KU Leuven: King Filip awards first ‘Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics’
The ‘Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics’, a new scientific award, recognizes outstanding statistical research with a significant impact on everyday life. The five laureates received their prizes during a solemn ceremony at KU Leuven, in the presence of His Majesty King Philippe.
The prize was created by Peter Rousseeuw, emeritus professor of statistics at KU Leuven, and will be awarded every two years by the King Baudouin Foundation. This new award, worth one million dollars, recognizes outstanding statistical research with a significant impact on everyday life.
The first Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics is shared by five laureates. Half of the prize money will go to James Robins of Harvard University; the other half will be split between Miguel Hernán (Harvard University), Thomas Richardson (University of Washington), Andrea Rotnitzky (Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Argentina) and Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (University of Pennsylvania). Their research has led to new insights and statistical methods to detect cause-effect relationships, with important implications for medicine and public health.
Cause-effect: no obvious search
The insights of James Robins and his colleagues enable statisticians not only to observe that certain variables occur together (correlation), but also to indicate whether one influences the other (causality).
Take, for example, the number of jellyfish stings on a given day, associated with ice cream sales that day. Then there is correlation: on days when more ice creams are sold, more jellyfish bites are usually noticed. However, the number of jellyfish stings is equally correlated with the outside temperature, the number of people swimming in the sea, and the use of air conditioning. Based on the data, you can deduce that swimming in the sea – and not using air conditioning or selling ice cream – increases the risk of a jellyfish sting. This method (causal inference) can be applied to all kinds of scientific issues.
Broad impact
The award-winning research has revolutionized the way statisticians, epidemiologists and other scientists assess the effects of medical treatments and therapies, and exposures to potentially harmful substances. It has dramatically increased the overall reliability of causal analysis in medicine and public health. In addition, these methods are now also applied in other domains, including economics and psychology.
“We hope that this award will eventually promote awareness of statistics and its social impact,” says founder Peter Rousseeuw, professor emeritus at KU Leuven. “Statistical knowledge and methods are an important building block in science, medicine, industry, economy, governance… and thus make a major contribution to society at large.”