Newsletter Volume 32, Number 1 (94) 2008 -ISI Sections

For the Bernoulli Society, the year 2008 will be highlighted by the seventh World Congress on Probability and Statistics, to be held in Singapore next July.
The history of those World Congresses started in 1986 in Tashkent. At that time, there was no occasion for probabilists and theoretically-oriented statisticians to meet together on a regular basis. For sure, there were meetings in these fields before 1986, but usually quite specialised, as the yearly held ‘Stochastic Processes and Applications’ meeting organized by the Bernoulli Society, and many rather specialized meetings or regional meetings. There were also of course the ISI Congresses. But as a matter of fact, theoretical statistics is not, and was not since quite a long time, one of the main focuses of the ISI Congresses, and probability has never been adequately represented in those congresses (and neither in the ISI itself, a fact which may be deplored). As to the World Congress of Mathematicians, Probability and even more so Statistics have always enjoyed very little space in them, and sometimes none at all, although it seems that things are changing in the most recent years in this respect.
To be accurate, one should however mention the “Vilnius Conferences” that were held every fourth year, and whose focus was precisely on Probability and Mathematical Statistics. These were, and still are now in some respects, wonderful meetings but, due to the ideological and material constraints of the USSR time, the attendance was somehow restricted and/or difficult to achieve for many people.
These are the reasons why the Bernoulli Society launched the World Congresses in Probability and Statistics. The fact that its first meeting occurred in the USSR is probably a kind of heritage of the Vilnius Meetings, together with the organizational powers of Albert N. Shiryaev.
Since its first meeting, the World Congresses in Probability and Statistics has become the main occasion for probabilists and mathematical statisticians to meet together, and it is now co-organized with the IMS. In fact, it is a unique place where most of probability theory is illustrated, including its many – old and recent – applications to other fields like mathematical physics, statistical mechanics, geometry and number theory, mathematical finance, and so on… It is also a unique place where interaction between Probability and Statistics is represented, and everybody knows how much those two domains are closely connected. Last but not least, Mathematical Statistics per se is also very well represented.
The next meeting, whose organisation committee is chaired by Louis Chen, will take place on July 14-19, 2008, and will undoubtedly be as successful as its predecessors. The programme is extremely attractive; plenary sessions and invited lectures feature top probabilists and statisticians, and invited sessions show a very wide spectrum going from pure probability to many statistical applications.
It will be a unique opportunity to understand what is going on right now in the field and to establish new contacts and meet people. I would like to urge everybody to attend!

Past President is Peter Jagers (Sweden). Further members of the Council include: Scientific Secretary Arnoldo Frigessi (Norway), Membership Secretary Josef Steinebach (Germany), Treasurer Ursula Gather (Germany) and ISI Executive Secretary Daniel Berze.

Joseph Steinebach (jost@math.uni-koeln.de) has been elected as the new Membership Secretary, replacing Volker Mammitzsch who we warmly thank for all the work he has done in this position. We thank also all Council Members who left the Council: Tim Brown (Australia), Murad Taqqu (USA), Frank den Hollander (The Netherlands), Valerie Isham (UK), Zhi-Ming Ma (China), Mario Wschebor (Uruguay).

The elections of the new committee members of LARC-SLAPEM have taken place from July 2-5. The newly elected members are: Claudio Landim, Mario Wschebor, Stella Brassesco and Daniel Hernandez-Hernandez.
The new committee is now composed of:
Ricardo Fraiman (Argentina)
Maria Emilia Caballero (Mexico)
José Leon (Venezuela)
Raul Gouet (Chile)
Claudio Landim (Brazil)
Mario Wschebor (Uruguay)
Stella Brassesco (Venezuela)
Daniel Hernandez-Hernandez (México)
Pablo Ferrari (Brazil)
A campaign to find new associates was made during a one-month period. As a result of this campaign, we now have 150 associates. We have recently signed an agreement with the IMS. The next CLAPEM will take place in Venezuela in 2009.

The European Regional Committee promotes European cooperation in the sciences of mathematical statistics and probability theory and their applications in accordance with the statutes of the Bernoulli Society. Activities held under the auspices of the European Regional Committee include: the European Meetings of Statisticians, the European Young Statisticians Meetings and the biennial courses Séminaires Européens de Statistiques.

