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Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability
At the ISI Sydney Session, this (northern hemisphere) spring I took over the Presidency from Don Dawson. On behalf of the Society, I wish to thank Don for all his work, and the careful and impressive way he has represented us. Actually, the whole leadership of the BS is now renewed: Arnoldo Frigessi has taken over from Enno Mammen as Scientific Secretary, Ursula Gather from Mathisca de Gunst as Treasurer (unfortunately this position involves more of toil than treasures), and of course there is a new President-Elect, Jean Jacod. Furthermore, Rodney Wolff has left the editorship of the Bernoulli News after three years. We thank him and the old Executive for a great job. After the little ceremony, when Don passed over to me, the interesting book on the Bernoulli family that wanders from President to President, I strolled home to my little B&B uphill Sydney in the warm April night. Suddenly, my cell phone rang. It was a Swedish radio station that wanted an authoritative comment on whether the existence of an almighty God was compatible with the prevalence of randomness. I was in a good mood and embarked on a lengthy answer, the contents of which I cannot recall much of. I walked on, under a dark and starry southern sky, realised that in Europe it was noon time, and thought the unexpected question was quite befitting. Probability and Statistics are key sciences for our understanding of world and life, and far from the technical, almost content-free symbol manipulations they are sometimes viewed as.
This, on the other hand, must not mean that they can refrain from technicality
and the best of mathematical ideas. The gulf between theory and application must
always be bridged, over and over again. The purpose of theory is not explaining
itself, but to help us in understanding realities. On the other hand, this
understanding will never occur without better and better theories. Peter Jagers P.S. A word of thanks for the excellent European Meeting of Statistics in Oslo, where indeed theory and practice walked hand in hand. Meetings in 2005 (new announcements only):XIV Latin American School of Mathematics The XIV Latin American School of Mathematics, XIV ELAM, will take place in Solis, Uruguay, 1 - 9 December 2005 and will be dedicated to the subject "Dynamical Systems, Probability and Mathematical Statistics and their Interactions". The School is organized by UMALCA, the Mathematical Union of Latin America and the Caribbean, and includes the celebration of the 10th anniversary of UMALCA. There will be 6 short courses and 10 invited plenary conferences. There is a web page http://imerl.fing.edu/elam/. Mario Wschebor 7th German Open Conference on Probability and Statistics
Registration is now open for the 7th German Open Conference on
Probability and Statistics (Frankfurter Stochastik-Tage), which
will take place from March 14 to 17, 2006, in the historic buildings of the
"Campus Westend" of Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. The "Stochastik-Tage"
is organized by the Stochastics Group of the German Mathematical Society. Having
developed in their importance far beyond a national meeting, the "Stochastik-
Tage" is now co-sponsored by the Bernoulli Society and the IMS. There will be an
attractive program of invited and plenary lectures, and 14 sections will provide
a forum for presentation and discussion of results. For more information, see
Anton Wakolbinger Conference on Stochastics in Science
Guanajuato, Mexico. March 20-24, 2006. In
honor of Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen.
* Inaugural Talk
* Special Invited Talk
Invited Session 1: Infinite Divisibility and Lévy Processes
Invited Session 2: Finance
Invited Session 3: Quantum Statistics
Invited Session 4: Stochastics in the Physical Sciences
Invited Session 5: Bioinformatics
Invited Session 6: Likelihood Theory
Invited Session 7: Infinite Divisibility in Quantum Stochastics
Invited Session 8: Applications of Lévy Theory
Invited Session 9: Turbulence and Tempo-Spatial Modelling
Invited Session 10: Applications of Lévy Processes The Abel Prize is an international prize for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics, including mathematical aspects of computer science, mathematical physics, probability, numerical analysis and scientific computing, statistics, and also applications of mathematics in the sciences. The prize is meant to recognize contributions of extraordinary depth and influence to the mathematical sciences. Such work may have resolved fundamental problems, created powerful new techniques, introduced unifying principles or opened up major new fields of research. The intent is to award prizes over the course of time in a broad range of fields within the mathematical sciences.
