In 2017 the city of Szeged is hosting the ProCivicStat international conference. The programme is brought to life by the strategic cooperation of six universities as part of the European Union’s Erasmus + programme, this time hosted by the University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

The conference organised in the the Study and Information Centre (TIK) was ceremoniously opened by Prof. Dr. Krisztina Karsai, Vice-Rector for Education and Prof. Joachim Engel, professional leader of ProCivicStat and elected president of the IASE (International Association for Statictics Education). In their speeches both respected speakers emphasised the responsibility of teaching the ways of statistical data interpretation – a responsibility of both public and higher education.

The conference was opened by the plenary lecture of Jim Ridgway, professor emeritus at the University of Durham. The aim of the conference on the one hand was to introduce the recent developments to the ProCivilStat cooperation along with their effect and to create a forum for participants where they could share their experiences, thoughts, issues and practical methods concerning teaching statistics. The lectures were available to stream online as well.

The conference offered the following lecture topics and workshops:

• The usage of real data in a classroom situation
• IT and statistics: software and the usage of databases
• Visualisation: problems, trends and solutions
• Investigating social and economic phenomena within the classroom for statistic experts and non-professionals
• Developing critical thinking and reasoning, identifying the false uses of statistics
• Innovative educational and study methods