The ERC has a new web page: http://bs-erc.stat.unipd.it/.
The European Young Statisticians Meetings (EYSM) is a series of conferences organised by and for young European statisticians. The complete series of European Young Statisticians Meetings (started in 1978 by Paul Embrechts) is here:
15^thEYSM, 10-14 September 2007, Castro Urdiales, Spain;
14^thEYSM, 22-26 August 2005, Debrecen, Hungary;
13^thEYSM, 21-26 September 2003, Ovronnaz, Switzerland;
12^thEYSM, 4-8 September 2001, Jánska Dolina, Slovakia;
11^thEYSM, 24-28 August 1999, Marly-le-Roi, France;
10^thEYSM, 1997, Warsaw, Poland;
9^thEYSM, 1995, Rotterdam, The Netherlands;
8^thEYSM, 1993, Vilnius, Lithuania;
7^thEYSM, 1991, Oberwolfach, Germany;
6^thEYSM, 1989, Prague, Czech Republic;
5^thEYSM, 1987, Aarhus, Denmark;
4^thEYSM, 1985, Varna, Bulgaria;
3^rdEYSM, 1983, Leuven, Belgium;
2^ndEYSM, 1981, Bressanone, Italy;
1^stEYSM, 1978, Wiltshire, Great Britain.

The next European Meeting of Statisticians will be in Toulouse, France, from July 20-24, 2009.

The seventh World Congress in Probability and Statistics, jointly sponsored by the Bernoulli Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, will be held in Singapore from July 14 to 19, 2008. This meeting is a major international event in probability and statistics held every four years. It features the latest scientific developments in the fields of probability and statistics and their applications.

The programme will cover a wide range of topics and will feature thirteen keynote lectures presented by leading specialists. In addition, there will be invited paper sessions highlighting topics of current research interest as well as many contributed talks and posters. The venue for the meeting is the National University of Singapore. Singapore is a vibrant, multicultural, cosmopolitan city-state that expresses the essence of today's New Asia. It offers many attractions both cultural and touristic, such as the Esplanade and the Singapore Night Safari. On behalf of the Scientific Programme and Local Organising Committees, we invite you to join us in Singapore for this exciting meeting. Your participation will ensure that the 2008 World Congress will be a memorable scientific event.

Louis Chen, Chair of the Local Organising Committee
Ruth Williams, Chair of the Scientific Programme Committee

Programme:
Named Lectures:
Martin Barlow, University of British Columbia (Medallion Lecture);
Richard Durrett, Cornell University (Wald Lectures);
Jianqing Fan, Princeton University (Laplace Lecture);
Alice Guionnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (Lévy Lecture);
Mark Low, University of Pennsylvania (Medallion Lecture);
Zhi-Ming Ma, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beijing (Medallion Lecture);
Peter McCullagh, University of Chicago (Neyman Lecture);
Douglas Nychka, US National Center for Atmospheric Research (Public Lecture);
Oded Schramm, Microsoft Research (BS-IMS Special Lecture);
David Spiegelhalter, University of Cambridge and MRC Biostatistics Unit (Bernoulli Lecture);
Alain-Sol Sznitman, ETH Zurich (Kolmogorov Lecture);
Elizabeth Thompson, University of Washington (Turkey Lecture);
Wendelin Werner, Université Paris-Sud (BS-IMS Special Lecture).

Invited Sessions:
Advances in Statistical Computing
Organiser:
Luke Tierney (University of Iowa)
Speakers:
Ross Ihaka (University of Auckland)
Luke Tierney (University of Iowa)
Simon Urbanek (AT&T Labs, Floreham Park)

Algebraic Statistics
Organiser:
Eva Riccomagno (Università di Genova)
Speakers:
Aleksandra Slavkovic (Pennsylvania State University)
Akimiki Takemura (University of Tokyo)
Henry Wynn (London School of Economics)

Applications of Probability/Statistics in Imaging
Organiser:
Zuowei Shen (National University of Singapore)
Speakers:
Mario Figueiredo (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon)
Xiaoming Huo (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Zuowei Shen (National University of Singapore)

Astrostatistics
Organiser:
John Rice (University of California, Berkeley)
Speakers:
David van Dyk (University of California, Irvine)
Domenico Marinucci (Universita di Roma "Tor Vergata")
John Rice (University of California, Berkeley)

Gaussian Processes with Applications
Organiser:
Robert Adler (Technion)
Speakers:
Jonathan Taylor (Stanford University and Université de Montréal)
Keith Worsley (McGill University)
Steve Zelditch (Johns Hopkins University)

Geophysical Models: Inference, Prediction and Interpretation
Organiser:
Douglas Nychka (US National Center for Atmospheric Research)
Speakers:
Tao Shi (Ohio State University)
Will Welch (University of British Columbia)
Jim Zidek (University of British Columbia)

Lévy Processes
Organiser:
Victor Perez Abreu (CIMAT, Guanajuato)
Speakers:
Andreas Kyprianou (University of Bath)
Victor Rivero-Mercado (CIMAT, Guanajuato)
Jan Rosinski (University of Tennessee)

