Professional Statisticians’ association launched

(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)    The Caribbean Association of Professional Statisticians (CAPS) whose motto is `Promoting Statistics for Sustainable Development’ was launched on Monday in Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis.
The Association was launched during the opening ceremony of the Thirty-Eighth Meeting of the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (SCCS), and the Twenty-third Meeting of the Regional Census Coordinating Committee (RCCC).
The launch featured the presentation of prizes to Mr. Roydenn Silcott of Montserrat and Jason Reynolds of Dominica, who were the winners of competitions that were held Region-wide to select the CAPS’ logo and motto, respectively. The main prizes -an IPad and trophy for each winner, as well airfare and per diem relative to the collection of their prizes at the SCCS - were contributed by the European Union (EU), while the CARICOM Advisory Group on Statistics contributed a cash prize to each winner.
The CAPS, which had its genesis in 2009 at a High Level Advocacy Forum on Statistics held in Trinidad and Tobago, is a non-profit organization that has as its objectives the promotion of the contribution of statistics and its applications to evidence-based decision-making in the CARICOM Region; collaboration and discussion among professional statisticians; and the promotion of continuous training and development of professional statisticians. The organization aims to be a forum for discussion on statistical matters and will act to encourage research on statistical methodology and its applications, and to publish and disseminate findings. Its other objective is the promotion of a culture of statistical literacy, awareness and the general use of statistics in everyday life.
The association came into being as clarion calls continue to be made for demystifying statistics and for the integral role of statistics in everyday life to be heightened.
It is anticipated that the establishment of the CAPS will positively impact the harmonization process within the Region and that its Membership Directory could be a catalyst for the Database of Regional Experts.
It is envisaged that Chapters for the CAPS in the CARICOM Region will consist of individual Member Countries, in the case of the larger countries and of groupings of Member Countries, in the case of the smaller countries. It is also envisaged that the Association will establish Committees to deal with Subject matters such as Official Statistics, Survey Statistics, Statistical Computation and Statistical Education.