UVA Dept. of Statistics hosts virtual symposium highlighting importance of statistical literacy across sectors

The UVA Statistics Virtual Symposium is an event that has been offered since Fall 2016. Students in various statistics courses such as "Statistics for Biologists", "Introductory Statistics", and "Introduction to Regression Analysis" have fully integrated this symposium into their course work and curricula. The intention of these events has been to invite speakers who have a diverse set of backgrounds and careers so that students can see the relevancy of statistical literacy. Panelist have been from the medical field, NASA, Google, 538, and the New York Mets to represent the discipline's usefulness in healthcare, academia, sports analytics, aviation, and journalism.

At least 400 students attend each event, and the feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive. One student stated, "I was not aware that the statistics field was so applicable to so many other fields such as medicine, finance, and research. Statistics majors seem very versatile and flexible. There are so many options that I didn't know existed for statistics majors."