Piret Avila was awarded the young statistician’s grant

The Master’s work of Piret Avila “Statistical analysis of the stochastic super-exponential growth model” completed in Institute of Mathematics and Natural Sciences in Tallinn University concerns the methodology of estimation of population growth. According to Mrs Kaja Sõstra, the Head of the Methodology Department of Statistics Estonia and the chairperson of the evaluation committee of the competition, the research is high-level. “The members of the evaluation committee valued the innovative approach used by Piret Avila using the mathematics’, theoretical physics’ and mathematical statistics’ tools in order to solve the demographics’ task”, marked Sõstra.

Albert Pullerits grant was bestowed for the first time by Statistics Estonia in relation to the 90th anniversary of statistics Estonia. All students’ works that develop or use a statistical method are eligible to apply for the grant. The subject area for 2011 is Population and Social Statistics in connection with the Population and Housing Census starting at the end of the year.

Statistics Estonia is going to award the price every year. The aim is to promote statistics as a very important branch of science, to motivate young people interested in statistics to apply and develop statistical methods, and to strengthen Statistics Estonia’s collaboration with research institutions. The winner will be awarded the iPhone 4 this year.

Albert Pullerits was the first leader of the Estonian State Central Bureau of Statistics established in 1921 and the founder of Estonian official statistics system.

The work of Piret Avila can be found on Statistics Estonia’s website (http://www.stat.ee/57945).

More detailed information about the young statistician’s grant named after Albert Pullerits is available on the website of Statistics Estonia.