Institute for Research in Statistics and its Applications (IRSA) at the University of Minnesota
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.
Subject matter is the choice of the participant(s) or their classmates. Posters must be the original design and creation of the entrant(s).
Posters can be done digitally or manually (drawn by hand). Manually drawn posters would need to be digitized (scanned or photographed) for submission via the portal.
Your poster should provide sufficient information without being too text heavy; see the judging rubric for details. Consider using tables and graphs to showcase your work. You can use computer graphics or hand-drawn illustrations. Note that the judging criteria/rubric penalize posters with too much text.
There is no entry fee for the competition.
To participate in this competition, posters must be submitted by April 25, 2026. The results will be announced in early May.
Note that, you do not need to submit to the national competition separately. All submissions to the Minnesota competition are automatically considered for the national competition. By submitting a poster, students agree their work may be displayed at the ASA’s meetings, featured in its publications, and included on its website.
State-level First Prize (one for each age group): $80
State-level Second Prize (one for each age group): $60
State-level Third Prize (one for each age group): $40
All submissions receiving prizes will be further directed to the national competition of the ASA for the national prize.
All prize winners will be invited to present their posters at the The 2026 ASA Midwest Regional Conference in Statistics and Data Science (May 28 - 29, 2026, UMN Minneapolis campus)
Each prize winner will receive a certificate.
All high-school prize winners will receive a personalized letter of recommendation for college applications upon request.
The archive of the 2025 winning posters of the national competition
On March 21, 2026 (10:00 am), IRSA will host an information session about the competition, followed by a free online visualization workshop on Zoom for all K-12 schools, taught by instructors from IRSA. The workshop will give introductions to basic tools to visualize your data and tell your data story with figures. Visit this website to RSVP.
To enter the competition, complete the registration form with your team's information. Note, each poster requires a separate online entry.
Prepare two versions of your poster:
Full Version: This version should include the poster title, school name, grade, and the names of all participants. Ensure the title and participant names match the registration form.
Anonymous Version: This version should only include the title of the poster and the grade of the authors.
Poster measreuments: 18- 24 inches in height and 24 - 30 inches in width.
In the online entry form, you may provide brief supplementary information such as examples of original data, references for published data, brief descriptions of data collection, and/or the purpose of the experiment. Do not copy and paste your actual data into the form. Please note this information will not be used in the judging, so ensure that your poster includes all the necessary information about the study and data you are presenting.
Name the poster submission file to include the grade category and a short title of your poster.
For example, the authors from Grade 5 who present the results of their seed growing experiment would submit two poster versions in files called: seed_Growing_Grade5_full.pdf and seed_Growing_Grade5_anonymized.pdf
Please ensure the submission is of high-quality so that all text and graphics are clearly visible when zoomed in.
Contact: Dr. Tianxi Li (tianxili@umn.edu), Associate Professor of Statistics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