Call for nominations: The nomination letter should be postmarked no later than November 15th, 2005. The name of the Abel Laureate will be announced in late March or early April 2006. Arnoldo Frigessi Report: 25th European Meeting of StatisticiansThe 25th European Meeting of Statisticians took place at the University of Oslo, 24 - 28 July 2005, organised by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Computing Centre. This 25th EMS was the largest EMS Conference ever. The Scientific Programme was exceptionally broad and exciting, covering all areas of methodological, applied and computational statistics and probability theory, bridging between theory and practice. There were about 90 invited lectures, 400 contributed papers and in total 650 participants from more than 50 countries. Usually, the participants at the EMS are around 350! Among the plenary invited speakers, Professor David Donoho from Stanford University gave two forum lectures with the title "Sparsity", which describes situations where parameter space is highly incomplete and scattered. Donoho, who is among the most cited mathematicians in the world, has developed an approach that exploits the structure of incompleteness leading to discoveries in fields as diverse as image processing, cosmology and genomics. Professor Keith Worsley, McGill University, focused on the study of dependency between images, that is, regions of high correlation. He studies functional magnetic resonance images of brain activity and brain damage due to trauma. The same methods are used in astrophysics to look for large-scale structure in the universe, and anomalies in the cosmic microwave background from the big bang. Professor Neil Shephard from Oxford University has developed statistical methods for management of high frequency financial data. These large data-bases store all financial activities in all details for large markets. Shephard lectured on his new paradigm which draws together econometrics with financial economics theory. This work is likely to have deep impacts on the econometrics of asset allocation, pricing and risk management. The week preceding the 25th EMS, 17 - 23 July 2005, the European Young Statisticians Training Camp of the EMS took place. This training event is part of a larger series of summer schools in mathematics, which has been funded by the EU – Marie Curie series of events. The umbrella organisation is the European Mathematical Society. The camp for young statisticians was a new training idea, its goal being to prepare young researchers by mini-courses to the major conference that immediately followed. The camp promoted direct contacts between young scientists and invited senior statisticians, building a network of young statisticians, hopefully useful in the building of their research career. There were 100 participants to the camp, Ph.D. students and young post-docs from 25 countries, most of them funded by the EU. The training programme of the camp was a mixture of lectures and other group activities, with the goal of preparing the statistical scientists of the next generation. The students heard about the foundation and philosophy of modern statistics, about the balance between models and simplicity, about modern applications of probability theory, statistical genomics, computational statistics, survival analysis in epidemiology, and also about Olympic unfairness and a quarrel between Nobel Literature Prize winners and Science between freedom and responsibility. They interviewed six established statisticians and listened to a lecture on Norwegian modern history. Contributed by Arnoldo Frigessi International Association for Official Statistics
Paul J. Crowley Reports:IAOS WebsiteReaders are encouraged to visit the IAOS website at
www.stats.govt.nz/iaos for the latest information on IAOS activities. The website is regularly
updated. Comments or suggestions for improving the website can be sent to
iaos@stats.govt.nz.
The Programme Committee expects to finalise the programme structure by November
2005 and will then be seeking expressions of interest for papers for the various
topic
sessions. The Conference outline will be available initially on the IAOS website
( www.stats.govt.nz/iaos ) from late November 2005. The ISI Briefing Seminar for Chief Statisticians is being planned for next year in Canada. The Briefing Seminar is of interest to senior representatives of national and international statistical organisations and will include presentations, panel and group discussions. It will either precede or follow the IAOS 2006 Conference, which will be held from 6-8 September at the Château Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, Canada. The exact dates and location of the Briefing Seminar are currently not known, however they will be published in the February 2006 issue of the ISI Newsletter. ISI 2007 IAOS Programme
The following is a list of the IAOS Programme Sessions
and Organisers for the ISI 2007:
 IAOS
Developments
The IAOS Executive is currently dealing with a number of strategic issues: Future Programmes The Scientific Programme for the IAOS sessions at the 2007 ISI Session is well in hand under the leadership of Richard Barnabé. The Executive has commenced the planning and organisation of the Programme for the 2006 IAOS Conference in Ottawa in September 2006. Future activity will deal with the organisation of the subsequent 2008 IAOS Conference (venue still to be decided) and the 2009 ISI Session in South Africa. Members who may have suggestions about the 2008 and 2009 Conferences are invited to send their comments to the President, Brian Pink. Membership Revitalisation A Committee is to be established to look into the issue of revitalising the membership of the IAOS and will deal with issues such as the size of the IAOS, the age profile and geographical distribtution of its membership. Any member who has suggestions on how this group should progress or who would like to participate should make contact with Ms. Zigure, Vice-President. Review of IAOS Statutes It was agreed that it was an appropriate time to undertake this work and Mr. Ljones, President-Elect, will take the lead on this stream. ISI Strategic Directions It remains unclear as to how the strategic planning work currently being undertaken by the ISI is going to impact, if at all, on the operations of the IAOS and for this reason it was agreed that the President and President-Elect take the running on this stream. It was recognised that there would be some strong links with the group working on the membership revitalisation stream. Finance, Publicity and Marketing
A Committee is to be established to examine the
issues of Finance and the role of Publicity and Marketing of the IAOS. Any
member who wishes to participate in this Committee should contact Mr. Crowley,
Vice-President.
