**** NEW ****

The poster submission is now electronic with a new judging rubric. In addition to submitting your online entry form, you must upload a high-quality image or digitally created PDF file of your poster. Please ensure the image is high enough quality for all text and graphics to be read. Do not mail a physical poster. If submitting a digitally created poster (rather than a photo of a physical poster), please see the electronic poster tutorial.

PLEASE READ THE NEW JUDGING RUBRIC.

Note: There has been a tendency in some entries across the nation over the past few years to include more text in entries than was originally intended when the competition was created. In that light the national committee has revised the rubric to encourage entrants to emphasize graphics, minimize text, and enlarge font. Be sure to read the rubric carefully as the penalty is substantial for having excessive text or small font on an entry. The emphasis is on the viewer being able to draw conclusions by visualizing the data (the graphs tell a story) and not having to read conclusions derived from the data. The national committee has told me that they intend to be more vigilant in judging according to the rubric. The local judges will follow the intention of the national.

Recognizing that there is a continuing need to encourage and promote the understanding and application of statistics, the Cleveland Chapter of the American Statistical Association is sponsoring a statistics poster competition that offers an avenue for students in Ohio to express their creativity in the graphical analysis of data. This competition encourages students to discover the usefulness of statistics in displaying data that occur in various contexts in their everyday lives.

Winners from this competition are automatically entered into the national statistics poster competition that was started in 1990 in which some winners have come from Ohio. Examples of national winners as well as a webinar on how to create a statistics poster may be found at:

ASA-Statistics-Poster-Competition-for-Grades-K-12.aspx

Definition

A statistics poster is a visual display containing two or more related graphics (plots, charts, maps, etc.) that summarize a set of data, look at the data from different points of view, and answer some specific questions about the data. Note that tables are discouraged because it is not the numbers themselves that are important but the stories they have to tell.

Some General Guidelines to Follow

• Each graphic should convey some new information about the data that cannot be seen in the other graphics.

• Whether created using survey data or experimental data, a statistical poster should tell a story.

• The poster should demonstrate that the scientific method of solving a problem has been used-that

  • there was a carefully focused overall question;

  • appropriate data were collected;

  • the data were analyzed intelligently; and,

  • the correct conclusions were drawn.

• A viewer should be able to see the poster's main message clearly from 4 to 6 feet away. The legends for each graphic should reflect the graphic's contribution to the poster. A good graph should be comprehensible without any significant instruction.

• Use large lettering. This may require computer-generated lettering to be enlarged. Bold lines and symbols can be used to help make the messages of the individual graphics stand out.

• Color is an excellent way to help the viewer keep track when the same elements appear in more than one graphic. Use of consistent colors in similar categories across multiple bar graphs or pie charts is important. However, too many colors may detract from the message and confuse the viewer.

• Skillful art is beneficial to guide the viewer around the poster, but "art for art's sake" is to be avoided.

• Avoid using three-dimensional graphs (particularly pie charts, bar graphs, histograms) as they are misleading.

• Be careful that areas or volumes of shapes in pictographs accurately reflect the respective proportion of data. Many pictographs found in newspapers are drawn incorrectly.

Judging

Entries will be judged on the basis of:

• Overall impact of the display

  • Does the poster immediately catch your eye?

  • Is it bright and visually attractive?

  • Does it draw you in to investigate the individual graphs?

  • Does it avoid artistic features that distract from the statistics message?

• Clarity of the message

• Do the important relationships and patterns in the data stand out?

• Are the conclusions obvious from the graphs?

• Appropriateness of the graphics for the data

• RUBRIC https://www.amstat.org/asa/files/pdfs/EDU-PosterJudgingRubric.pdf

Judges include teachers of statistics and statisticians. Their decisions are final. Entries cannot be returned.

ELIGIBILITY

All students in K-12 schools including home-schooled in Ohio are eligible.

RULES

• Students may work individually or in teams. For those in the K–3 category, there is no restriction on the size of the team. For other categories, the maximum number of students per team is four.

• For teams with members from different grade levels, the highest grade determines the entry category.

• Posters measure between 18 and 24 inches high and 24 and 30 inches wide.

• You will upload a photo/image file of a physical poster or a PDF file of a digitally created poster.

• If creating a digital poster, please follow the guidelines in the electronic poster tutorial.

• Include the grade category and title of your poster in your file name.

• Ensure the image/file is high enough quality that it can be zoomed in on and all text and graphics can be easily read.

• Make sure the poster gives no information that identifies the team or school.

• Each poster requires a separate online entry.

• Posters must be the original design and creation of the entrant(s).

• Computer graphics may be used.

• Subject matter is the choice of the participant(s) or their classmates.

• Brief supplementary information such as examples of original data, references for published data, brief descriptions of data collection procedures, and/or the purpose of the experiment may be provided in a text box in the online entry form. Do not copy and paste your actual data into the form. Please note this information might not be used in the judging, so make sure the main poster briefly provides sufficient information without being too text heavy (the updated judging criteria/rubric penalizes posters with too much text). Follow the evaluation criteria and judging rubric explained below.

PERMISSIONS

By submitting a poster, students agree that all rights to their poster, including all copyrights, are assigned to and become the property of the American Statistical Association and shall be considered "work for hire" under the copyright act. Such agreement permits posters to be displayed at conferences, in electronic format on the internet, or in publications or promotional materials.

CATEGORIES and PRIZES

There are four categories: grades K-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12. At least $100 in prizes is available for each category.

The Ohio competition will notify winners by

National awards: Only first-, second-, and third-place winners and honorable mentions will be notified personally. The ASA will announce winners in August on its website.

ENTRY FEE and MAILING

There is no entry fee. All winners of the Ohio competition will be entered in the national competition.

Please submit, via e-mail: an Ohio entry form (WORD PDF) and the electronic version of your poster.

Send to Jerry L. Moreno at moreno@jcu.edu

DEADLINE

Entries must be received by April 17th.

Ohio awards: Only first-, second-, and third-place winners and honorable mentions will be notified personally. Ohio winners will be chosen by April 30th and forwarded to the national competition.

National awards: Only first-, second-, and third-place winners and honorable mentions will be notified personally. The ASA will announce winners in August on its website.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Direct any questions to Jerry Moreno, coordinator of the Ohio Data Visualization Poster Competition at 216-397-4681, or moreno@jcu.edu. Members of the Cleveland Chapter may be available to speak to your class about creating statistics posters.