ISI - International Statistical Institute Newsletter Volume 26, No. 1 (76) 2002
The ISI Standing Committee on Professional Ethics announces a ISI Cutting Edge Conference to be held in the German capital from July 1 to 3, 2002, concerning
Emerging Issues on Professional Ethics in Statistics.
This meeting will address the perspective of users as well as producers of statistics in all areas:
. The aim of this convention will be to identify gaps and deficiencies in the current ISI Declaration on Professional Ethics (1985 - see http://isi.cbs.nl/ethics.htm) from the perspective of statisticians active in different areas, and to explore ways of enhancing the guidance given to statisticians on ethical issues.
The Declaration adopted by the ISI in 1985 is an excellent document that has served to educate and inform many statisticians faced with ethical dilemmas. However, the fifteen years since its adoption have seen many dramatic changes to the subject of statistics and its application, so that a review of the content of the declaration as well as an examination of its use is certainly over-due. Some critics of the declaration also argue, that it is too focussed on socio-economic empirical research. In Berlin we will check if there are gaps and we will identify deficiencies in the declaration. We want to look again at the declaration in order to make it more relevant to the needs of today's statistical researchers, technicians, bankers, teachers and others. Ethical considerations in statistical education shall be examined as well.
The participants will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ISI declaration perhaps in relation to other codes of ethics, and suggest ways in which the ISI declaration might be improved (or other developments they would like to advocate).
Five topical meetings will be organised with selected authors and discussants to deal with the five areas quoted at the beginning of this announcement. The first session of the conference will be devoted to two keynote addresses on overview of professional ethics in scientific activities, and on an historical perspectives of the ISI Declaration. In addition, contributions will be welcomed.
The conference is organised by the chairman of the ISI Standing Committee on Professional Ethics and head of Berlin Statistics:
Statistisches Landesamt Berlin
Prof. Dr. Eckart Elsner
Alt-Friedrichsfelde 60
10306 Berlin
Tel.: + 49 - 30 - 9021 3488
Fax: + 49 - 30 - 9021 3488
E-mail: e.elsner@statistik-berlin.deThe conference venue is the Berlin building of
"Deutscher Staedtetag"
Straße des 17 Juni 112
10623 Berlin
Members of the ISI and sections interested to participate in this meeting are requested to send a message to Prof. Dr. Elsner before April 1, 2002, indicating whether they will submit a contribution and, if yes, in what area (all papers and relevant material should be sent before May 15, 2002, in order to be presented to all participants in advance on the conference website for stimulating a higher level of discussion).
For all taking part, this Berlin meeting promises to be a lively and interesting three days. Sorry to say, that neither the ISI, nor Statistisches Landesamt Berlin, nor Deutscher Staedtetag are able to provide funding for the participants of the meeting. However, a very limited number of participants from developing countries may request help from the ISI Development Fund through the usual channels.
Fourth International Conference on Statistical Data Analysis Based on the L1-Norm and Related Methods (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, August 4 - 9, 2002)
The fourth international conference on the L1-Norm and related methods will be held in Neuchâtel Switzerland from August 4-9, 2002. It will be co-organised by UNI Neuchatel, University of Illinois at Chicago and the Rutgers Department of Statistics, New Jersey.
L1-Norm and objectives of the conference: Statistical data analysis using the L1-norm criterion has been successfully applied for robust estimation, model fitting (constrained and unconstrained), analysis of variance, hypotheses testing, cluster analysis and nonparametric method. It has been studied in several contexts under a variety of names: minimum or least sums of absolute errors; least absolute deviations, or errors, or residuals; and L1-norm method (from minimising the L1-norm of the vector of deviations). Historically, the L1-norm method was suggested and studied in the early work of Boscovich (1757) and Laplace (1793) before the least squares work of Gauss-Legendre (1805). The conference has been held in 1987, 1992, and 1997. The objective of the 2002 conference just like the previous ones is to bring new developments together in order to simplify and enrich the theory, and discuss possibilities for new applications.
Programme: The conference takes place over five days and will include invited talks, contributed papers and a tutorial. The tutorial will be give by Roger Koenker of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), Gib Bassett of University of Chicago and Steve Portnoy of University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign on Quantile Regression and its Applications. A complete listing of each session and their respective organisers can be obtained from (http://www.unine.ch/statistics/conference/l1_norm4.htm).
Contributed papers: Those wishing to present papers at the conference are asked to submit to the conference organiser an abstract in English (limited to one typed page) no later than March 30, 2002. Notification of the acceptance of the abstracts will be given by April 20, 2002. Deadline for submission of the final version of contributed papers is 20 May 2002. The final programme will be circulated in May 2002. In addition to publication of the conference proceedings, the journal Student (ISSN 1420-1011) will publish a Special Issue of the accepted contributed papers for the conference. Abstracts should be submitted electronically.
The conference fee is $250, which includes the attendance of the scientific sessions, tutorial and coffee breaks as well as copies of the proceedings. Meals and accommodation are not included.
For further information, please contact:
Prof. Yadolah Dodge, Conference Organizer
Groupe de Statistique,
Espace de l'Europe 4,
P.O. Box 805,
CH 2002 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Phone: +41-32- 718 1380,
Fax : +41-32-718 1381
E-mail: yadolah.dodge@unine.ch
Website: http://www.unine.ch/statistics/conference/l1_norm4.htm
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