2006 IAOS Conference, September 2006, Ottawa, Canada Acknowledgement On the 11th of August, Frederick Ho Wing Huen retired as Head of the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong. Over the years, Fred has been a great supporter of the IAOS and SCORUS and will be greatly missed. We acknowledge his valuable contribution. IAOS Editorial Address:
Vice-President: Paul J. Crowley, Business Statistics
Integration & International Relations, Central Statistics Office, Ireland Tel:
+353-21-4535501 - Fax: +353-21-4535433 IAOS Executive:
President: Mr. Brian Pink, Government Statistician, Statistics
New Zealand Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statisticswww.scorusnet.com
The Conference provided cities with an overview of innovative instruments, practically oriented research and case studies that could contribute to an economically and socially stronger Europe. Particular attention was paid to the Urban Audit, which has collected fundamental statistics on 258 European towns and cities. Standardised Interfaces for Geographical Analysis (pre-conference SCORUS workshop) * Rainier Humbel, Swiss National Statistical Office * Rutta Koskinen, Statistics Finland * Mathieu Vliegen, Statistics Netherlands * Andreas Gleich, Bureau for Statistics and Urban Research, Nuernberg Policy Analysis of the Urban Audit I * Berthold Feldmann and Teodora Brandmueller: Urban Audit – state of the art and possible analysis of data * Marco Bontje – A comparative research between inventive cities with use of Urban Audit data * Elsa Fontainha – Dynamics and patterns in 20 cities in 10 European countries Best Practices: Economic Participation * Scott Burnham – Creative cities * Vladimira Silhánková – Military area revival in the Czech Republic and municipal dwelling policy in towns * Daniel Roos – Campus New West * Integration: the Lisbon Strategy and Urban Reality * Simone Crok – Monitoring diversity and integration in Amsterdam * Maria-Jose Peiro – European Civic Citizenship and Inclusion Index * Henk van Waversen – The Lisbon Strategy and an Amsterdam neighbourhood’s reality Policy Analysis of the Urban Audit II * Lewis Dijkstra and Mikael Kekkonnen – Analysis of Urban Audit Data: some results * Anca Carrington – Comparative Study of European Cities * Mathieu Vliegen – The main findings on census related topics for the 10 Dutch Urban Audit cities * Leila Lankinen – Results of Urban Audit for Finland Knowledge Economy and Creativity I * Jan van der Borg and Antonio Paolo Russo – The Impact of Culture on the Economic Development of European Cities * Harry Schulman – The knowledge city – a comparative research about the meaning of the ICT sector * Dave Carter – The creative city Labour Migration and Economic Participation * Han Entziner – Future Labour and Migration * Albert van der Horst – Destination Europe, Immigration and integration in the European Union * Franz-Joseph Kemper – Recent and Future Trends of Labour Migration to Germany Different Definitions of Ethnicity and its Political Impact * Harald Lederer – Ethnicity in German Migration and Integration Statistics * Dev Virdee – The situation in Great Britain * Maarten Alders – Classification of the population with a foreign background in The Netherlands Implementation of Crime Reduction Programs at the Local Level: Experiences and Lessons Learned * Marnix Eysink Smeets – Introduction on research models * Jan Andersson – Successes and pitfalls in implementing the National Crime Prevention Programme * Nick Tilley – Crime reduction – Local implementation of National Programmes Young Migrants and Children of Migrants in the Urban Society * Maurice Crul – Education and Labour Participation of Second Generation Migrants in European Cities * Alexander Thamm and Michelle Feye – Experiences from the ‘Mitwirkung’ Programme for Youth Participation in Five German Cities Science and Practice: Bridging the Gap * Örs Szokolay – Policy driven research in Hungary * Eric Ponthieu – Urban Research in FP7 * Claude Jacquier – Putting Towns and Cities on the European Union Map – A Challenge for Urban Researchers Knowledge Economy and Creativity II * Sako Musterd – Accommodating Creative knowledge: the need for inter-urban comparison * Anne von Streit – Munich as Knowledge City – Key factors and political strategies Best Practices: Youth in the City * Raja Miah * Anjo Clement – Vocational Education and Enterprise * Bertil Nilsson – From social exclusion to social inclusion We look forward to Conference Proceedings from this informative Conference. See http://www.hetkenniscentrum.nl/conference/ for additional information. International Association of Survey Statisticians
Message from the IASS PresidentSince the Sydney Session and the detailed reports of the last Newsletter, two more meetings co-sponsored by the Association have successfully taken place. These were the Colloque Francophone sur les Sondages, held in Québec City in May, and the Meeting on Small Area and Small Domain Estimation in Jyväskylä in August. A report from the Jyväskylä Meeting appears below. I had the good fortune to personally attend the Meeting in Québec City and was proud to see IASS sponsoring a meeting conducted in French. The level of support and enthusiasm of our francophone colleagues was impressive. We are grateful to the Organizers of both these Meetings for their valuable contributions to our profession. The IASS is co-sponsoring several more meetings over the coming period and details are provided below. Preparations towards the next ISI Session in Lisboa in August 2007 continue on two main fronts. The development of the IASS component of the Scientific