Greenfield Challenge

Updated January 2026.

In his 2009 Box Medal Acceptance Address, Tony Greenfield challenged the members of ENBIS with the following words:

My challenge to you is that you will tell some audience about work you have done, and completed successfully because you used a statistical method. But that audience must be of people who are not statisticians.

And you will have spoken to those people through publications that are for the wider public, through magazines or newspapers, or from a public platform. You might even write a short story or a play.

…

That is my challenge: Tell the world, outside your circle, of work you have done, and done successfully because you used statistics.

…

ENBIS decided to pick up the glove thrown by Tony: in 2010 the Greenfield Challenge was launched as an ongoing ENBIS activity and for the first time ever the prize was awarded at ENBIS-11 in Coimbra (Portugal). After 2025, ENBIS will not give a Greenfield Challenge Award.

2026 Greenfield Challenge Initiative Recognition

In 2025, we launched the Greenfield Challenge Initiative Recognition, which celebrates daring but small attempts at meeting Tony’s original challenge.

The recognition awarded to up to five selected submissions is a certificate and the opportunity to present in a plenary session at the annual ENBIS conference, in either a live five-minute presentation or a prerecorded three-minute video presentation. The committee for judging the Greenfield Challenge Initiative Recognition is chaired by the President elect and includes all three vice presidents. This committee may organize a webinar for the Greenfield Challenge Initiative Recognition.

How to participate in the Greenfield Challenge Initiative Recognition?

We would like to encourage you to report interactions with non-statisticians. For example, interactions can be face-to-face, in writing, in the form of an audio or video recording, or in social media and can be in any context, for example interactions with students, educators, managers and employees of organizations in private and public sectors.

By the deadline published in ENBIS News, ENBIS members can make a submission. Some examples: a talk about the Reproducibility Crisis given at a local residents’ club, a DOE project in a primary school, a sampling activity shared at a teachers’ college, statistical opportunities presented to government, an analysis of production efficiency in a manufacturing company, a market segmentation study for a business.

The procedure to submit is simple. All those who wish to enter need to provide the following by e-mail to the President-elect:

• A short (half a page) summary in English specifying date, venue, target population/target publication and topic.
• Presentation slides (if applicable; whatever the language they are in; we are confident that somebody in ENBIS will have some working knowledge of it).
• A web link / web links (if applicable).
• Other supporting material (e.g. newspaper clippings).

Submissions may be announced as a short news item on the ENBIS website and in ENBIS News.