From face recognition to fingerprint scans, Sinjini Mitra explains how statistical ideas inform the design and implementation of biometric security systems.

About 28,000 items of space debris can be tracked orbiting the Earth. But estimates suggest there are many millions more pieces of debris, too small to see, that pose a danger to satellites and other spacecraft. Brian Tarran hears how statistical models inform our understanding of this growing problem.

Sheila Bird offers a personal account of the debate over rapid coronavirus screening in secondary schools, and the efforts to reinstate confirmatory PCR tests.

Differential privacy promises to strike a balance between the protection of privacy for individuals and the generation of insights from data. But how exactly does it work? Christoph F. Kurz works through a simple hypothetical example.

Joseph L. Gastwirth and Qing Shi use three decades of data from a triennial survey of consumer finances to calculate the “number of families needed” to equal the wealth of the Forbes 400 rich list.

Significance magazine has opened its archives for access by the public. The magazine’s volumes 1-16 and volume 17 issues 1-2 from 2020 are available to read, free of charge. Further, all magazine content will be made freely available one year after its initial publication. RSS, ASA, and SSA members and subscribers will continue to enjoy exclusive access to the latest magazine content.

Significance is a bi-monthly magazine for anyone interested in statistics and the analysis and interpretation of data. Its aim is to communicate and demonstrate in an entertaining, thought provoking and non-technical way the practical use of statistics in all walks of life, and to show informatively and authoritatively how statistics benefit society. It is published on behalf of the Royal Statistical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Statistical Society of Australia.