UW News

Department of Statistics


February 8, 2024

ArtSci Roundup: Journeys of Black Mathematicians, Circa Performance, Building Scyborgs Lecture, and more

This week, head to Kane Hall for the film screening of Journeys of Black Mathematicians: Forging Resilience, attend K. Wayne Yang’s discussion on scyborgs and decolonization, enjoy next level circus by the Australian contemporary circus group Circa, and more. February 12, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | Black Soldiers and the Racial Debilitation of Slavery and…


November 13, 2023

UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences maintains No. 1 global ranking; more than two dozen UW subjects in top 50

campus entrance

Six University of Washington subjects ranked in the top 10, and atmospheric sciences maintained its position as No. 1 in the world on the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects list for 2023. The ranking, released at the end of October, was conducted by researchers at the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization dedicated to research on higher education intelligence and consultation.


August 29, 2023

Researchers prefer same-gender co-authors, UW study shows

A group of people at a table with papers and water bottles.

A new study from the University of Washington and Cornell University shows researchers more likely to write scientific papers with co-authors of the same gender, a pattern that can’t be explained by varying gender representations across scientific disciplines and time.


August 25, 2022

‘Dangerous’ and ‘extremely dangerous’ heat stress to become more common by 2100

maps of globe colored orange and red

A new study projects the number of days with “dangerous” and “extremely dangerous” mixtures of heat and humidity by the end of this century. Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, results show that deadly heat waves will become much more common in the mid-latitudes, and many tropical regions will experience “dangerous” heat for about half the year.


March 28, 2022

UW graduate and professional disciplines again place high in US News’ best graduate school rankings

campus shot

The University of Washington’s graduate and professional degree programs were widely recognized as among the best in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best Graduate School rankings released Tuesday.


November 5, 2021

ArtSci Roundup: DXARTS Fall Concert: Real & Imagined Soundworlds, The Importance of Being Earnest, and More

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! This week, attend lectures, concerts, and more. Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  DXARTS Fall Concert: Real & Imagined Soundworlds November 9, 7:30 PM | Meany Hall–Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater…


September 16, 2021

Rankings: UW among best in world for health and life sciences

building

The University of Washington is among the best universities in the world for the studies of health and life sciences, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2022.


July 26, 2021

Scientists model ‘true prevalence’ of COVID-19 throughout pandemic

US map with states represented by hexagons showing COVID-19 infection fatality rate

Two University of Washington scientists have developed a statistical framework that incorporates key COVID-19 data — such as case counts and deaths due to COVID-19 — to model the true prevalence of this disease in the United States and individual states. Their approach, published the week of July 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that in the U.S. as many as 60% of COVID-19 cases went undetected as of March 7, 2021, the last date for which the dataset they employed is available.


July 1, 2021

How long can a person live? The 21st century may see a record-breaker

two elderly people sit on a bench

A new University of Washington study calculates the probability of living past age 110, which, though rare, likely will increase this century.


February 9, 2021

Limiting warming to 2 C requires emissions reductions 80% above Paris Agreement targets

Even if all countries meet their Paris Agreement goals for reducing emissions, Earth has only a 5% chance of staying below 2 C warming this century, a previous study showed. But reductions about 80% more ambitious, or an average of 1.8% drop in emissions per year rather than 1% per year, would be enough to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.


October 12, 2020

UW awarded NIH grant for training in advanced data analytics for behavioral and social sciences

With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, a five-year, $1.8 million training program at the University of Washington will fund 25 academic-year graduate fellowships, develop a new training curriculum and contribute to methodological advances in health research at the intersection of demography and data science.


September 8, 2020

How birth control, girls’ education can slow population growth

baby crib

Education and family planning have long been tied to lower fertility trends. But new research from the University of Washington analyzes those factors to determine, what accelerates a decline in otherwise high-fertility countries.


September 1, 2020

UW launches Institute for Foundations of Data Science

people at white board

The University of Washington will lead a team of institutions in establishing an interdisciplinary research institute that brings together mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and engineers to develop the theoretical foundations of a fast-growing field: data science.


August 26, 2020

Faculty from Allen School, Evans School tapped for NSF institutes on artificial intelligence

The National Science Foundation has announced five new institutes devoted to AI research and based at universities around the country. Six University of Washington faculty will be affiliated with the institutes.


