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(left to right) Jonathan Miller, Victoria Kusak, Jayne Hattaway and Heather Bennett clean Bonfire Memorial on Nov. 7.

Photos by Carlos Romero — THE BATTALION

Students, gallery staff help maintain Bonfire Memorial before remembrance By Megan Rodriguez @MeganLRodriguez Armed with scrub brushes, ladders and water hoses, a task force of student volunteers and University Art Galleries department staff members held the first Bonfire Memorial Conservation Day on Nov. 7. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 30 volunteers worked in shifts for the annual minor conservation maintenance. In addition to running

the two university galleries, the University Art Galleries department cleans more than 34 sculptures around campus annually. In the past, students from select classes were given extra credit to participate, but this was the first year that volunteering was open to the student body and public, making it the first official conservation day. Cleaning included gently scrubbing the memorial’s metal with non-abrasive soap and coating it with a sculpture wax to restore color, as well as to protect the metal from corrosion and UV rays. This is called minor conservation and is done as an alternative to expensive and invasive measures that would

be taken by a professional conservation team, according to Amanda Cagle, collections manager of J. Wayne Stark Galleries. “What we do is preventative maintenance to preserve the metal, take care of any minor corrosion that we can spot clean,” Cagle said. “There are a lot of preventative things we can do to keep everything in great condition.” The Art Galleries Department began advertising for the conservation day through social media and local media outlets on Nov. 2. Jonathan Miller, communication senior, saw the event on Facebook and invited members of his organization, Alpha Phi Omega, to volunteer.

“Bonfire Memorial holds a really special place in my heart,” Miller said. “Everytime I come out here it’s usually with other people or when I just need a reminder that life is precious. It’s beautiful that we get to come to this university that has such amazing respect for our traditions and people who have come before us, so when given the chance to preserve something like this I was ready to jump on it.” Conservation Day was an opportunity to serve others for Sarah Hall, Alpha Phi Omega member and environmental geoscience senior. CONSERVATION ON PG. 2

Texas A&M professor Valen Johnson’s research could redefine how statistical research is conducted.

Hanna Hausman — THE BATTALION

A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin addressed the ongoing conversation about his job security on the Internet and social media at his Tuesday press conference. Dalia Muayad — THE BATTALION

SETTING STATISTICS STRAIGHT Research done to change p-value could significantly alter mathematical studies By Alex Sein @AlexandrSein In a 2016 paper published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Valen Johnson, university distinguished professor and department head of statistics, suggested, along with graduate students Alex Asher and Tianying Wang, that statistical significance should be redefined, or at least refined. The most widely accepted measure for statistical significance is the p-value, according to Wang, which is a measure of how likely a more extreme result is to appear after a set of trials. “This number, in statistics, is like a threshold — the smaller the number is, the more strict your standard,” Wang said. “In many cases it’s very flexible. The researcher can choose whatever they want to use, but usually, people just use 0.05.” There are currently two interpretations of probability within statistics: Bayesian and frequentist probabilities. Johnson was studying Bayesian probability, which judges probability by comparing re-

sults to previous iterations within the same trial. “In studying Bayesian hypothesis testing, I came to the conclusion that p-values of 0.05 were as likely to be evidence for a null hypothesis as against it,” Johnson said. The null hypothesis, according to Asher and Wang, is the idea that the results of a study are due entirely to random chance, or that there is no correlation between observed results. In order to see if the p-value accurately represents how often results are significant, they chose a set of old trials that had recently been repeated. “We used a data set that had been previously gathered by a consortium of scientists called the Open Science Collaborative and they spent more than a year reproducing about a hundred experiments that were published in three top psychology journals,” Asher said. According to Asher, the Open Science Collaboration (OSC) experiments, conducted in 2015, were intended to be fact-checks of the original studies; the scientists worked closely with the authors of the original papers in order to see if the results of the original experiments were still valid. However, according to Johnson, there was a discrepancy in the OSC results and the original trials. STATISTICS ON PG. 4

Collected under pressure Sumlin answer tough questions regarding future at Texas A&M By Ryan MacDonald @Ryan_Macdonald2 Despite having to field some hard-hitting questions, Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin was his emotionally-steady self at his weekly press conference on Tuesday afternoon. Since Saturday’s loss to Auburn, there has been much speculation that the Sumlin era would be coming to a close in Aggieland after this season, if not sooner. However, when Sumlin was asked if he has discussed his future at A&M with athletic director Scott Woodward, he said he has not. “We don’t get together until later in the week, he’s always around,” Sumlin said. “Early in the week it wouldn’t be uncommon for us not to get together. He’s usually around practice so when the injury situation clears up that’s when we have a discussion. So, no we haven’t really talked.” Two decades ago, this speculation

would not have as been as widespread. However, the integration of social media has augmented the spread of opinions, thoughts and ideas. Outside noise can often times affect the players in the locker room. But Sumlin said he thinks it is important that his players do not get caught up in what outside people are staying, but recognized that it’s nearly impossible in contemporary society to not allow players to use social media. “You can ask players to stay away from social media, but that’s asking a lot. I don’t think it’s possible in this day and age,” Sumlin said. “I can’t control the outside message. What’s important is that the message in our meeting room becomes the message.” Regardless of the speculation surrounding his future on social media, Sumlin insisted that his mindset is unchanged, focusing on one game at a time. “Whatever happens on Saturday, you move on to the next week,” Sumlin said. “That’s how I approach it, and that’s how I’ll continue to approach it going forward. The big picture will SUMLIN ON PG.4

LAST CHANCE TONIGHT! 7:30 PM • RUDDER AUDITORIUM

STUDENT RUSH TICKETS

ONLY $20

MSC Box Office • 979-845-1234 “A HIGH-TECH MAGIC EXTRAVAGANZA”

*A limited number of student RUSH tickets are available for ONLY $20 to tonight’s performance in Rudder Auditorium. These tickets are available at the MSC Box Office. Please limit 2 tickets per student. Student ID is required. This offer not valid for tickets already purchased.