ISI - International Statistical Institute
Newsletter Volume 26, No. 3 (78) 2002
Awards, Prizes and Competitions
Announcement of the Mahalanobis Prize
The Indian Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, representing the Indian Government, has taken the initiative to award biennially the P.C. Mahalanobis Prize in memory of this eminent Indian statistician. The Prize is to be awarded to a statistician who comes from a developing country and has worked there in recognition of his/her lifetime achievement in statistics and the promotion of best statistical practice. This initiative will serve the double purpose of keeping the memory of P.C. Mahalanobis alive and of recognising and stimulating progress in statistics in developing countries.
The Minister has asked the International Statistical Institute to propose a candidate for this Prize, and a Memorandum of Understanding has been drawn up accordingly. ISI has received a Fund of US$ 62,000 from the Indian Government of which the interest will be used to award the Prize, which will consist of an all expenses paid participation in an ISI Session plus a cash award. The first Prize will be awarded at the 54th ISI Session in Berlin.
The ISI Mahalanobis Committee has been revived to act as the jury for this prize and now consists of the following members:
- Chair: Jean-Louis Bodin, past ISI President, ADETEF, Paris, France;
- Member: Mr. K.K. Jaswal, Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Government of India, New Delhi, India;
- Member: Marcel van den Broecke, Director of the ISI, Voorburg, The Netherlands;
- Member countries:
a. Australia: Susan Wilson, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia;
b. ECLAC countries: Rolando Rebolledo, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile;
c. Republic of Korea: Moon Y. Huh, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea;
d. Canada: Mary Thompson, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada;
e. United Kingdom: Tony Williams, UK.The member countries and their representatives will be reviewed on a 2 year basis as is usual for ISI Committees.
The ISI has agreed to draw up a publicity plan, starting with this announcement. The Mahalanobis Committee invites the entire statistical community world-wide to propose candidates to the Committee, preferably with arguments supporting the proposed candidate. National Statistical Societies and National Statistical Offices will also be approached for this purpose. Proposals can be sent to the Chair, Jean-Louis Bodin (jean-louis.bodin@wanadoo.fr) or to Marcel Van den Broecke at the ISI Permanent Office (@cbs.nl).
Siu-Ming Tam reports the announcement of:
2003 Best Paper Prize on New Directions in Social Statistics - Call for Submission of Papers by Young Official StatisticiansIn an attempt to encourage more young official statisticians to take an active interests in the activities of the IAOS, the Executive Committee has recently resolved to set up a bi-annual prize for the best paper(s) on a selected field of official statistics written by young official statisticians.
Author(s) of the best papers will be given an economy return air fare, hotel accommodation and an allowance to attend the next upcoming ISI biennial conference, where their papers will be presented.
The topic chosen for competition will normally be one of the IAOS Invited Papers topics in the ISI conference. The papers will be judged by an international panel comprising a vice president of the IAOS, together with the IAOS session organiser and invited speakers of the chosen topic. The adjudication panel for the prize will make their recommendations of the best paper(s) based on:
- Scientific merit;
- Originality;
- Applicability of ideas in statistical offices; and
- Quality of the exposition.
The decision of the panel will be final.
For the 2003 prize, the topic chosen by the IAOS Executive Committee is New Directions in Social Statistics.
To be eligible, you must:
- be under the age of 40 on 1 January 2003;
- be employed by an official statistics agency; and
- be prepared to travel to Berlin in August 2003 to present the paper.
Submission of papers for the 2003 prize is now called. If you are interested, please send your paper, preferably in MSWord format, to Siu-Ming Tam at siu-ming.tam@abs.gov.au. The deadline for the submission is 31 January 2003. The successful winner(s) will be announced by end April 2003.
Call for Nominations – C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize for Outstanding Research in Statistics
The C.R. and Bhargavi Rao prize is established to honour and recognise outstanding and influential innovations in the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistical research, and pioneering contributions by a recognised leader in the field of statistics. The Rao Prize is awarded by the Department of Statistics at Penn State University to a nominee selected by the members of the Rao Prize Committee.
Nominations for the 2003 Rao Prize should be submitted by December 1, 2002 to:
Chair, Rao Prize Selection Committee
326 Thomas Building, Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802-2111, USA
The Rao Prize shall be awarded every two years (odd numbered years) to an individual working in the United States. The award recipient will receive a medal, a cash prize and an invitation to visit Penn State and give a talk.
Nominations should include a letter describing the nominee’s outstanding contributions to leadership and research in statistics, a current curriculum vitae, and two supporting letters.
2002 DeGroot Prize Winner Announced
The winner of the 2002 DeGroot Prize in recognition of a published book in statistical science is:
Robert G. Cowell, A. Philip Dawid, Steffen Lauritzen, and David J. Spiegelhalter (1999).
Probabilistic Networks and Expert Systems. Springer-Verlag, New York.The award, consisting of plaques and US$1,500, was presented to the authors on June 6th, 2002 at the final banquet of the Seventh Valencia International Meeting on Bayesian Statistics, held in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.
The DeGroot Prize, established in 2000, is awarded in recognition of a published book in statistical science. The Prize named for Morris (“Morrie") H. DeGroot, and recognises the impact and importance of his work in statistics and decision theory, especially in the form of monographs and textbooks, and his marked influence on the evolution of the discipline over several decades through his personal scholarship, educational, and professional leadership.
The Prize was established in 2000 by the DeGroot Prize Founders, and is administered on behalf of the statistical community by International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA). The Founders provided initial financial contributions to the Prize Foundation and established the Charter governing administration and award of the Prize. A charter for the prize is posted on the ISBA webpage.
For the inaugural award, books published between 1996 and 2000 were eligible for nomination. In all 15 books were nominated. These books were judged on (1) their overall quality and (2) the extent to which they represent important, timely, thorough, and notably original contributions to the statistics literature. The committee members also took cognisance of whether they thought that Morrie would have enjoyed reading the books.
Probabilistic Networks and Expert Systems possesses several special features that helped the Committee to distinguish it from the other excellent books that were nominated for the prize:
- The quality of the writing is impressive;
- It deals with problems on the cutting edge of the interface between statistics and computer science;
- It contains succinct but clear expository material on graphs and probability networks, worthy of a text book;
- It is replete with real examples and suggestions for further reading, along with an up-to-date bibliography.
While much of the material in the book has appeared in papers scattered about the literature, including in Valencia Proceedings volumes, the whole was far greater than the sum of these parts.
The selection committee believes that Morrie DeGroot would certainly have enjoyed reading the book, and perhaps would have used results in his own subsequent work.
I want to thank the other members of the Selection Committee who labored hard at the task of choosing the winner: Philip Brown, Kathryn Chaloner, Edward George, and Adrian Smith.
Stephen E. Fienberg,
Department of Statistics,
Carnegie Mellon University
Chair,
2002 DeGroot Prize Selection Committee
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