The ever-growing volume and variety of data types to be analyzed, together with the diversity of fields that rely on interpreting those data and identifying trends, call for new, purpose-built tools.
Statistics: new horizons
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In partnership with the Société française de statistique (SFdS) and its specialist groups\, this special issue of Tangente* offers a glimpse of the challenges facing statistical research and its applications. The familiar topics of opinion polling and weather forecasting will not take center stage in this issue, which explores the vast field of statistics across three broad themes.
• Statistical methods are constantly evolving. We will look at some of them, from familiar techniques such as the mean to lesser-known ones such as clustering, mixture models and random forests, and on to the now-famous "deep learning" that underpins AI text-generation software.
• The fields of interest are varied. Several will feature in the introductory article or in the many short pieces. Some specific fields, however, will be explored in greater depth: medicine, biology and sport, as well as the sensitive issues of personal data and statistical confidentiality.
• Finally, the history of statistics is also the story of women and men: a selection of portraits will introduce you to well-known and lesser-known figures from 1850 to the present day.
So dive in and enjoy the world of statistics!
\ We would particularly like to thank the groups Biostatistique et santé, Jeunes statisticiens, Machine learning et intelligence artificielle, Socio-histoire de la statistique et des probabilité, Statistique et enjeux publics, Statistique et sport*, as well as the SFdS executive committee, for their involvement in this issue.