Machine Learning and Data Mining
Organiser:
Ji Zhu (University of Michigan)
Speakers:
Peter Bühlmann (ETH, Zürich)
Yufeng Liu (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
David Madigan (Columbia University)

Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Organiser:
Gareth Roberts (Warwick University)
Speakers:
Alex Beskos (Warwick University)
Arnaud Doucet (University of British Columbia)
Antonietta Mira (University of Insubria, Varese)

Model Choice for High Dimensional Data
Organiser:
Laurie Davies (University of Essen)
Speakers:
Laurie Davies (University of Essen)
Nicolai Meinshausen (University of California, Berkeley)
Anthony O'Hagan (University of Sheffield)

Multiple Comparison and Testing
Organiser:
Yoav Benjamini (Tel Aviv University)

Probabilistic Analysis of Algorithms
Organiser:
Luc Devroye (McGill University)
Speakers:
Jim Fill (Johns Hopkins University)
Hsien-Kuei Hwang (Statistica Sinica, Taipei)
Ralph Neininger (J.W. Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt a.M.)

Probability Problems from Genetics
Organiser:
Richard Durrett (Cornell University)
Speakers:
Steven Evans (University of California, Berkeley)
Lea Popovic (Concordia University)
Deena Schmidt (Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, U. of Minnesota)

Quantitative Risk Management
Organiser:
Paul Embrechts (ETH, Zürich)
Speakers:
Kjersti Aas (Norwegian Computing Center, Oslo)
Roger Cooke (Resources for the Future, Washington D.C., and University of Delft)
Juri Hinz (National University of Singapore)

Random Matrices and Applications
Organiser:
Iain Johnstone (Stanford University)

Random Processes with Interactions
Organiser:
Vlada Limic (Université de Provence)
Speakers:
Mark Holmes (University of Auckland)
Gady Kozma (Weizmann Institut, Israel)
Jason Schweinsberg (University of California, San Diego)

Random Trees and Planar Maps
Organiser:
Grégory Miermont (Université Paris-Sud)
Speakers:
David Croydon (University of Warwick)
Maxim Krikun (Université de Nancy)
Grégory Miermont (Université Paris-Sud)

Sparsity in High Dimensional Problems
Organiser:
Jiashun Jin (Purdue University)
Speakers:
Emmanuel Candes (California Institute of Technology)
Yingying Fan (Princeton University)
Mike West (Duke University)

Statistical Challenges in the Study of Infectious Diseases
Organiser:
Christl Donnelly (Imperial College London)
Speakers:
Laura Forsberg White (Boston University)
Nicholas Jewell (University of California, Berkeley)
Hamish McCallum (University of Tasmania)

Statistical Inverse Problems
Organiser:
Axel Munk (University of Göttingen)
Speakers:
Laurent Cavalier (Université Aix-Marseille)
Peter Green (University of Bristol)
Alexandre Tsybakov (Université de Paris VI)

Statistical Learning Theory
Organiser:
Sara van de Geer (ETH, Zürich)
Speakers:
Stephane Boucheron (Université de Paris 7)
Kenji Fukumizu (Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo)
John Lafferty (Carnegie Mellon University)

Statistics in Genomics
Organiser:
Haiyan Huang (University of California, Berkeley)
Speakers:
Debashis Ghosh (University of Michigan)
Mary Sara McPeek (University of Chicago)
George Tseng (University of Pittsburgh)

Statistics in Quantum Information
Organiser:
Richard Gill (Leiden University)
Speakers:
Cristina Butucea (University of Lille at Villeneuve)
Madalin Guta (University of Nottingham)
Matthew James (Australian National University)

Statistics for Understanding Numerical Models of Climate Change
Organiser:
Jim Zidek (University of British Columbia)
Speakers:
Reinhard Furrer (Colorado School of Mines)
Cari Kaufman (U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research)
Hans Kuensch and Christoph Buser (ETH, Zürich)

Stochastic Control in Finance
Organiser:
Nizar Touzi (Ecole Polytechnique Paris)
Speakers:
Peter Bank (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Mete Soner (Koc University, Istanbul)
Jianfeng Zhang (University of Southern California)

Stochastic PDE and Interacting Stochastic Systems
Organiser:
Ed Perkins (University of British Columbia)
Speakers:
Tadahisa Funaki (University of Tokyo)
Leonid Mytnik (Technion, Israel)
Eulalia Nualart (Université de Paris 13)

Stochastic Loewner Evolution
Organiser:
Scott Sheffield (Courant Institute, NYU)
Speakers:
Tom Alberts (Courant Institute, NYU)
Julien Dubédat (University of Chicago)
Christophe Garban (Université Paris-Sud)

Stochastic Models with Spatial Effects
Organiser:
Harry Kesten (Cornell University)
Speakers:
Ed Perkins (University of British Columbia)
Jeremy Quastel (University of Toronto)
Bàlint Tòth (Technical University, Budapest)

