Publication Policy for The American Statistician
The American Statistician strives to publish articles of general interest to the statistical profession. Articles should be clearly written, address topics that are important for a broad group of statisticians, and ordinarily not be highly technical. The journal is organized into the following sections:
- Statistical Practice
- General
- Teacher's Corner
- Interdisciplinary
- Statistical Computing and Graphics
- History Corner
- Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials
- Letters to the Editor
Articles for The American Statistician should appeal to large
numbers of readers and should ordinarily not be highly technical.
Expository or tutorial articles on a statistical topic of current importance
should be comprehensive and authoritative, yet written at a level to appeal to
a broad cross-section of the readership.
Articles presenting new extensions of methodology generally do not belong
in The American Statistician, unless they are helpful in the teaching or
practice of statistics by providing novel ways of teaching or using a
statistical concept. In such cases the article must clearly demonstrate the
value of the methodological extension.
This section contains articles that are interesting or useful with regard to the practice of statistics, such as:
- Case studies illustrating important lessons and issues involved in the practice of statistics, or that deal with applications having broad appeal;
- Discussions and comparisons of modern statistical methods, focusing on their usefulness in practice;
- Articles that address practical problems at the interface between statistical methodology and areas of application;
- Articles that present statistical solutions to current industrial problems, with emphasis on methodology.
The following list illustrates examples of topics for articles in this section:
- National and international statistical problems and programs, and public policy matters of direct interest to the statistical profession;
- The history of statistics and probability;
- Commentaries, or informative essays, that provide viewpoints and perspective on statistical topics of general interest (these are similar in spirit to Letter to the Editor but involve longer discussions of background, issues, and perspective);
- Methodological developments that are both of broad interest to statisticians and generally not highly technical;
- Expository or tutorial state-of-the-art surveys of the discipline.
The editorial board particularly desires to attract expository articles written for a general statistical audience on topics of current importance in areas including, but not limited to, the preceding list.
In this section The American Statistician publishes articles, notes, and discussions of interest to statistics teachers covering a variety of different courses and settings. The range includes:
- Statistics and probability topics for high school students, including Advanced Placement Statistics;
- Introductory college courses in statistics for all audiences;
- Applied statistics courses at all levels;
- Industrial and continuing education outside the framework of standard academic courses;
- Mathematical statistics courses at the undergraduate and first-year graduate level.
An article for this section should state clearly the type of course in which the material is useful and discuss student reactions to the ideas presented.
This section has a character somewhat like JASA Applications and Case Studies, as well as Statistical Science, but with perhaps greater subject matter emphasis, and certainly with greater accessibility and clear exposition characteristic of TAS. Papers in this section should
- Bring more domain-specific application knowledge to statisticians, and
- Make TAS and the ASA in general more attractive to people who are “on the fringes” of statistics, but housed in various “non-statistics” academic, professional, and scientific disciplines,
Types of papers in this section include surveys of uses of statistics in fields that are considered primary not statistics, descriptions of important problems in particular disciplines in need of statistical methods, and critical reviews of statistical methodologies that are in common use outside of the statistical core.
Statistical Computing and Graphics
This section includes articles about statistical computing and statistical graphics that are of broad interest to statisticians. For example, topics can include new graphical procedures or comparisons and evaluations of existing procedures; proposals of computational algorithms or assessments in terms of speed or numerical stability; and computational methods for simulation and approximation. This section also includes a special component, "Statistical Computing Software Reviews," which contains reports in the style of book reviews, generally extensive and comparative, on selected computer software systems.
Articles relating to the history of statistics, from very old to somewhat recent history, are welcome. Examples may include archival research on the early days of the ASA showing some interesting new facet; papers displaying historical trends in the use of statistics in teaching, research, and practice; re-interpretations of history in modern light (e.g., as changed by modern technology); unearthing of little-known contributions by historical statistical luminaries; and recollections of general interest. “History” is interpreted fairly broadly: technology has rendered much of the latter part of the twentieth century “historical.”
Reviews of Books and Teaching Materials
The American Statistician publishes reviews of materials related to the teaching of undergraduate and service courses in statistics. This includes textbooks for such courses; special volumes and conference proceedings concerning statistical education; software, videotapes, organized sources of data, and internet resources intended for purposes of statistical education; and other similar items. All such reviews are coordinated with the Journal of the American Statistical Association through the Reviews Editor, who handles both The American Statistician and JASA and selects reviews for The American Statistician according to the above criteria. Items are not reviewed in both journals.
Letters to the editor are confined to discussions of papers that have appeared recently in The American Statistician and to discussions of important issues facing the statistical community. Letters discussing papers must be received within three months of publication of the paper; the author of the paper will then be given an opportunity to reply, and the letters and reply will be published together. All letters to the editor are refereed.