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"The RSS charter should stress the need for professional statisticians to have experience which makes them empathetic to the context of the statistical data and thus aware of underlying problems. Their responsibilities should lie with the community as well as with the standards and status of the profession. " Janet Shapiro "Overwhelmingly books and courses on theoretical or so-called 'applied' statistics simply use statistics to illustrate theoretical principles and are not application based. This may count towards chartered statistician status particularly in the academic world, but being able to use statistics is not experience in developing substantive applications which require a statistical approach. It is necessary to dig deeper than the data and its regularities and start with the conceptual view that lies behind them. We need to start with the constitutive not the methodological." Andrew Philpott Morgan. I thought these kinds of points made by Janet Schapiro and Andrew Philpot Morgan do really carry the discussion forward partly because they show how pervasively statistics have come to be used. That makes the RSS claim of exclusive ownership of the science of statistics very revealing. An analogy came to mind. The thought of a Society devoted to the proper use of the English language. We might all expect to give support to such a Society, and we might even encourage our children to go to their meetings. But we would also expect that such a Society would take an interest in the use of English in different communities. We would not expect such a Society to publish four journals oriented to the interests of its members and not addressed to users of the English language. I used this analogy, and the kinds of point made by Janet Schapiro and Andrew Philpot Morgan, at a meeting last Wednesday with some of the top brass of the RSS. But they were impervious to any suggestion that the revised version of the Charter should do other than proclaim the primacy of the science of statistics 'in the public interest'. My reminder of Solzhenitsen's book 'For the good of the cause' fell on deaf ears. The top brass also expressed a strong desire to increase the membership and influence of the RSS. They did not recognise any contradiction between the desire to increase membership and the focus on the science of statistics. We have another Philpot on this list. Greg Phillpotts was at the meeting on Wednesday, and as an Honorary Secretary of the RSS until about 2008, will have major responsibility for trying to increase RSS membership and influence. Perhaps Greg could tell us how this apparent contradiction might be resolved? In what ways will the emphasis given to the science of statistics in the proposed revisions of the Charter make the RSS more worthy of support by, for example, members of Radstats? Ray Thomas, Social Sciences, Open University Tel: 01908 679081 Fax 01908 550401 Email: [log in to unmask] 35 Passmore, Milton Keynes MK6 3DY ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] *******************************************************