Why Stats, Why Maths? (May 7, 2012)

In Australia AMSI is the acronym for the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute while on another continent, AIMS stands for African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

TFW has been given to understand that Australia's AMSI is still looking to receive continuation funding based on issues brought to the fore at a national forum in February this year, and while its African counterpart hasn't had an easy time of it, an article in the May 4^th issue of Science indicates that support of AIMS is growing.

AIMS South Africa was founded in 2003 just outside Cape Town and is the initiative of Neil Turok, a South African–born mathematician who heads the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. It is the product of a partnership of the University of Stellenbosch, University of Cambridge, University of Cape Town, University of Oxford, University of Paris-Sud, and the University of the Western Cape.

According to Martin Enserink's Science article, Professor Turok "has a dream to create a network of 15 AIMS institutes around the struggling continent. He ambitiously dubbed it the Next Einstein Initiative—the idea being that the 21^st century's most revolutionary mathematicians might well be Africans".

As Professor Turok explains, in the beginning AIMS was "often at the brink of bankruptcy during the first few years". However, over the past two years, GFC or no, the times have changed for AIMS. Canada has pledged $20 million to expand the AIMS network; the money has gone to set up the second AIMS in Senegal and another is to open in Ghana this September while a fourth is scheduled for Ethiopia next year. Each AIMS franchise is or is to be co-administered by local universities.

In addition to the Canadian money Senegal's AIMS is receiving "€1 million from the Senegalese government for a new building that will replace the current, modest dwellings loaned from a French institute".

According to Professor Turok the rationale for the all AIMS branches is for "students [to] come for months of day-and-night immersion in high-level mathematics. For many students, the focus on problem-solving rather than rote learning is like 'shock therapy,' Turok says. 'The first 2 months, they are typically very unhappy. Then, a light bulb goes on, and they realize they can learn by playing and discovering.'"

And outstanding academics are engaged to spend three weeks (pretty well 24/7). “It's amazing and very inspiring,” says Nigerian student Odumodu Nneka Chigozie. It's a big investment for the faculty, says Abdellah Sebbar of the University of Ottawa, who did his stint earlier this year—especially because he has three children and a wife with a job of her own. But Sebbar, who hails from Morocco, says that as an African, “I want to be in this process for the long run.”

Finally: "'I really think that [AIMS] will transform development,' Turok says. And then, as the mathematician takes over from the dreamer: 'It would cost $100 million over the next 10 years—that's about 0.003% of Africa's total aid budget.'"

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How Australia's AMSI will fare in the coming federal budget remains to be seen but the article on AIMS-Africa brought to mind the editorial written by the highly regarded statisticians, Marie Davidian and Thomas A. Louis, for Science (April 6, 2012) "Why Statistics?".

Put simply: "Statistics is the science of learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty; and it thereby provides the navigation essential for controlling the course of scientific and societal advances. This field will become ever more critical as academia, businesses, and governments rely increasingly on data-driven decisions, expanding the demand for statistics expertise."

Then referring to what has become known as BIG DATA: "Big Data payoffs can be enormous, but there are many pitfalls. Take the promise of personalized medicine: Achieving this goal will require the integration of vast landscapes of genomic, clinical, and related data from legions of patients. The potential for false discovery looms large. New statistical methods will be needed to address some of these issues... A dramatic increase in the number of statisticians is required to fill the [US'] nation's needs for expertise in data science. A 2011 report by a private consulting firm* projected a necessary increase of nearly 200,000 professionals (a 50% increase) by 2018."

Davidian and Louis conclude: "The future demands that scientists, policy-makers, and the public be able to interpret increasingly complex information and recognize both the benefits and pitfalls of statistical analysis... Embedding statistics in science and society will pave the route to a data-informed future, and statisticians must lead this charge."

Meanwhile Australia's major political parties work to outdo each other in digging deepening pits in which to bury Keynesian economics.

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* www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Technology_and_Innovation/Big_Data_The_Next_frontier_for_innovation.