Kettering University is hosting an international statistical conference June 24-28 that will feature statisticians from around the world discussing the use of data in urban communities. City of Flint Mayor Dayne Walling will deliver the keynote address at 8:30 a.m. June 24.

The conference, entitled, “Flint: One city, 100 years under variability,” was organized to celebrate the International Year of Statistics 2013 and the 175th anniversary of the American Statistical Association. Presenters at the conference will share expertise in statistical modeling, applications and education, focusing on the multi-disciplinary use of data in urban areas. Analysis and models based on historical records will be discussed in several sessions over the four days.

An international statistics convention in Flint will discuss how cities use and collect statistical data, using Flint, Michigan, as a primary example.

Walling’s speech will focus on how the city of Flint used statistical data when creating and adopting a new Master Plan over the course of the last four years. Other speakers will discuss data-driven approaches to crime, measuring inequality, harnessing the power of statistical methods in an era of big data and data reporting and analysis, among many others. The full agenda is available online.

“It’s a great honor to host an international conference that features some of the top statistics scholars in the world right here in Flint,” said Dr. Leszek Gawarecki, Mathematics department head at Kettering University and one of the conference organizers. “The city of Flint has a complex history that can be explained and understood better through analysis of data and statistics, so it is the perfect location for a conference discussing those types of topics.”

The conference will focus primarily on the research methods, modeling and analysis of historical data in the following areas: big data; computational statistics; crime statistics; data mining; financial services and statistics; general methods; health service statistics and pharmaceutical development; historical data and statistics; reliability and longevity statistical issues; and statistics in education.

The local organizing committee is Leszek Gawarecki, Boyan Dimitrov, Srinivas Chakravarthy, Tom Creech, Daniela Szatmari-Voicu and Cheryl Cochran from Kettering University and Gergana Kodjebasheva from the University of Michigan-Flint.