Will You Tell Us a Story?

Stories about statistics are the lifeblood of Significance. Through them, we inspire each other and the wider world.

The annual Significance writing competition—formally known as the Statistical Excellence Award for Early Career Writing—casts its net across the world to find new stories and is a highlight of the magazine’s calendar.

Over the years, the competition has treated readers to stories about an array of subjects. Last year, first prize went to Zhaoxi Zhang, whose article “Early Scottish Statisticians and Their Lasting Legacy” expressed why the likes of John Arbuthnot, William Playfair, and Alistair Sinclair did so much more than crunch numbers in ivory towers.

Zhaoxi Zhang (center) with finalists Sarah C. Lotspeich, left, and Becky Griffiths

Other 2025 finalists and entrants applied modern statistical techniques to the 19th-century data of medical pioneer Ignác Semmelweis, explored probability in crocheted cardigans, and considered autism therapy through a Bayesian lens. In 2024, Joseph Lam’s article “Terminating Bias: How Arnold Schwarzenegger Helped Us Understand Linkage Errors and Biases” introduced readers to an increasingly important issue in our ever more diverse society. Read entries by previous winners and runners-up.

Winners and runners-up will be announced at the Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence Awards in London in July of 2026 and invited to present their articles at the 2026 RSS International Conference in Bournemouth, UK, to almost 1,000 attendees from more than 40 countries. The winning article will be published in Significance, and the finalists’ articles will be published on the Significance website. Highly commended pieces may be awarded and published at the judges’ discretion.

Launched in 2011, the Significance writing competition is aimed at students and early-career statisticians and data scientists. It is jointly organized by Significance and the RSS Young Statisticians Section as part of the RSS Statistical Excellence Awards Program, and entries are judged by a panel made up of section officers and committee members, along with the Significance editor and editorial board members.

Entries can be inspired by your work or studies; current affairs; or one of your personal experiences, hobbies, or obsessions. No topic is off limits.

Rules of Entry

• Entrants must be either students currently studying for a first, master’s, or PhD degree in statistics, data science, or related subjects or graduates whose last qualification in statistics, data science, or related subjects (whether first, master’s, or PhD degree) was not more than five years ago.
• Articles must be 1,500–2,500 words in length.
• Articles can include tables and figures, though there should be no more than five tables/figures.
• Writing style must be accessible and engaging.
• Technical terms and mathematics must be used sparingly and suitably explained where used.
• End references should be limited to 10.
• Footnotes must not be used.
• Only submissions in English will be considered.
• Manuscripts must be original and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. You may submit articles based on work in theses or papers that have been submitted to, or accepted by, academic journals, provided that the competition submission is sufficiently different in style and structure.
• Articles must be entirely written by a human being and not include AI-generated text from a large language model such as ChatGPT unless such text is explicitly identified as such and serves the purpose of the article (e.g., it is an AI-generated sentence serving as an example in an article about LLMs).
• Winners, finalists, and entrants from previous years of the competition may participate in this year’s competition.
• All entries must be accompanied by our competition entry form.
• Email submissions as a text/Word or PDF file.
• Entries are due by May 31.