Speaker
Description
Every year, the Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) dedicates the academic year to a prominent scholar. Traditionally, the chosen figure has been a mathematician, reflecting the Faculty’s stronger tendency to recognise mathematicians rather than statisticians.
Nevertheless, our proposal to dedicate the 2023–2024 academic year to George E. P. Box, marking the tenth anniversary of his death, was accepted. The initiative of devoting an academic year to a particular figure often has a limited impact, as only people who are already interested in that person’s field tend to participate in the activities. Our approach was precisely the opposite: we prepared activities and events that could attract not only the usual members of the Faculty—mathematicians and statisticians—but also people from other disciplines and from both academia and industry.
The initiative aimed to promote the importance of collaboration between statisticians and experts from other fields within a multidisciplinary framework, and to highlight the role of statistics as an essential partner in scientific progress. We think this approach would have pleased both George E. P. Box and Tony Greenfield. In fact, Tony Greenfield taught a short course at the Faculty for many years.
Each month, a quote from Box was displayed in the Faculty’s main hall. The first quote was deliberately provocative and helped establish the theme of the entire year: “Why do we aspire to be second-rate mathematicians when we can be first-rate scientists?” This quote was also used as the title of the opening talk, delivered by Geoff Vining.
Activities held during the year included two talks, by Geoff Vining and Daniel Peña; a design of experiments competition; a series of debates among teachers on controversial topics; and audiovisual materials celebrating Box’s legacy (https://fme.upc.edu/ca/la-facultat/activitats-fme-personalitats-del-curs/personalitat-del-curs/2023-2024-Box/Audiovisuals).