Buday conference and awards ceremony
In the framework of the cooperation between the Csányi Foundation, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the Hungarian Statistical Society and the Hungarian Association for the Study of Hungarian History, the conference in memory of László Buday, a statistician born in Pécs, was organised again this year.
The day started with a short tour of the KSH headquarters, during which we were given an insight into the prestige of the “palace” built at the time of the Kiegying (1867) (we were able to get our hands on the oldest statistical sources among the one million fifty thousand items in the library and gain an insight into the cold-shaking history of the eclectic-style office).
The Csányi Foundation’s Pécs 1 and Pécs 3 groups produced four high-quality presentations, the credibility of which is backed up by lengthy public research and a wealth of literature. The work was preceded by several weeks of research. The first was a presentation by the sixth-graders on school gun control and the shops on Kiráy Street in Pécs. The Csányi children involved in the project researched and analysed the habits of primary school pupils in grades 1-7 in order to make informed conclusions based on statistics. The project, which at first sight may seem impossible to carry out (as it is difficult to find a topical issue that has not yet been addressed and that holds any outstanding data/surprises), was an unqualified success, with the young people making a number of interesting discoveries.
The next three presentations were given by the current eighth-year scholarship holders on the following topical subjects: comparing data from artificial intelligence, surviving images of the First World War from the Fortepan database. Students created summary graphs from the image database based on “tags”, i.e. call words, illustrated with contemporary images. In the context of artificial intelligence, students compared three different AIs (Gemini, Chatgpt, Snapchat AI). They asked questions to all three AIs and explored which one gave the most authentic answers. The research proved to be interesting as the three AIs all gave different answers to the questions. In conclusion, the AI from the Open AI company Chatgpt proved to be the most credible source. Of particular interest is that the children were able to draw parallels between the projects (using one to help the other), which is a huge step forward that they can use in their future studies and work. The third presentation was about the live births and deaths around the First World War. The consequences of different historical events were explored and we were transported to a world a hundred years earlier, where everyone reassessed how wonderful it is that we can afford to live in peace. The students’ project was facilitated by small mentors.
The presentations of the groups from Pécs were followed by presidential addresses, first opened by Dénes Ádám, Deputy President of the HCSO, and then by Erika Csányi, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Csányi Foundation, who stressed the importance of statistics as it embraces our whole life. She concluded with a pithy quote. Dr. Gabriella Vukovich, President of the MST (former President of the KSH), went on to praise the students and emphasize the importance of involving new generations, and then Béla Debreczeni-Droppán of the HSZ stressed that every generation needs to follow role models, which is especially important in a fast-paced world.
After the welcome speeches, we heard three professional presentations on the following topics:
From Data Collection to Data Communication – A Service Provider Approach at the HCSO (Géza Novák, Head of Department, HCSO)
G. Géza, Géza Géza, Head of the Data Services Department, KSH, Géza Géza, Director of the Data Services Division, Hungary. Insight into the circumstances of the first statistical law (1874:XXV.) (Balázs Horváth, Secretary General, MST)
Respondents’ willingness to respond and alternative data sources in the 21st century (Gergely Bagó, expert, Methodology Department, KSH)
The presentations were followed by lunch and then the much anticipated awards ceremony, where the winners of the short story writing competition, announced earlier in the call for entries, received their prizes:
1st place Maja Sas (Jászberény Group 4)
2nd place Melinda Jakab
3rd place Domján Letícia (Jászberény, Group 4)
In addition to the prize winners, Ramóna Simon, Lili Burkus and Regina Kállai (Jászberény Group 4) received a Buday commemorative medal, a certificate and a KSH gift pack.
Special prize winner of the Buday Statistics Writing Competition:
– Zsombor Barkóczy, Group P2, who submitted a paper entitled “Use of administrative and private data in Hungarian statistics: a brief overview of the use of statistical data in Hungary.”
In closing the programme, mentor András Gál thanked all students, partners and colleagues for their help in making the Memorial Conference a success. Finally, we closed the day with a photo session, which was memorable for everyone. Thank you to the Csányi Foundation for giving us the opportunity to witness again this year’s meaningful and exciting presentations.
András Dömölki
Member of group P2
That’s how we saw it:
“Today we visited the headquarters of the Central Statistical Office in Budapest. We arrived, were shown around the building and then the conference started. After the opening, we gave our own presentations on WW1, which we had been preparing for several weeks in several groups. These included comparisons of artificial intelligence data on war statistics, analysis and visualisation of Fortepan’s image database, and analysis of graphs of live births and deaths in the war years based on KSH data. After the toasts and presentations, we had lunch, then the awards ceremony and the closing speech. We all gained a lot of new knowledge in the world of statistics.”
Pécs Group 3
“On 25.10.2024, we went with our peers to the Buday Memorial Conference in Budapest, to the Central Statistical Office, where we were first shown around the palace. At the conference, the group and I presented our two research papers. One of them was about school test cheating habits, we asked our contemporaries with a questionnaire – whether they were used school test cheating, where they “hid” their leaflets, in which classroom they most often do school test cheating. Surprising results were found, for example, that a higher proportion of students use school test cheating, usually because they have not studied enough. The second topic was about Király Street, the pedestrian street in Pécs, where we listed the shops and investigated which shops are in the majority and why. Which ones are the ones that satisfy everyday needs or the ones that are the places of social life and entertainment. It was a busy day and we learned a lot!”
Pécs Group 1