July 30, 2020

National Academies publishes guide to help public officials make sense of COVID-19 data

University of Washington professor Adrian Raftery is lead author on a National Academies guide to help officials interpret and understand different COVID-19 statistics and data sources as they make decisions about opening and closing schools, businesses and community facilities.


April 13, 2020

UW team illustrates the adverse impact of visiting ‘just one friend’ during COVID-19 lockdown

After weeks of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, people of all ages may be asking: What could be the harm of visiting just one friend? Unfortunately, it could potentially undo the goal of social distancing, which is to give the COVID-19 virus fewer opportunities to spread. According to a website set up by researchers…


March 24, 2020

Ships’ emissions create measurable regional change in clouds

aerial image of ships' tracks

Years of cloud data over a shipping route between Europe and South Africa shows that pollution from ships has significantly increased the reflectivity of the clouds. More generally, the results suggest that industrial pollution’s effect on clouds has masked about a third of the warming due to fossil fuel burning since the late 1800s.


November 26, 2019

UW researchers Alex Luedtke, Tyler McCormick receive ‘new innovator’ grants through NIH High-risk, High-Rewards program

Two UW professors — Alex Luedtke and Tyler McCormick — are among 60 researchers the National Institutes of Health has named recipients of its 2019 Director’s New Innovator Awards.


December 24, 2018

New global migration estimates show rates proportionally steady since 1990, high rate of return migration

People waiting at an airport

Two University of Washington scientists have unveiled a new statistical method for estimating migration flows between countries. They show that rates of migration are higher than previously thought, but also relatively stable, fluctuating between 1.1 and 1.3 percent of global population from 1990 to 2015. In addition, since 1990 approximately 45 percent of migrants have returned to their home countries, a much higher estimate than other methods.


September 12, 2018

Three UW teams receive TRIPODS+X grants for research in data science

The National Science Foundation announced on Sept. 11 that it is awarding grants totaling $8.5 million to 19 collaborative projects at 23 universities for the study of complex and entrenched problems in data science. Three of these projects will be based at the University of Washington and led by researchers in the College of Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences.


March 19, 2018

University of Washington graduate and professional disciplines rank highly in US News’ Best Graduate School lists

library at night

Nearly 50 different graduate and professional programs and specialties at the University of Washington are among the top 10 in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 Best Graduate School rankings released March 20.


July 31, 2017

Earth likely to warm more than 2 degrees this century

bar chart

A new UW statistical study shows only 5 percent chance that Earth will warm less than 2 degrees, what many see as a “tipping point” for climate, by the end of this century.


March 15, 2017

Adrian Raftery receives Ireland’s St. Patrick’s Day Medal for contributions to statistics

UW professor Adrian Raftery.

On March 15 at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland honored Adrian Raftery, a professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington, for his diverse contributions to the field of statistics. Kenny presented Raftery with the St. Patrick’s Day Medal, which is awarded each year by Science Foundation…


January 10, 2017

Two UW professors win Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Emily Fox and Catherine Karr

Two University of Washington professors have received the 2017 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the U.S. government to early career scientists and engineers.


December 13, 2016

Studies of vulnerable populations get a ‘bootstrapped’ boost from statisticians

a crowd of people in a building

In a paper published online Dec. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington researchers report on a statistical approach called “tree bootstrapping” can help social scientists study hard-to-reach populations like drug users.


November 30, 2016

What makes Bach sound like Bach? New dataset teaches algorithms classical music

MusicNet is the first publicly available large-scale classical music dataset designed to allow machine learning algorithms to tackle everything from automated music transcription to listening recommendations based on the structure of music itself.


September 22, 2016

5 UW professors among HHMI’s inaugural class of Faculty Scholars

Amid a decline in funding for scientific research, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Simons Foundation to launch a new Faculty Scholars program. Announced Sept. 22 by HHMI, the inaugural crop of early-career scientists includes 5 faculty members from the University of Washington.


September 18, 2014

World population to keep growing this century, hit 11 billion by 2100

graph of world population and each continent

A study by the UW and the United Nations finds that the number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, about 2 billion higher than widely cited previous estimates.


July 10, 2014

Students calculate future sea-level rise in Olympia

Aerial view of Olympia

Students in a UW statistics course did a case study on sea-level rise in Olympia. All are co-authors on a new paper that looks at the uncertainties around estimates of rising seas.