Program is progressing under the leadership of David Steele, while both the content and financing of the Short Courses that IASS will offer are under active consideration by our Scientific Secretary. On a different note, many IASS members will have been saddened to hear of the death of Dr. M.P. Singh in August. A full obituary outlining MP’s career appears elsewhere in this ISI Newsletter, but for IASS members he played a particular role. In addition to his many contributions to survey statistics, he was the Editor of Survey Methodology since its inception almost 30 years ago. Survey Methodology has been one of the key journals offered through IASS for many years and an important contribution to our profession. Many of us will miss MP personally, but all of us will miss his leadership of the journal he nurtured for so long. While on the subject of journals available to IASS members, we must congratulate the Journal of Official Statistics on its recent 20th anniversary. A report on the celebrations of this occasion is included below. Finally, we have also included for members’ information a report on a recent first meeting of the European Association for Survey Research. This organization clearly has overlapping interests with the IASS and the two organizations are seeking means of cooperation. Gordon Brackstone IASS President Message from the Scientific SecretaryThe preparations for the Short Courses in Lisbon 2007 have started. In the coming months, we hope to develop a course package that will cover topics that are important to our members. We will also approach a number of organizations to seek sponsorship. In order to be able to fulfil one of our main goals, to enable students from developing countries to attend the Courses, we need sponsors. If you have any suggestions about courses or potential sponsors, please do not hesitate to contact me. The IASS is sponsoring a number of conferences. The next one is the Second International Conference on Telephone Survey Methodology that will be held in Miami, Florida, in January. You can now find the Program on the web (see address below). There will also be a monograph published after the Conference. The monograph will present the state of the art research in telephone survey methodology. Another conference that the IASS is supporting is the Q2006 Conference in Cardiff, UK, in April. This is the third conference in a series that covers important methodological and quality topics of relevance to the European Statistical System. You can find the Program and read more about the Conference on the web (see address below).
|
 |
Editorial Address |
Paula Brito, Ph.D.,
IASC Scientific Secretary, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-464 Porto, Portugal Tel: (+351) 225571233; Fax: (+351) 225505050 E-mail: mpbrito@fep.up.pt |
|
| President |
Gilbert Saporta, Conservatoire National des Arts et
Métiers, Chaire de Statistique Appliquée, 292 rue Saint Martin, 75141 Paris cedex 03, France Tel: +33-1 40 27 22 68; Fax: +33-1 40 27 27 46 E-mail: saporta@cnam.fr |
||
| Website |
IASC website:
http://www.iasc-isi.org ; CSDA SSN website: www.csdassn.org |
I. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis: Impact Factor
Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (CSDA), the official journal of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC), is an international journal dedicated to the dissemination of methodological research and applications in the areas of computational statistics and data analysis. We are pleased to report that the impact factor for 2004 of CSDA is 1.022, which represents more than 40% increase. The graph below shows the increase of CSDA impact factor in the recent years.
Stan Azen, Editor-in-Chief of CSDA
II. 8th ERS-IASC Summer School
Report The 8th ERS-IASC International Summer School on Statistical Models in Financial Series took place in Barcelona (Spain) from July 17th to 23rd, 2005. It was hosted by the Department of Statistics and Operations Research of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) and organised jointly with the Department of Business Economics of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain).
The aim of the School was to provide an overview of the recent development in the methodological, computational and applications aspects of the Statistical Models applied to Financial Time Series. The lectures were taught by Agustín Maravall (Banco de España), Daniel Peña (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid), Esther Ruiz (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid), Ruey Tsay (University of Chicago) and Cesar Villazón (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). The last day was dedicated to the debate of cases from real situations in the financial markets with the participation of professionals from this sector. The School was attended by 23 students, most of then young researchers (Ph.D. students and recently appointed teachers). The students came mostly from Spain (64%, the majority of them from the rest of Spain) but also from Croatia, The Netherlands, Honduras, Iran, Ireland, and Serbia and Montenegro. Some registration and accommodation grants were given to students coming from "in transition countries", which were supported by the ERS-IASC and the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM), respectively. The Summer School was a success as it is deduced from the results of the evaluation of the questionnaire, where the students very highly scored the organization of the course, the teaching, content and materials. More information can be found on the website http://www-eio.upc.es/smfs2005.