Stochastic Networks
Organiser:
Kavita Ramanan (Carnegie Mellon University)
Speakers:
Maury Bramson (University of Minnesota)
Weining Kang (Carnegie Mellon University)
François Baccelli (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)

Stochastic Neuronal Models
Organiser:
Luigi Ricciardi (University of Naples Federico II)
Speakers:
Susanne Ditlevsen (University of Copenhagen)
Petr Lansky (Academy of Sciences, Prague)
Benjamin Lindner (Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems)

Stochastic Processes in Physics
Organiser:
Anton Bovier (Weierstrass-Institute and Berlin University of
Technology)
Speakers:
Jiri Cerny (ETH, Zürich)
Takashi Hara (Kyushu University)
Simone Warzel (Princeton University)

Uncertainty in Computer Models
Organiser:
Anthony O'Hagan (University of Sheffield)
Speakers:
Derek Bingham (Simon Fraser University)
Michael Goldstein (Durham University)
Jeremy Oakley (University of Sheffield)

Forthcoming Meetings

Current Trends and Challenges in Model Selection and Related Areas
This workshop will be held from July 24-26, 2008, at the University of Vienna. The workshop will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of current trends and challenging problems in model selection and related shrinkage methods. Invited speakers include Yannick Baraud (Université de Nice Sophia-Antipoli), Rudy Beran (UC Davis), Ed George (The Wharton School), Patrik Guggenberger (UCLA), Ching-Kang Ing (Academia Sinica), Paul Kabaila (LaTrobe Univ.), Gabor Lugosi (Pompeu Fabra Univ.), and Yuhong Yang (Univ. of Minnesota). Contributed presentations are welcome. For further details, see www.univie.ac.at/workshop_modelselection/.

Efficient Monte Carlo: From variance reduction to combinatorial optimization
(On the occasion of R.Y. Rubinstein’s 70^th birthday)

This workshop will be held from July 14-18, 2008, at the Sandbjerg Estate, Soenderborg, Denmark. During his career, Reuven Rubinstein has initiated many new discoveries in Monte Carlo simulation, stochastic modelling and optimization, and has inspired numerous researchers to take up research in these fields. This Conference is intended to celebrate Professor Rubinstein's 70^th birthday by bringing together many of these international researchers in modern Monte Carlo methods. Professor Rubinstein has significantly advanced (or even established) the theory and application of adaptive importance sampling, rare event simulation, randomized optimization, stochastic optimization, sensitivity analysis, the score function method, stochastic counterpart method, and recently the popular cross-entropy method (see http://www.cemethod.org). Currently, he is pursuing important research in optimization and counting problems concerning #P complete problems. Organising Committee: Søren Amussen (Aarhus, Chair), Peter W. Glynn (Stanford), Jozeph Kreimer (Beer Sheeva), Dirk P. Kroese (Brisbane). Programme Committee: Peter W. Glynn (Stanford, Co-Chair), Sandeep Juneja (Mumbai), Joseph Kreimer (Beer Sheva), Dirk P. Kroese (Brisbane, Co-Chair), Don McLeish (Waterloo), Georg Pflug (Vienna), Ad Ridder (Amsterdam), Alexander Shapiro (Atlanta), Nahum Shimkin (Haifa), and Assaf Zeevi (New York).

Invited Speakers: Peter W. Glynn (Stanford), Boaz Golany (Haifa), Dirk P. Kroese (Brisbane), Boris Polyak (Moscow), Christian Robert (Paris), Reuven Y. Rubinstein (Haifa), Alexander Shapiro (Atlanta), Robert L. Smith (Ann Arbor).

Registration fee will be approximately US$ 150 per day and covers accommodation and all meals. The Annals of Operations Research will publish a special volume on Monte Carlo Methods for Simulation, Optimization and Counting.

Contact Information: Oddbjorg Wethelund, tel +45 8942 3515, e-mail: oddbjorg@imf.au.dk.

Reports on Recent Meetings

This Conference, held from July 23-27, 2007, was hosted by the Department of Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science of the University of Bern, Switzerland. The aim of the Conference was to bring together a wide range of researchers, practitioners and graduate students whose work is related to the analysis of extreme values in a broad sense. More than 120 participants were present from 26 different countries. The scientific programme included 79 talks and a poster session with 20 posters.

Among the topics of the Conference were:
Classical extreme value theory,
Novel applications of extreme value theory,
Statistics of extremal events,
Heavy-tailed phenomena,
Large deviations,
Methods of risk analysis,
Stochastic processes for extremes,
Rare event simulation,
Multivariate extremes,
Dependence and extremes,
Spatio-temporal models.

