Unicamp will host, starting this Thursday (16), the VI School of Sampling and Research Methods (Esamp), an event that aims to motivate students, teachers, researchers and interested professionals to delve deeper into this, research into this or act in this field of statistics. The program, spread over three days, includes conferences, thematic sessions, oral communications, poster sessions and mini-courses that focus on presenting and discussing the latest in development and sample planning, research methods in the area and analysis of sample survey data.
During the opening of the event, professor Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, rector of Unicamp, highlighted the importance of the role of public universities in technological development and in the study of their own impact on society. “Without data, without information, we won’t be able to do this. We recently released the first edition of a survey, the result of an agreement with IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] and the Public Ministry of Labor, on application workers. This is one of the most important ways for us to collaborate with the development of our society, guaranteeing rights and making technology something capable of improving people's lives as a whole”, he highlighted.
The opening ceremony was also attended by Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva, vice-president of Science – Society for the Development of Scientific Research and general coordinator of this edition of Esamp, professor Nancy Garcia, local coordinator of the event, and the Professor Ricardo Martins, director of the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing (Imecc). Responsible for the idea of bringing Esamp to Unicamp, Garcia, who is a professor at Imecc, highlighted the quality of the sampling research carried out in Brazil. “Notably, this is research of international quality, which is recognized everywhere in the world,” she stated. According to Martins, to make up for the shortage in the area, post-doctoral scholarships are already included in the institute's budget, equivalent in value to the scholarships provided by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp). “[This area of mathematics] is a fundamental science not only for carrying out electoral research, but for the scientific development of all areas”, he highlighted.
Held by the University and Imecc, the event takes place on Thursday (16) and Friday (17), at the Unicamp Convention Center, and on Saturday (18), in the institute building. Esamp has the support of the Brazilian Statistics Association (ABE), Fapesp, Science, the Regional Center for Studies for the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), the Ponto BR Information and Coordination Center (NIC .br) and the National School of Statistical Sciences (Ence).
The first edition of Esamp was held in 2007, at IBGE, in Rio de Janeiro. The event returned in 2009, for a second edition, which took place in Natal, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), and in 2011 at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), in the Minas Gerais city of the same name. The University of Brasília (UNB) hosted the fourth Esamp, in 2013. And the fifth took place in 2017, in Cuiabá, at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT).