Pilar Muñoz, Chairperson of the Summer School
III. The 3rd World Conference on Computational Statistics and Data Analysis
Organised by the European co-editor of CSDA, Erricos Kontoghiorghes, the 3rd
World Conference on Computational Statistics and Data Analysis will take place
in Cyprus next 28 - 31 October. Plenary talks will be given by Prof. Rand Wilcox
– “Comparing Groups and Studying Associations”, Prof. Manfred Gilli –
“Optimization Heuristics in Economics and Statistics”, Prof. Gilbert Saporta –
“Some Statistical Aspects of Credit Scoring” and Prof. Joyce C. Niland –
“Biomedical Informatics: The Key to Translational Research”. The tracks cover
the following subjects: Data assimilation and its application; QR factorizations
and other rank-revealing factorizations; Functional Genomics: Computational and
Statistical Aspects; Robust and Nonparametric Methods; Model Selection,
Computational Methods, and Optimization Heuristics; Applications in
Macro-Economics, Finance and Marketing; Computer-intensive methods for dependent
data; Statistical Learning Methods involving Dimensionality Reduction; Clinical
Trials; Statistics for Functional data; Machine Learning and Scientific
Computing; Robust data mining; Latent Variable and Structural Equation Models;
Statistical Signal Extraction and Filtering; Advances in Mixture Models; Mixed
models for Complex and Large Problems; Nonlinear time series modelling;
Financial econometrics; Flexible function estimation in high dimensional
problems; New developments in software for statistical computing; Models and
methods for Customer Relationship Management; Recursive Partitioning and related
methods; Partial Least Squares: A Framework for Data Analysis and Statistical
Modeling; Fuzzy Statistical Analysis; Computational Econometrics; Statistical
Algorithms and Software; Matrix Computations and Statistics; Analysis of
Symbolic and Structured Data. A tutorial will take place on ”Data Analysis
Techniques for Evaluating Trading Strategies”. The full Scientific Programme may
now be found on the Conference web page,
http://www.csdassn.org/europe/CSDA2005/. Approximately 500 participants are
expected at the Conference.
IV. The 5th IASC Asian Conference on Statistical Computing
The Asian Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) is going to hold its 5th Asian Conference on Statistical Computing in Hong Kong, 2005 (IascAsian05), on 15 - 17 December 2005. The theme of this year’s Conference is Statistical Intelligence and Computational Technology. Two Workshops are organised on December 15th: (1) GAP: Generalized Association Plots for Dimension Free Data Visualization, by Dr. Chun-Houh CHEN, and Dr. Han- Ming WU, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and (2) VGAM: Vector Generalized Linear and Additive Models, by Dr. Thomas YEE, University of Auckland. The deadline for submission of abstracts is October 1st, and for submission of a Proceedings Paper, October 15th. Further information may be found on the Conference website http://www.hku.hk/statistics/IascAsian05/.
The 17th Conference of IASC-ERS, Compstat 2006, will be held in Rome, from August 28th to September 1st 2006, and it is organised by the Dipartimento de Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate of La Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Roma.
The provisional Programme is comprised of fourteen invited sessions, two keynote lectures and one joint tutorial. Topics related to Biostatistics, Business Intelligence, Categorical Data Analysis, Classification and Discrimination, Clustering, Computational Bayesian Methods, Computational Econometrics, Computational Methods for Industry, Computational Methods in Official Statistics, Computational Statistics in Finance, Data Mining, Design of Experiments, Dimensionality Reduction, Environmental Statistics, Functional Data Analysis, Graphics and Data Visualization, Image and Signal Processing, Imprecise Data and Fuzzy Methods, Internet Based Methods, Machine Learning, Matrix Computations and Statistics, Metadata and Data Representation, Microarray Data Analysis, Multivariate Data Analysis, Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms, Nonparametric Statistics and Smoothing, Optimization Algorithms, Partial Least Squares, Pattern Recognition, Resampling Methods, Robustness, Simulation, Software Evaluation, Spatial Statistics, Statistical Databases, Statistical Education and Web Based Teaching, Statistical Matching and Data Imputation, Statistical Methods for Market Analysis, Statistical Musicology, Statistical Software, Support Vector Machine, Symbolic Data Analysis, Textual Data Analysis and Information Retrieval, Time Series Analysis and Web Mining. More information can be found on the COMPSTAT website: http://www.uniroma1.it/compstat2006.
There are the following satellite conferences:
* KNEMO – Workshop on Knowledge Extraction and Modelling ( http://www.knemo.unina.it ). Organised by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Naples - Federico II. Villa Orlandi, Island of Capri, Italy, September 4th - 6th, 2006.
* Workshop on Data and Information Visualization
( http://appel.rz.huberlin.de/Zope/ise_stat/wbiwi/ise/stat/forschung/veranstaltungen/div2006 ). Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,
Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Berlin, Germany, August 23rd - 25th, 2006.
* International Conference on Statistical Latent Variables Models in the Health
Sciences
( http://www.stat.unipg.it/forcina/shlav/shlav.html ). Perugia
University, Perugia, Italy, September 6th - 8th, 2006.