One day of the Conference was dedicated to Laurens de Haan on the occasion of his 70^th birthday. Social activities offered an excursion to the Bernese Alps and a conference banquet with Swiss music and magic moments with the illusionist Siderato (Peter Mürner, former university rector).

Funding was provided by Swiss Mobiliar, Allianz Suisse, Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Academy of Science and the Moser Foundation.

The Conference was very successful owing to the high quality of the presentations and the posters. The open atmosphere and the smooth organisation also contributed to making this Conference an unforgettable event.

This Conference was held in Copenhagen, August 13-17, 2007. There were 150 participants, among them many young researchers who had also participated in a satellite summer school at the picturesque Sandbjerg Manor in southern Denmark. The Conference provided the most recent results about the wide spectrum of Lévy process theory. The names of the speakers and the abstracts can be found at http://www.math.ku.dk/english/research/conferences/levy2007/levy.html

They show convincingly that the Lévy process theory is very much alive. It has become an exciting field of research on stochastic processes. Applications include meteorology, physics, queuing and branching theory, stochastic networks, bioinformatics, finance, insurance, fractal, and heavy-tailed phenomena. The list of speakers includes old masters such as Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, Michael Markus, Jay Rosen, Ron Doney, Jean Jacod, but also various postdoctoral students and junior researchers.

The Lévy Process Conferences have become important European events on the stochastic process theory. Starting in 1999 with the first conference in Aarhus (an initiative of Ole Barndorff-Nielsen), the organisation of these meetings (in Aarhus 2002, Paris 2003 and Manchester 2005) has always been based on informal networks in the stochastic process community. Thanks to an initiative of René Schilling and Alexander Lindner, the sixth conference will be held in Dresden in 2010. The stochastic process community is looking forward to this event.

International Association for Official Statistics

New IAOS Web Address
The IAOS is transferring its website from Statistics New Zealand to a permanent location, which will be a component of the ISI website. We are grateful for Statistics New Zealand for their past support. The new URL will be: http://isi.cbs.nl/iaos.
Please submit information that may be of interest to IAOS members to:
Mr. Stephen Penneck - stephen.penneck@ons.gov.uk

The International Association for Official Statistics would like to welcome you to the biennial meeting for statisticians from national statistical institutes, international organisations and academies. The theme of the Conference is: Smart Data, Innovative Uses – Reshaping Official Statistics.
An integral part of the Conference is also the 26^th biennial conference of the SCORUS, a standing committee of the IAOS on regional and urban statistics.
The IAOS 2008 Conference will be hosted in Shanghai by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The Conference covers relevant topics for reshaping official statistics. There will be both plenary and concurrent sessions. Areas covered by the Conference are:

Use of administrative data – past, present and future:
Administrative data was in many ways the beginning of social and economic statistics.
What are the current trends and what is in store for the future?
What are the benefits and costs for respondents and the NSIs?
How can NSIs ensure the custodians of administrative data recognise the statistical potential of these sources.

Challenges of building register based or other administrative based statistics:
Legal challenges to building register based or other administrative based statistics?
Who should have access to micro data?
How do we deal with the gap between administrative concepts and statistical concepts?

User demands for official statistics:
Trends in user needs.
New administrative practices and how they create new data.
Growing demand for regional and small area data.

Methodology and IT:
Statistical modelling and estimation based on data from administrative sources.
Synthetic statistical data by combination of sources.
Response burden.
Scanning technology.
Questionnaire design and testing.
Electronic reporting – do the benefits really outweigh the promise?
Geographic Information System and regional reference systems.

Use of administrative data in official statistics:
Business statistics.
Social statistics.
Census.
Economic statistics.
Environment statistics.
Regional and urban statistics.
Labour market statistics.

Policy and dissemination:
New public management – creates data and uses data. The role of official statistics.
User changes – and administrative data.
Independence and administrative data.
The research community and access to administrative data.
Linkage of sensitive data and protecting confidentiality – ethical questions.
Access to private client data.

If you would like to present a paper, please submit a proposal as soon as possible and an abstract not exceeding 500 words with three key words on e-mail to IAOS@ssb.no by 31 March 2008. We are also interested in hearing from you if you would like to organise a full session (3-4 papers). Please submit a title and, if possible, a list of speakers as soon as possible and by 31 March at the latest.

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

This annual Berlin SCORUS meeting brings together scientists from universities and research institutes, statisticians, selected experts from welfare and public health institutions, firms and unions, social workers and others in a setting designed to support discussion and learning. Organized by Prof. Dr. Eckart Elsner, these conferences speak to the regional and urban issues concerning young people. By presenting research about the situation of children and young people in an international atmosphere, it is hoped that participants can stimulate comparable investigations or programs in other places that will help practitioners in providing services and support for young people in urban settings.
The 13th Conference in this series focuses on “Demographic Aging” and takes place 17-19 March 2008 in Bildungs- und Begegnungszentrum “Clara Sahlber” in the South-West of Berlin. For further information on the program, please contact Prof. Dr. Eckart Elsner profelsner@aol.com.

