We’re excited to launch this year’s Significance Statistical Excellence Award for Early Career Writing, a chance for emerging statistical storytellers to shine
Do you have an interesting tale to tell with statistics? Would you like to win a shiny trophy and publication in Significance and a slot at the 2025 Royal Statistical Society (RSS) Conference? Then start flexing your fingers – this one’s for you.
The Significance writing competition launched in 2011 and is jointly organised by Significance and the RSS Young Statisticians Section (YSS) as part of the RSS Statistical Excellence Awards programme. Aimed exclusively at students and early-career statisticians and data scientists, it was created as a showcase for emerging stats communicators capable of reaching a non-specialist audience with attention-grabbing stories that challenge myths, shape decisions and explain the world around us.
Your entry could be inspired by your research or job, a news event, or one of your personal passions.
Over the years, the competition has treated us to stories on a wonderful array of subjects. Last year, first prize went to Joseph Lam (see Q&A below), whose article “Terminating bias: How Arnold Schwarzenegger helped us understand linkage errors and biases” cleverly and humorously introduced us to an increasingly important issue in our ever more diverse society. Other finalists and highly commended entrants in 2024 examined the “peak” ages of basketball players, Premier League football fans, capture–recapture and the artist Modigliani, kissing scenes on television and cheating in exams. In 2023, Robyn Goldsmith scooped first prize with her entertaining analysis of the rise of Korean popular culture. You can read entries by previous winners and runners-up here.
Entries are judged by a panel made up of YSS officers and committee members, the Significance editor and editorial board members. Winners and runners-up will be announced at the RSS Statistical Excellence Awards in London in July 2025, and invited to present their articles at the 2025 RSS Conference in Edinburgh (1–4 September 2025) in the company of over 700 attendees from more than 40 countries. The winning article will be published in Significance, and finalists’ articles on the Significance website. Highly commended places may be awarded, and published, at the judges’ discretion.
Rules of entry
- Entrants must be either (1) students currently studying for a first degree, master’s or PhD in statistics, data science or related subjects, or (2) graduates whose last qualification in statistics, data science or related subjects (whether first degree, master’s or PhD) was not more than 5 years ago.
- Articles must be between 1,500 and 2,500 words in length.
- Articles can include tables and figures – though, for space reasons, there should be no more than five tables/figures in total.
- Writing style must be accessible and engaging.
- Technical terms and mathematics must be used sparingly, and suitably explained where used.
- End references should be limited to 10.
- Footnotes must not be used.
- Only submissions in English will be considered.
- Manuscripts must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. You may submit articles based on work in theses or in papers that have been submitted to, or accepted by, academic journals, provided that the competition submission is sufficiently different in style and structure.
- Articles must be entirely written by a human being, and not include AI-generated text from a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT unless such text is explicitly identified as such and serves the purpose of the article (e.g., it is an AI-generated sentence serving as an example in an article about LLMs).
- Winners, finalists and entrants from previous years of the competition are not excluded from participating in this year’s competition.
- All entries must be accompanied by our competition entry form.
- Email submissions as a text/Word file, or as a PDF, to significance@rss.org.uk.
- Articles will be reviewed by a judging panel featuring representatives of both the YSS and Significance.
- Up to three finalists will win a full registration to the 2025 Royal Statistical Society International Conference in Edinburgh, UK. Please note that travel and accommodation costs will not be covered.
- The winning article will be published in Significance.
- Runner-up articles may be published on the Significance website or in Significance magazine at the editor’s discretion.
- Closing date is 30 May 2025.
Meet last year’s winner
Joseph Lam, a PhD student at University College London, won our 2024 competition.
Joseph Lam receives his award from former Significance editorial board chair Mario Cortina Borja
What first gave you the idea for your winning entry, “Terminating bias: How Arnold Schwarzenegger showed us the importance of spelling names correctly”?
My PhD project focuses on understanding data linkage biases by ethnicity, and methods to deal with them. Researchers and politicians increasingly use linked data to understand the population and policy-making. Bias in linkages is, however, not sufficiently discussed and acknowledged, and people might not how linkage biases may perpetuate existing inequities.
Arnold is no stranger to data linkage methods! He made his debut in a 2011 data linkage methods paper by Lange and Naumann titled “Frequency-aware similarity measures: Why Arnold Schwarzenegger is always a duplicate”. I thought Arnie wouldn’t mind helping us out once more in communicating this important message to policy-makers, academics and the public alike!
How long did it take you to complete?
It took around 3–4 weeks – I was already working on the project as part of my PhD before I learned about the competition. The timelines of my project matched quite well with the competition.
What was the most difficult aspect of it, and what was the most enjoyable?
I am passionate about the topic and linkage methods, which meant I tend to go into a lot of details in my writing. That may sometimes blur the key messages. I find the more relaxed, conversational style of writing quite liberating – matching Arnold movie quotes with my key points make me chuckle!
How did you feel when you won?
I was over the moon. I was really glad my friends/colleagues/amazing statisticians Mario, Ofran and Tim were at the ceremony to celebrate with me! It’s like the great statisticians gave me a nod of approval, and I can now proudly call myself a part of this guild of stats experts and enthusiasts!
What was it like presenting your article at the 2024 RSS Conference?
It was a humbling experience. Sharing my work with room full of experts was nerve-wracking, but also empowering – I really enjoyed listening to people’s reactions to and reflections on my presentation, as well as their ideas and stories!
Top tip for 2025 entrants?
Think about the hook, the message and the punchline. Have fun – it shows in the writing.
You might also like: Past winners and finalists of the Significance/YSS writing competition
