Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations (JFSSA) is aiming at dissemination and development of statistics, and is composed of the following six statistics academic organizations: Japanese Society of Applied Statistics, Japanese Society of Computational Statistics, The Biometric Society of Japan, The Behaviormetric Society, The Japan Statistical Society, and Japanese Classification Society. In accordance with the aims, the JFSSA promotes various joint projects, including
A board of directors is established in the JFSSA, and it is composed of directors elected from member organizations, two persons from every organization, and a director general chosen by the directors. In addition, to promote projects effectively, various committees established.
The target of statistics is the overall society, and statistics should swiftly respond to changes in the society in order to strengthen its presence. For that purpose, it is important to make the benefits of the systematic activities of the JFSSA as well as activities by individual organizations widely understood. In addition to academic organizations, establishing close relationships with statistics research institutes and governmental offices involved in statistics is also important. Under such background, the JFSSA will further strengthen cooperation among member organizations and make efforts energetically to make contributions to the development of statistics and data science.
The JFSSA was launched on February 4, 2005. It was actually initiated at the conference of the Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting Liaison Committee (Joint Meeting Liaison Committee) convened in May 2001. Many collaborative activities had been carried out even before that: activities by the Statistics Research Liaison Committee (SRL) of the Science Council of Japan, holding annual conventions of two or more academic organizations simultaneously. The Statistical Science Joint Research Meeting (1994) was held in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) by ISM, SRL, Japanese Society of Applied Statistics, and the Biometric Society of Japan. Particularly, the Japanese Society of Applied Statistics and the Biometric Society of Japan established the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations Liaison Committee (although the member organization of the committee was two, this name was adopted in consideration of future expansion) in 1995. The federation had held joint annual meetings until 2001 under an integrated program and compilation of abstracts of papers in accordance with the memorandum of the agreement.
After that, Japan Statistical Society, Japanese Society of Applied Statistics and the Biometric Society of Japan officially joined the Joint Meeting Liaison Committee, and the Japanese Classification Society, Japanese Society of Computational Statistics and the Behaviormetric Society were under invitation to join the Committee. Under such circumstances, the first Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting was held in 2002 at Meisei University under the auspices of the three official member organizations and with the support of the Japanese Classification Society. Soon after that, to promote cooperation beyond the bounds of the Joint Meetings, the Joint Meeting Liaison Committee has been renamed as the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations Liaison Committee, and the Japanese Classification Society, Japanese Society of Computational Statistics and the Behaviormetric Society joined the Committee. The Joint Statistical Meetings, the major activities of the JFSSA, have been held successfully so far: the second meeting was held at Meijo University in 2003, the third at Fuji University in 2004, and the fourth at Hiroshima Prince Hotel in 2005.
As described above, JFSSA has made energetic efforts since the first meeting of the Board of Directors on February 4, 2005.
Project committees are established if necessary to proceed with various projects. So far, committees have been established for the education of statistics and the development of educational materials in addition to committees for discussing the organization and management of the Joint Statistical Meetings. JFSSA made various recommendations such as “research supporting,” “promotion of statistical science,” “requests to the Japan Association of National Universities regarding statistical/probability questions of unviersity entrance examinations,” and “reference standards for the development of educational programs for each statistical sciences”.