IAOS Biennial Conference Smart Data, Innovative Uses - Reshaping Official Statistics, Shanghai, China, 14-16 October 2008

In 2008, the 26^th biennial Conference of SCORUS will be an integral part of the IAOS Conference. The Conference will be hosted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China and will cover relevant topics for reshaping official statistics. The active participation of SCORUS in the IAOS biennial Conference provides a wonderful opportunity to explore the role of regional and urban statistics as providers and users of official statistics. Of particular interest to SCORUS members are discussions of the use and production of administrative data; trends in user demands for official statistics covering regional and small area data; GIS and regional reference systems; use of various types of data; and data policy regarding confidentiality and access.

This European SCORUS Conference brought together statisticians, researchers, and planners of cities and regions to discuss their work under the theme “The Strength of Cities and Regions”. The focus of the Conference was on cities as drivers of growth for the wider region; the social and cultural components of competitiveness of cities and countries; measures to ensure that the benefits of development politics reach the population concerned; and the increasing diversity of cities as a result of EU expansion and globalisation.
The presentations from this Conference are available online at http://www.darmstadt.de/en/scorus/publications/index.htm.

Session A: Cities as the drivers of growth for the wider regions
Recent trends in the urban and regional evolutions in metropolitan France;
A study of economic activity in Greece at the sub-regional level;
Exploring the patterns of population change in cities and their wider regions.

Session B: Economic performance in cities and regions
Variation in economic performance among OECD regions – A study of the endogenous factors of growth;
Towards mutually reinforcing development of old and new urban centres in European city regions? The Amsterdam
example;
Benchmarking London – the GLA’s interim metro region dataset;
Urban Audit – The State of Cities report.

Session C: The visualisation of regional and urban data
Statistics in the Internet of services: visualisation and service composition;
City server 3D;
Networking of spatial data;
Statistical Visualisation: New Developments from the Office for National Statistics, UK.

Session D: The increasing diversity of cities as a result of EU expansion and globalisation – an asset and a
challenge
Neighbourhood-level diversity in German cities – is it linked with global economic change?
Job movements and commuter flows in urban areas in a period of economic decline;
Specialisation versus spatial concentration: Which approach defines better the impact of economic integration: the
case of the Romanian regions;
Porous Europe: European cities in global urban arenas.

Session E: Quality assurance in regional and urban statistics
Delineating target sub-city districts for decision-makers: an attempt to automate the process;
Estimation and Analysis of the value added at municipality level;
Sampling strategies for the estimation of form census variables;
Aiming at high quality statistical information on Urban Europe – Achievements and challenges.

Session F: The social and cultural components of competitiveness of cities and regions
How family-friendly are German cities?
Comparing social cohesion by using Dashboard, Urban Audit data and the European Perception Survey;
Research into Cultural and Creative Industries in London;
Neighbourhood level diversity in German cities – is it linked with global economic change.

Session G: The organizational set-up for collecting and disseminating urban and regional statistics
State of Play of the Urban Audit data collection;
Regional statistics system of Poland;
Establishment of Regional statisticians in the Regions of England;
The organizational set-up for disseminating urban and regional statistics in the Czech Statistical Office.

Session H: Territorial structure and standard regional reference systems
Built-up Territory and Urban Regions;
Regional references for regional analyses – important elements of Regional Statistics in the Czech Statistical Office;
Raster maps with variable cell sizes – an attractive possibility to ensure data production as well as statistical
significance;
Better urban planning through the standard geographic reference system of German municipalities.

Future Conferences:
2008 Statistics and the Help of Young People in Big Cites – Demographic Aging, Berlin, DE
2008 IAOS and SCORUS Conference in Shanghai, China
ISI Session in Durban, South Africa
2010 SCORUS Conference in Riga, Latvia
2011 ISI Session in Dublin, Ireland
SCORUS Satellite Meeting in Gallway, Ireland

SCORUS – The International Network for Regional and Urban Statistics
Please visit our revised website. Changes include a removal of the discussion piece and a renewed concentration of
sharing information to keep our membership updated on SCORUS related activities.
For information on joining the SCORUS list server or providing suggestions to the leadership group, please contact
SCORUS Secretary Wendy Thomas at wlt@pop.umn.edu.

