Belgium: Small but Significant

摘要

Belgium, a small federal country with 10 million inhabitants and three official languages—Dutch, French, and German—is located in the heart of Europe and boasts its capital, Brussels, as well as NATO headquarters. The country is known for chocolate, french fries, and Manneken Pis, but also has a long and diverse tradition in statistics. A little more than 10 universities are scattered throughout the country, most with substantial statistical research and consultancy groups. Academic statisticians and data analysts are found as subgroups in departments of mathematics, engineering, medicine, public health, biology, agriculture, sociology, psychology, and economy. Thus, formal departments of statistics are the exception, rather than the rule. In many universities, however, statisticians are organized into university-wide institutes, such as in the Dutch- and French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain, Limburg University, University of Ghent, and the French-speaking Free University of Brussels. Such institutes supplement often substantive area-driven primary organizational units.