Pilar Muñoz, ERS-IASC Scientific Secretary
VI. The 56th Session of the ISI
The 56th Session of the ISI will take place in
Lisbon, Portugal, from 22 to 29 August 2007. As usual, a certain number of
invited paper meetings are organised by the IASC. These are:
* Model Selection for Supervised Learning
* Discovering Data Structures with Forward Research
* Interval and Imprecise Data Analysis
* Computational Statistics and Metabolomics
* Financial Data Mining and Modelling
* Computational Econometrics and Finance
* Exploratory Multiple Table Analysis
* Statistical Challenges in Data Mining Applications
* Statistical Algorithms and Software.
 |
Editorial Addresses |
Andrej Blejec, National Institute of Biology, Vecna pot 111 POB 141, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tel: +386 1 423 33 88, Fax: +386 1 2412 980 E-mail: andrej.blejec@nib.si and K. Laurence Weldon, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6 Tel: +1 604 291 3667, Fax: +1 604 291 4368 E-mail: weldon@sfu.ca |
|
| President |
Gilberte Schuyten, Department
Data Analysis University Ghent, H. Dunantlaan 1, B-9000 Gent, Belgium Tel: +32 92 64 63 86, Fax: +32 92 64 64 87 E-mail: gilberte.schuyten@ugent.be Website: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/members/profile_view_ind.php?id=545 |
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| Website | http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/ |
FORTHCOMING IASE ACTIVITIES
ICOTS-7: Working Cooperatively in Statistics Education Salvador (Bahia), Brazil,
July 2 - 7, 2006Local Organisers: Pedro Alberto Morettin (Chair), Lisbeth K. Cordani, Pedro Silva, Clélia Maria C. Toloi and Wilton de Oliveira Bussab. IPC Executive Committee: Carmen Batanero (Chair), Susan Starkings (Programme Chair), Allan Rossman and Beth Chance (Editors of Proceedings), John Harraway (Scientific Secretary) and Lisbeth Cordani (Local Organisers Representative).
The International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI) are organizing the Seventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), which will be hosted by the Brazilian Statistical Association (ABE) in Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, July 2 - 7, 2006.
The major aim of ICOTS-7 is to provide the opportunity for people from around the world who are involved in statistics education to exchange ideas and experiences, to discuss the latest developments in teaching statistics and to expand their network of statistical educators. The Conference theme emphasises the idea of cooperation, which is natural and beneficial for those involved in the different aspects of statistics education at all levels. Some examples are given below.
1. Cooperative learning in statistics education. Recent trends in educational psychology emphasise the role of student activity and social interaction in learning. These developments are particularly important in the case of statistics where students are taking a more active role in working on cooperative projects and studies.
2. Cooperation between statistics teachers and researchers. Real life applications generated by working with a researcher in another area help motivate the teaching of statistics. The subject is more enjoyable for students when a teacher can call on such real applications. At the same time, teachers are an essential part of a research team in statistics education, since they collaborate both in collecting data from the students and in helping with the design and evaluation of action-research programmes.
3. Cooperation between statistical agencies and statistics educators. Statistical agencies need the cooperation of the population at large when collecting their data. They are also interested in improving the statistical literacy of their citizens. Consequently, the agencies are communicating statistical ideas to their populace as well as providing official data for research on different topics, including teaching. Statistical offices and educators collaborate in the development of teaching resources based on official data and set up workshops and conferences on the teaching of statistics.
4. Interdisciplinary cooperation for research. Interdisciplinary research is natural both in applied statistics and statistics education. Many central statistical concepts and procedures arose from research problems in other subjects. At the same time the researcher, whatever subject he or she is working in, benefits by having problems actually solved. Statistics education is based on many different disciplines, such as psychology, education, epistemology, statistics and sociology, which all contribute in their own unique way to the study and solution of teaching problems.
5. International cooperation in statistics education. Global communication and increasing interest and respect for complementarity in education are leading to an increasing number of successful international research or educational programmes at different levels: e.g., Large scale statistical literacy comparative studies; Regional, National or International funded projects; International statistical education centres; International training programmes or conferences in statistics education.
6. Globalization and diversity in statistics education. Cooperation requires both global and local approaches to research and teaching. There is a contrast and a complementarity of global and local approaches in statistics education; e.g., large sample, quantitative studies versus qualitative and ethnographic research; the need to recognise global tendencies, and at the same time being sensitive to specific difficulties or talents of special and gifted students, minorities, etc.
A first planning meeting in Berlin and two meetings of Local Organisers with IASE representatives in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo initiated planning for the Conference that is now advancing at a good pace. The Local Organisers designed a beautiful logo and the IPC web page, designed by John Shanks, is systematically updated as new information becomes available and can be accessed at http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/icots7.
