Editorial

Abstract

The outgoing editor writes: Two years ago, in my editorial for Issue 1 of Significance, I wrote that starting a new job is never easy. Well, leaving this one is even harder. Although editing the magazine has not always been an easy ride, it has certainly been exciting, challenging and fulfilling. I have learnt a great deal, both about the production and publication of magazines, and also about the wonderful and varied world of statistics. I have many people to thank for this, and there really isn't space here to mention them all personally. But I would partic ularly like to thank everyone who contributed material to Significance over the past eight issues. Feedback has generally been very positive, both from inside the Royal Statistical Society and, perhaps more importantly, from those outside who have been introduced to our world through Significance. And thank you too, to every one who has helped on the production side—not everyone involved gets their name on the inside front cover. But mostly I would like to say thank you to the RSS for giving me the opportunity in the first place. I would like to think that the eight issues of Significance I have helped to produce have been something along the lines of what the interview panel were looking for when they hired me. And though I will no longer be at the helm, I'm quite sure Significance will now continue from strength to strength and will remain something the RSS can be proud of. The incoming editor writes: I will be having the pleasure, as well as the somewhat awesome task, of taking over from Helen Joyce as editor of Significance magazine from the next issue. One of the things that has greatly impressed me has been the range of issues that have been covered to date, from one-day cricket match results to variables in the making of pastry to, in this issue, the performance of a Health Service Foundation Trust hospital. Statistics lie at the heart of most things. This means that most things can be part of the remit of this magazine—an encouraging state of affairs for any incoming editor. Significance is a magazine written by and for statisticians. As a community, statisticians are greatly misunderstood. Communicate or die seems to be a current mantra; what statisticians have to offer is communication without spin or bias. The real meaning of data, as opposed to the prejudices, distortions, or wished-for conclusions often presented instead, becomes ever more essential. The Fleet Street media, which is the world that I come from, can be particularly negligent in failing to distinguish between them. Statistics have to be accessible as well. If statisticians cannot explain what they do and why they do it, in clear language understandable to most people, there is a danger that they will be ignored and their subject will be relegated in popular imagination to the status of esoteric number-crunching practiced by strange mathematicians inhabiting an irrelevant world of their own. All scientists have an image problem. The image of statisticians is particularly against them; which is a shame, because the genuinely exciting developments, in society, in science, and in knowledge generally, have rigorous statistical analyses at their core. If I can continue the magazine in the vein that has been established I shall be happy.