Dr Godday Ebuh, an official of the Nigerian Statistical Association (NSA), says the association will mentor 42 statistics undergraduate students participating at the second edition of its statistics competition in FCT.
TBI Africa said Ebuh, First National Vice President of NSA, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kwali, FCT, on Friday that the association would mentor them to be accomplished statisticians.
NAN reports that 42 students from 21 tertiary institutions are currently participating in the competition which started on May 12 and winners will be announced at end of the competition.
According to him, the winners will get scholarship for Masters degrees, in addition to the mentorship they will receive from the association.
The official said that the objective of the competition was to harmonise knowledge among students and create awareness in difficult area of statistics.
“The competition started in 2018 with the course on probability and this year, we are looking at inferential statistics.
“Statistical inference is a core course; we want to make sure that they are rooted in statistical inference because some of them are in the top class.
“ Their minimum Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) is 3.50; it is second class upper in university and upper credit in polytechnic.
“ Some of them may end up becoming lecturers; they need to be sound for them to contribute to academic environment.
“They are camped in National Mathematical Centre, we have to take them through the course and subject them to examination; each examination takes minimum of six hours,’’ he said.
Ebuh said that those that won last year got cash and they got automatic ticket to participate in the 2018 edition of NSA conference.
“ We gave a price of N50, 000 for individual winner and institution got N200,000; 150,000 for second position and N120,000 for third position.
“We distributed journals and other incentives; we are partnering with African University of Science and Technology (AUST) and National Mathematical Centre, both in Abuja, to organise the competition.
“We are going to nominate them for scholarship to go and do their Masters at AUST.
“ We are going to move from giving them money to giving them laptops, textbooks, not only the winner that will benefit, even the participants will get textbooks.
“ Going forward, we intend to partner with other organisations to upgrade the competition. This is just the foundation,’’ he said.
The NSA was founded in 1976 as a non-profit making professional body comprising statisticians, economists, planners, demographers, analysts and corporate organisations with interest in statistics.
The association engages in generating interest in statistics, professional development, retraining of users and producers of statistics.
It provides sound information base to enhance policy formulation and strategic planning in the public and private sector of the national economy.