We all hope ICOTS-7 will continue the scientific quality and engagement of previous ICOTS and encourage you not to miss this event. More information is available from the IASE web page at http://isi.cbs.nl/iase.htm and from Carmen Batanero ( batanero@ugr.es ).
Contributed by Carmen Batanero
SRTL-4 Report
The fourth research forum in a series of international research forums on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL) took place during winter at The University of Auckland in New Zealand. This particular gathering of researchers has played an important role in advancing our understanding of the richness and depth of reasoning about distribution, a key focus of statistics education. The focus of SRTL-4 on reasoning about distribution emerged from the previous three SRTL Conferences. Distribution is a key concept in statistics, and yet statisticians and educators may not be aware of how difficult it is for students to develop a deep understanding of this concept. When students are given tasks involving comparing distributions or making inferences, they often fail to utilize relevant information contained in the underlying distributions. Curricular materials often focus on construction and identification of distributions, but not on what these distributions mean to students and how they interpret them.
The programme began with an overview talk by Chris Wild entitled: "A statistician’s view on the concept of distribution". Eight presentations of SRTL-4 were thematically grouped into five clusters. A cluster included one or two ninety-minute research presentations to the entire group, small group discussions, and a whole group reflection on the cluster. All presenters showed a small subset of video segments of their research. Optional time was devoted to viewing and discussing the research video tapes from methodological and interpretive perspectives. In addition, three post-graduate students presented their current research findings in a poster session and a software developer discussed potential research questions to the entire group (see abstracts below). The programme ended with three discussants’ reflecting on reasoning about distribution from research, curriculum, and technology viewpoints.
The research forum proved to be very productive in many ways. Several types of
scientific publications will be produced
including a CD-ROM of the proceedings edited by Katie Makar, papers in refereed
journals, and a special issue of Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ) on
reasoning about distribution co-edited by Maxine Pfannkuch and Chris Reading. An
additional product of the meeting will be a new SRTL website hosted by the
Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland, and will include a variety
of resources. These will all serve as a rich resource for statistics educators
and researchers. As a result of the success of this gathering, plans are already
underway for the next gathering (SRTL-5) in 2007.
For further information, please visit the SRTL-4 website at
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/srtl4/index.html or contact the SRTL Co-chairs
Joan Garfield ( jbg@umn.edu ) and Dani Ben-Zvi ( dbenzvi@univ.haifa.ac.il ).
Contributed by Maxine Pfannkuch
International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) needs your help In order to make the web pages of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) more helpful for users, the ISLP Advisory Committee is conducting a short survey of the users of the ISLP web pages. The survey is anonymous and is at http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/survey.htm . It should take about 3 minutes to complete. We would appreciate the filling out of the survey by anybody who has ever looked at the ISLP web pages. Thank you in advance to all who fill out the survey form. If you have not yet explored the web pages of the ISLP, you can begin to do so by going to http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/islplist.htm . Contact Carol Joyce Blumberg at cblumberg@winona.edu for further information.
Contributed by Carol J. Blumberg
Chance News
Chance News reviews current issues in the news that use probability or statistical concepts. Its aim is to give the general public a better understanding of such news and to allow teachers of probability and statistics courses to liven up their courses with current news. In the past, most of the articles in Chance News related to U.S chance news. We have changed Chance News to a Chance Wiki to make it a collaborative effort of its readers in the spirit of the very successful free encyclopedia Wikimedia. We hope, by doing this, to make the new Chance Wiki an International Chance Wiki. So, we encourage you to participate and to pass this information on to anyone who you think might like to contribute to this effort. You can view the Chance Wiki at http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/ .
Contributed by Laurie Snell
Third Radical Statistics critical essay 2006
Speak your mind and win a prize! Submit an original essay, 3,000 words maximum, by 1 May 2006 that addresses a current social research/policy question, with critical use and interpretation of relevant data sources. First prize is £300 and second prize is £200. There are two categories of entry, Student or Open, awarded on the basis of readability, clear presentation of statistical material and convincing argument. Age and experience will be taken into account when judging. The judges are Simon Briscoe, Len Cook, Ruth Levitas, Denise Lievesley and Susan Starkings.
The essay awarded first prize will be featured on the Radical Statistics website and published on 1 July 2006. More detailed information can be found on the website www.radstats.org.uk.
Applications are encouraged well before the deadline. Send your essay by e-mail, labelled ‘Radstats Critical Essay’, include your full name, address, age and number of years for which you have been engaged in social research, statistics, or the social sciences to janet.rmshapiro@btopenworld.com .