International Association for Statistical Computing

Dear Colleagues,
Let me start with extending best wishes to all members for 2008.
First, allow me to inform you about the results of the IASC elections. We have received back 110 voting sheets from approximately 600 sent. They arrived from all over the world and resulted in:
President-Elect 2007-2009 and President 2009-2011:
Y. Tanaka, Japan
Vice-Presidents 2007-2009:
W.K. Fung, Hong Kong
C.E. Priebe, USA
Scientific Secretary 2007-2009:
F. Palumbo, Italy
Treasurer 2007-2009:
M. van de Velden, The Netherlands

Council Members 2007-2011:
M. Adena, Australia
P. Brito, Portugal
D. Cook, USA
G. Dohnal, Czech Republic
C. Kim, Korea
F. Leisch, Germany

The Council of the IASC for 2007-2009 is, aside from these new members, composed of G. Saporta (France, Past President), Z. Geng (China), R. Gentleman (USA), G. Kitagawa (Japan), D. Ladiray (France), and M. Mizuta (Japan).
They are Council Members for the period 2005-2009.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing Council Members, V. Esposito Vinzi (Italy), J. Gentle (USA), E. Kontoghiorghes (Cyprus), J. Lee (Korea) and Y. Mori (Japan), for all they did for the IASC. I would like to thank also the "unelected" officers of IASC who have taken on the significant tasks of leading our key committees over past years, namely to L. Edler (IASC Membership Committee), G. Galmacci (IASC Electronic Affairs and Public Relations Committee), M. Schimek (Liaison with the Interface) and D. Zighed (Committee for Liaison with Machine Learning and KDD Organizations).

We are entering into a very busy year for the IASC. Preparations for the 4^th World Conference on Computational Statistics and Data Analysis of the IASC, a joint meeting with the 6th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the IASC to be held in Yokohama, Japan, December 5-8, 2008, are continuing on schedule. The same holds for the 18^th Symposium of the European Regional Section COMPSTAT 2008, to be held in Porto, Portugal, August 24-29, 2008. All members are cordially invited to take part. Our main challenge, aside from seeing all of you in great numbers, is to ensure that students and young researchers are able to attend.

Computational Statistics & Data Analysis is the official journal of IASC. Thanks to the CSDA Editors S. Azen, E.J. Kontoghiorghes and J.C. Lee, the journal has progressed substantially and is an international reference. The impact factor of this journal is increasing. The number of pages published for volume 50 reached 3,700 pages, and 5,500 pages for volume 51, thus 9,200 pages since the 55^th Session of the ISI in Sydney. As we agreed on in Lisboa during the 56^th ISI Session, our principal mission is to promote the understanding, development and good practice of statistics worldwide. If you have any suggestions, please make them known either to me or to our Scientific Secretary.

Statistical Learning Data Mining and Regression Tools, Island of Procida (Naples, Italy), on September 3-7, 2007

The 9^th IASC-ERS Summer School on Statistical Learning Data Mining and Regression Tools was held in September 2007 in the picturesque venue of “ex Convento delle Orfanelle - Terra Murata” of the University “L’Orientale” on the island of Procida, Italy.
Members of the Organising Committee were: Rosaria Lombardo, Chairperson (Second University of Naples), Michele Gallo (University of Naples “L’Orientale”), Pietro Amenta (University of Sannio), Ida Camminatiello (Second University of Naples), Pasquale Sarnacchiaro (Second University of Naples), and Luigi D’Ambra (University “Federico II” of Naples) as Consultant Member.
The IASC-ERS School is generally intended to achieve postgraduate training on special topics of statistics for both researchers and teachers at universities. Professionals working in industry and interested in the application of new statistical methods are also invited to participate.
Participants are supposed to have a good PhD level background in statistics even if not necessarily focused on the subject of the course.
The aim of this School was to provide an overview of the recent developments in Data Mining using Statistical Learning techniques and non-parametric Regression tools. Professors of recognized experience in the field participated at the School.
In the context of the Data Mining process, the main goal is to discover knowledge from large database using statistical learning techniques. Parametric and non-parametric (non-linear) regression models, classification and regression trees can address to identify special patterns and/or the basic nature of the underlying phenomena, permitting to aggregate or amalgamate the information contained in large data-sets into smaller manageable information nuggets, for prediction and prevision final aims. A strong emphasis was given to case studies and live applications on PCs. The knowledge level of most of the students on the software-package R was beginner, so that the practical guide in the computer room to the simple and complex functions was really appreciated by the students.

Twenty participants came from nine different countries (Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, UK, Germany, Portugal, Poland and Kuwait).
Lectures were organized for 5 full working days. A CD containing the lecture materials, a set of papers on the topics of the School, data sets and free software, provided by the lecturers, were made available to participants.

The Summer School was a success as deduced from the results of the Customer Satisfaction survey. Students very highly scored the organization, the professors and the teaching materials. In the same way, professors were glad to stay with students who were “eager to learn”, as commented by Prof. Friedman.

