Student Competitions

Eligibility: To be eligible, the student must be a graduate degree candidate at an accredited institution in any term during 2022, be registered in the UP-STAT 2022 conference, and present the research during the conference. The reported research should reflect the student's work and be relevant to Statistical Sciences, the broad theme of the conference. The student must be the first or the corresponding author of the paper/poster, although the research can be performed in collaboration with a faculty advisor and/or a small number of co-investigators.

Review Criteria: The competing presentations for the paper and the poster sessions will be reviewed by the Student Awards Committee. The reviewers will assess the strength of the research and presentation in the following four areas:

1. motivating problem for the research
2. methodological statistical development
3. scientifically meaningful applications of the proposed methods
4. clarity of presentation  

How to Participate: To participate first register for the conference (registration is free!), then email Prof. Lili Tian, Chair, Student Award committee, the following:

• your name as it appeared when you registered
  
• which competition you want to participate
• the title and the abstract of your paper/poster

Note: You are welcome to participate in both competitions; however, two separate abstracts must be submitted in that case, that correspond to two different research projects. 

Deadline for Submission: April 11, 2022.

For the paper award competition, an extended abstract (1-2 pages) must be submitted by April 27, 2022. This is in addition to the last bullet point listed above.

For the poster session competition, a 2-minute video must be uploaded by April 27, 2022. ZOOM breakout rooms will be utilized to communicate with poster presenters.

The 2022 UP-STAT Poster Competition will be held asynchronously, with participants posting their presentations online. As such, student “posters” will be recorded and may take the form of any presentation method deemed necessary (slide presentations as one example). These are to be two-minutes in length and must be uploaded by April 27^th. We will utilize the Flipgrid platform, enabling you to post your video and interact remotely with conference attendees.

The UP-STAT poster competition will be hosted on Flipgrid. Please post your presentation to the Flipgrid platform using either a Gmail or Microsoft Account.

1. Record/Pause button
Press this to start recording, or to pause and catch your breath!

2. Options drawer
Upload video clips, Flip the camera & Share your screen

3. Effects drawer
Add Filters, Pen annotations and more to your recording

See this guide for more information on Flipgrid features and effects.

This method is preferred for solo Presentations.

1. Navigate to the Flipgrid site.
   NOTE: If prompted to log in, click Join with Microsoft, or Join with Google using either a personal or institutional account. 
2. Click on the red Record a Response button.
   NOTE: When prompted by your browser, Allow Flipgrid to Use your microphone. 
3. You should now see the full Flipgrid Camera window. Click on Options to display camera controls and functions.
4. Within the expanded menu, click Record Screen.
5. Click Start Screen Recording button.
6. Select the window or application to be recorded and click Share when ready.
   NOTE: When recording, you may head to any application you wish to record - Google Slides, PowerPoint, or a website.
7. When you are finished presenting, click Stop recording.
8. Click Next.
9. Fill out the Display Name and Description fields.
10. Click Submit to finalize and post your completed video.
11. Wait for the upload process to complete and click Done to complete the process.

This method is particularly suited to group/team presentations.

1. While hosting a Zoom session with your fellow contributors, click on the Record button and select Record on this Computer or press Alt + R.
   NOTE: When recording a shared screen in Zoom, you may head to any application you wish to record - Google Slides, PowerPoint, or a website. See this guide for help sharing your screen in Zoom.
2. Present with your peers and press on the Stop button to end the recording.
3. End the meeting to save the finished recording.
   NOTE: Your save folder will automatically open featuring several versions of the recording. Keep this pop-up open for later reference. The video will be titled “zoom_0.mp4”
4. Open an internet browser & navigate to the Flipgrid site.
   NOTE: If prompted to log in, click Join with Microsoft, or Join with Google using either a personal or institutional account.
5. Click on the red Record a Response button. 
   NOTE: When prompted by your browser, Allow Flipgrid to Use your microphone.
6. You should now see the full Flipgrid Camera window. Click on Upload clip.
7. Click on Upload Video to bring up the file explorer. Manually locate the video file and Open/Select to begin the upload process. Alternatively, you may click and drag the video from the folder location.
8. Click Next.
9. Fill out the Display Name and Description fields.
10. Click Submit to finalize and post your completed video. 
    
11. Wait for the upload process to complete and click Done to complete the process. 

Additional Details:

• Flipgrid currently supports MP4, MOV, and WEBM video formats.
• The maximum size of an import is 500 mb.
• Chromebooks do not support MOV files.
• We recommend the web browser or app is up to date to avoid any importing issues.
• Having Issues with a Recorded Video? We recommend using a free program, such as https://convert-video-online.com/, to convert the video to 720p quality.

1. Open an internet browser and navigate to the Flipgrid site.
   NOTE: If prompted to log in, click Join with Microsoft, or Join with Google using either a personal or institutional account.
2. Click on the thumbnail image of a video to view.

You can reply to a video with a video comment, text comment, or a text comment with a video comment. Text comments are limited to 500 characters of plain text.

1. Open the desired video Response.
2. Select the Add a Comment button below the video.
3. Enter the text comment and press Enter or the send icon
4. If the student attempts to submit a comment that contains potentially inappropriate words or phrasing, Flipgrid will automatically prevent the comment from being submitted and alert the student to update the comment. ALTERNATIVELY: click on the Recorder Button to record a video response. 
   NOTE: For additional guidance with Recording, see Section C: How do I record using Flipgrid?

The UP-STAT Data Analytics Competition is a staple of the UP-STAT conference series. To further encourage greater and more involved student participation, the UP-STAT conference always holds a Data Analysis Competition, typically featuring very complex data aimed at challenging all the competitors at the very core of their statistical knowledge and acumen.

A team of at least one student and no more than 5 students may enter the competition by submitting their entry information which includes team name, school, and the names and email addresses of the team members. The data set will be accessible from the conference website on around March 25, 2022, to teams that have entered the competition. Teams will be required to submit a report (maximum of 10 pages) on their results by April 28, 2022. Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 teams, all of whom will be asked to present their results at the conference.  

The State University of New York at Buffalo

May 2-4, 2022

Theme:

Statistical Science at the Service of Social Justice

Understanding Disparities in Educational Discipline and their relationships with Jailing Rates in the United States of America

What kind of evidence does a Sound Data Driven Statistical Investigation Reveal?

General description:

This year’s UPSTAT Data Analytics Competition brings back the fascinating theme of “Statistical Science at the Service of Social Justice”. This year, we invite and challenge our contestants to investigate two themes around social justice, namely (a) Disparities in educational discipline and (b) Jailing rates (c) The relationship (if any) between (a) and (b)

A good place to start is the PNAS article entitled “Racial disparities in school-based disciplinary actions are associated with county-level rates of racial bias” by Travis Riddle and Stacey Sinclair both Princeton University professors.

The idea would be to collect data from a variety of sources (The Civil Rights Data Collection, Vera Incarceration Trends (BJS), Census data (mainly from the ACS tables), and Race Implicit Association Test (Harvard). This will be time-consuming because the different sources have different naming conventions and unique identifiers -- participants must do additional work to get these data at the county level in the United States. Participants can then display these data via heatmaps over the US or sub-regions of specific interest (e.g., the rust belt). Some of the questions that participants may address with these data include amongst others:

• Does the analysis of Riddle et al. extend to jail admissions?
• Are rates of school-related disciplinary action outcomes related to jailing rates?

Note: These questions could be assessed at various levels, from descriptions to complicated multi-level models and posthoc analyses. Crucially, the participants should consider addressing many other questions and themes of their own towards addressing the overarching theme of the competition.

Data source.