DMS Name Change

To SIAM members:

The director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) at NSF has proposed that the division be renamed the Division of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. We, and the NSF, seek your views on this proposed name change. These will be summarized, without identifying the senders, and forwarded to the NSF, in particular to Ed Seidel, Assistant NSF Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, who intends to decide on the matter in January.

Briefly, the primary arguments that have been put forward in favor of the change are:

The proposed name would put the Division in a better position to vie for new resources in this era of big data and to collaborate with other divisions. The progression and the culture of statistics do not justify its being viewed as one of the mathematical sciences. The name change will signal more inclusiveness of the growing field of statistics. A fuller statement of these arguments can be found in a letter from Dr. Pantula available at archive.siam.org/dmsnamechange/pantula-letter.pdf

Others, including the three prior directors of DMS, have argued against the change. Briefly, the primary arguments that have been made against the change are:

The name change suggests that statistics is not a mathematical science and implies diminished relevance of the mathematical sciences to data. This violates common usage and the inclusive view of the mathematical sciences successfully advocated by DMS for many years. The proposed name is preferential to one sub-area, and will provoke discord in the community. Some feel it may portend a realignment of resources that hasn't been discussed or justified.

PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO <[email protected]> BY DECEMBER 1 AS PLAIN TEXT EMAIL WITHOUT ATTACHMENTS.

Email headers will be removed from comments before they are transmitted.
** Thus, senders' identities will not be known unless they choose to identify themselves in the message body. **
Nevertheless, we feel that comments will be most useful if the identity of the sender and his or her role as a DMS stakeholder is included in the message.

Thank you.

Nick Trefethen, SIAM President
Doug Arnold, SIAM Past-President