"I’ve been exploding those for 40 years," she adds with a smile.
Among her main targets are suggestions that statistics are "dry" and uninteresting, or are inherently misleading and untrustworthy.
Statistics had played a vital role in the past, including in efforts to improve domestic water quality and protect against disease, as well as to improve social conditions, including housing.
It had also established itself as an attractive subject at schools, and pupils enjoyed studying data about things that interested them.
"The experience of doing your own investigation helps you to learn," she said.
Statistics "deals with variation and uncertainty", but many people are "not comfortable with variation and uncertainty".
Australian-born, Prof MacGillivray is an award-winning adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology, in Brisbane. She is the second woman and second Australian to serve as president of the institute, since it was established in 1885. She is in Dunedin to attend a University of Otago symposium today, in honour of internationally respected statistician Associate Prof John Harraway, of the University of Otago mathematics and statistics department.
Statistics was now "part of everybody’s lives" and was "increasingly important for every single discipline" at university.
"It’s extremely important for development worldwide."
Trained statisticians, including those with some IT background, found such skill "opens employment doors like nothing else", she said.
Prof MacGillivray was elected at the World Statistics Congress in Marrakech, Morocco, about three weeks ago.
The institute is the world’s most broadly comprehensive statistics organisation, and seven other international statistics bodies are members of it.
Prof MacGillivray is also a former president of the International Association for Statistical Education, and a former president of the Statistical Society of Australia.
