From August 22 to 23, the final of the 9th National Undergraduate Student Statistical Modeling Competition, guided by the Statistical Education and Training Center of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Teaching Guidance Committee for Statistics Majors in Higher Education Institutions under the Ministry of Education, and the Graduate Education Guidance Committee for Applied Statistics (professional degree), and organized by the Statistical Education Society of China (SESC), took place at Xiasha campus. Mao Youfeng, a member of the Party Group and deputy director of the NBS, Di Wei, deputy director of the Statistical Education and Training Center of NBS, Li Jinchang, secretary of ZUFE’s Party Committee, and Dong Jincai, a member of the Party Committee and vice president of ZUFE, attended the opening and closing ceremonies and delivered speeches. The opening and closing ceremonies were respectively hosted by Hong Xingjian, dean of the School of Data Science, and Jin Hong, director of the Statistical Education and Training Center of the NBS.
In his address, Mao Youfeng highlighted numerous breakthroughs achieved in this competition, which had significantly increased its influence and appeal. The scale of the competition had continued to expand, and there had been notable improvements in the selection of themes, the competition system, fair and scientific evaluation, and the digital platform functions. He expressed the hope that the SESC, along with experts, scholars, and tutors, would work together to build and protect well the competition as a prestigious event in the field of Statistics. He also encouraged young students to strive for innovation and contribute their wisdom to the comprehensive construction of a Chinese-style modernization.
Li Jinchang expressed his willingness to carry out in-depth exchanges with participating universities in talent cultivation, professional construction, and disciplinary development. He emphasized the need to focus on the statistical industry’s development, and make due contributions to the modernization of national statistics in the new era.
Since its commencement in February of this year, a total of 11,213 teams composed of 33,600 participants from 613 colleges and universities nationwide took part in the competition. After selections in 27 provinces and the national competition's preliminary evaluation and on-site re-evaluation, 100 teams were selected for the national defense competition. Eventually, 20 teams in the graduate student track and 40 teams in the undergraduate student track were awarded first prizes. ZUFE's one undergraduate team and two postgraduate teams were honored with first prizes.
The National College Student Statistical Modeling Competition has been held every two years since 2009, but starting from the 7th competition in 2021, it became an annual event. The competition aims to foster a favorable environment for college students to learn and apply statistics, pay more attention to pressing economic and social issues and meet the demands of universities and statistical departments in cultivating statistical talents in the era of big data. Also, it enhances their skills in data mining, analysis, statistical methodology, and computer technology for data processing to strengthen innovative thinking, and contributes to the modernization reform of statistics. In March of this year, the competition was included in the competition catalog of the 2023 Analysis Report of National University Student Competitions by the China Association of Higher Education (CAHE).