Contributed by Susan Starkings
Teaching Statistics Trust grants offer
In addition to publishing Teaching
Statistics, the Teaching Statistics Trust has many other facets. It is very keen
to support statistics teaching in general, and is embarking on a new initiative
to help and encourage statistics teachers in schools. It wants to encourage
school teachers to develop and share their good ideas. So, it is offering small
development grants of £50 for any article by a practising school teacher that is
accepted for publication in Teaching Statistics from now to the end of 2006.
"Accepted for publication" does not mean actually published - the lead times
mean that this might be somewhat later - but the article must have been
refereed, any comments attended to, and a final draft accepted by the Editor.
"Schools" include colleges provided a substantial amount of the work is at what
would normally be thought of as school level, i.e. up to about age 18. And
anywhere in the world. The Trust is also sponsoring an additional prize, as well
as the annual C. Oswald George Prize, which will be an award of £100 for the
best article in the journal by a practising school teacher in 2006 (volume 28)
and in 2007 (volume 29). Each year’s winner will be determined by the Editorial
Board. For details of how to submit your article, and further information about
Teaching Statistics, please visit
www.blackwellpublishing.com/test .
Contributed by Gerald Goodall
First Announcement of the Joint ICMI/IASE Study “Statistics Education in School Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education”
In the past three decades, a statistics education research community has developed, linking people from various backgrounds (statisticians involved in teaching statistics in service courses at universities, mathematics educators, and psychologists), leading to the creation of the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE, http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/ ) in 1991, with over 500 members at the time and to the publication of a research journal SERJ in 2002, a peer-reviewed electronic journal of IASE ( http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/publications ) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI, http://isi.cbs.nl/ ).
Also since the mid-80’s, the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction
(ICMI,
http://www.mathunion.org/Organization/ICMI/ ) has found it important to
involve itself directly in the identification and investigation of issues or
topics of particular significance to the theory or practice of contemporary
mathematics education, and to invest an effort in mounting specific ICMI studies
on these themes. In the past few years, ICMI became increasingly
interested in organising a Study focussed on the teaching of Statistics.
Research in statistics education is scarce as compared with other areas within
the mathematics education community, while, at the same time, the teaching of
statistics at school level is carried out as a part of the mathematics
curriculum and is receiving increasing attention in new curricula around the
world.
Conversations between ICMI and IASE made clear the com- mon interest in organising a joint Study related to current problems in teaching of statistics within school mathematics. It was recognized that, in spite of recommendations to increase the presence of statistics teaching at school level, students enter university with a poor level in statistics. This impedes their progress in learning very basic inferential statistics at university, and is causing a general misuse and misunder- standing of statistics by researchers and professionals.
The above facts led the ICMI Executive Committee to invite the IASE to cooperate in a joint ICMI/IASE Study focussed on statistics. This invitation was accepted by the IASE, who proposed to merge the Study Conference with IASE’s next Round Table Conference to be held in 2008 in Monterrey, Mexico.
Carmen Batanero (past IASE President 2001-2003) will act as Chair of the International Programme Committee of the joint Study, whose composition is given below.
The first meeting of the ICMI/IASE Study IPC is planned at ICOTS-7 (July 2006,
Brazil
http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/icots7 ), where over 400 statistics educators
are expected. The second ICMI/IASE Study IPC meeting is planned at 56th
ISI
Session (August 2007, Lisboa, http://www.isi2007.com.pt/ ). The ICMI/IASE Study
Conference will be hosted by the Monterrey Technological Institute in July 2008
(Monterrey, Mexico).
The IASE is convinced that the engagement of both organizations to work together on the issue of statistics education in school mathematics will contribute to the advancement of preparation of youngsters to become statistical and mathematical literate citizens.
Joint ICMI/IASE Study International Programme Committee:
Carmen Batanero
(Spain), Chair, batanero@ugr.es
Bernard Hodgson (Canada), Ex- officio,
bhodgson@mat.ulaval.ca
Allan Rossman (USA), Ex- officio, arossman@calpoly.edu
Armando Albert (México), albert@itesm.mx
Dani Ben-Zvi (Israel),
dbenzvi@univ.haifa.ac.il
Gail Burrill (USA), burrill@mail.msu.edu
Doreen Connor
(UK), doreen.connor@ntu.ac.uk
Joachim Engel (Germany), engel@math.uni-hannover.de
Joan Garfield (USA), jbg@umn.edu
Jun Li (China),
lijun@math.ecnu.edu.cn
M. Gabriella Ottaviani (Italy),
mariagabriella.ottaviani@uniroma1.it
Lionel Pereira Mendoza (Singapore), lpereira@nie.edu.sg
Maxine Pfannkuch (New Zealand), pfannkuc@math.auckland.ac.nz
Victor Polaki (Lesotho), mv.polaki@nul.ls
Chris Reading (Australia),
creading@une.edu.au
Contributed by Gilberte Schuyten
Back to the content of this Newsletter Volume 29, No. 3 (87) 2005
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