20 May 2021
by Habiba Farzand, University of Glasgow
I was able to attend a course titled “Statistics for HCI” offered at the ACM CHI 2021 conference by Prof Alan Dix, with the generous support of SICSA.
The course was organized as part of the ACM CHI 2021 conference which is the biggest conference in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). ACM CHI is a venue where researchers and practitioners gather from around the world to discuss and share recent and exciting knowledge. Along with presenting research work, other knowledge-sharing opportunities are also organized which include workshops, demos, courses and much more. This conference was supposed to be held in Japan but due to the coronavirus, it was held online.
Out of the numerous knowledge sharing activities planned at ACM CHI 2021, one of them included a course on statistics. The course “Statistics for HCI” was delivered by Prof Alan Dix – an epitome in the field of HCI. Prof Alan Dix is the director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University. He is also one of the four co-authors of an HCI textbook. “Statistics for HCI” was a 3-hour online course that reflected on various, yet important concepts in statistics. 60+ attendees had registered for the course.
Statistics are hard but also an integral part of the research. This course touched upon the basics yet fundamental concepts in statistics. The course shed light on how to make better sense of data. It aimed at making the most of the empirical efforts. Concepts like randomness & distribution, power law, central limit theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, bayesian stats, and alike were discussed. This course was not only an opportunity to learn about statistics but also an opportunity to interact with Prof Alan Dix – a notorious name in the cosmos of HCI. The attendees of the course were also offered a 25% discount on the book “Statistics for HCI: Making Sense of Quantitative Data” by Alan Dix.
Without the generous support from SICSA, I would have missed this great opportunity to learn about statistics from one of the most outstanding personalities. I am thankful to SICSA for their support in attending the course. Learning about statistics would assist me to perform better analysis and understand the data in a clearer manner.