests other than the truth, destroying the pursuit of knowledge and morally bankrupt who resist.
If they can not, persecution and ridicule go after those who feel bound by the ethics of vocation.
Take them our Save the Sunset, here and now!
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