A Teaching Statistics journal article 'Calculated democracy—Explorations in gerrymandering' (paywalled) by David McCune and Samuel Luke Tunstall has been awarded the C Oswald George prize for 2019.
The prize is named after the UK government statistician Dr C Oswald George, who helped found the UK’s Institute of Statistics and served as its chairman and president. The prize has been awarded to authors of the best article in Teaching Statistics since 1979.
This year's winning paper was described as providing 'an authentic and topical context which can be introduced in a simple hands-on way before generalizing to fuller real and possibly complex data.'
The citation goes on to say: 'Although the specific context is electoral districts in the USA, the concepts are highly accessible and readily applicable to determining electoral boundaries wherever there are two main parties, with further extensions possible for more advanced investigation. For teaching statistics, this paper brings together some key aspects of statistical thinking but in a context outside the standard ‘box’ of applications, thus extending and enriching the statistical experience for both teachers and students.'
Read the full citation.
Huge congratulations to the authors.