The next COMPSTAT Symposium, International Conference on Computational Statistics, will take place in August 2008, in Porto, Portugal, locally organized by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto. COMPSTAT is an initiative of the European Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC).
COMPSTAT’2008 will be its 18^th edition; previous conferences have taken place in Berlin (2002), Prague (2004) and Rome (2006). The Local Organising Committee is working actively and with much enthusiasm to organize an interesting, exciting and welcoming conference.
COMPSTAT’2008 Keynote Speakers will be Prof. Peter Hall (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia), Prof. Heikki Mannila (Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, Finland) and Prof. Timo Teräsvirta (School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus, Denmark).
Two tutorials will take pace, namely: “Computational Methods in Finance” by James Gentle (Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, USA), and “Writing R Packages” by Friedrich Leisch (Institut für Statistik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany).

COMPSTAT‘2008 will also include standard Contributed Paper sessions. These may relate to the Invited Paper sessions, but do not need to do so. The authors are entitled to choose between an oral and a poster presentation.
To promote the success of posters, structured dedicated sessions will be organized where authors are expected to present their work in short.

As it is usually the case for COMPSTAT symposia, a Proceedings Book will be published by Springer, gathering the papers of Keynote speakers and speakers of Invited Sessions; accepted Contributed Papers shall be published on a CD (subject to conference registration). All papers are refereed.
Authors in Contributed Sessions (Oral or Poster) who do not wish to submit a full paper for the Conference CD may submit a Single Abstract. Accepted Abstracts will be published in the Abstract Book, but not in the Conference Proceedings nor on the CD. In case the total number of slots available for oral presentations is attained, Single Abstract submissions will be considered for poster presentations.

For guidelines, templates, and paper upload instructions, please visit the Conference web page:
www.fep.up.pt/compstat08/.

For further information, please visit the Conference website: www.fep.up.pt/compstat08/.
We all look forward to meeting you in Porto next August!

III. The 4^th World Conference on Computational Statistics & Data Analysis of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) and the 6^th Conference of Asian Regional Section of IASC

The Joint Meeting of 4^th World Conference of the IASC and 6^th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the IASC on Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (IASC 2008) will be held at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan on 5^th-8^th December 2008.
IASC 2008 provides a forum for researchers and practitioners all over the world, including Asian countries, to share their knowledge about theories, methods and the practice of statistical computing and computational statistics, and to discuss current important issues regarding statistical methods and data analysis in various disciplines such as medicine, business, ecology, biology, engineering, where statistical computing is indispensable. IASC 2008 is associated with "CSDA: The Computational Statistics & Data Analysis", the official journal of the IASC. The CSDA plans to have a special issue after the Conference.

The IASC 2008 International Organizing Committee is composed of:
Junji Nakano - Chairperson of IASC 2008, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan; Gilbert Saporta - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, France; Jaromir Antoch - Charles University, Czech Republic; Wing Kam Fung - University of Hong Kong, China; Moon Yul Huh - SungKyunKwan University, Korea; Tohru Uwoi - Bellsystem24 Inc., Japan; Shingo Shirahata - Osaka University, Japan; Genshiro Kitagawa - The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan; Yoshiyasu Tamura - The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan;
with Advisory Board:
Stanley P. Azen - University of Southern California, USA; Lutz Edler - German Cancer Research Center, Germany; Jae Chang Lee - Korea University; Yutaka Tanaka - Nanzan University.
The Scientific Program Committee is as follows:
Masahiro Mizuta - Chair (Hokkaido University, Japan); Yoshimichi Ochi – Vice-Chair (Oita University, Japan); Tomas Aluja-Banet (The Technical University of Catalonia, Spain); Paula Brito (University of Porto, Portugal); Chun-houh Chen (Academia Sinica, Taiwan); Robert Gentleman (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA); Tomoyuki Higuchi (The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan); Erricos Kontoghiorghes (University of Cyprus, Cyprus); Jung Jin Lee (Soong Sil University, Korea); Youngjo Lee (Seoul National University, Korea); Paul Murrell (The University of Auckland, New Zealand); David Scott (Rice University, USA); Berwin Turlach (The University of Western Australia, Australia); Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (ESSEC, France); Huiwen Wang (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China); Philip Leung-ho Yu University of Hong Kong, China).

For more information, please contact
Chairperson of IASC 2008: Junji Nakano
The Institute of Statistical Mathematics
4-6-7 Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku
Tokyo 106-8569, Japan
Executive Secretary: Yoshiro Yamamoto
Tokai University, Japan
E-mail: iasc2008@ism.ac.jp
Website: http://www.iasc-ars.org/IASC2008/

IV. The 2^nd International Workshop on Computational and Financial Econometrics (CFE'08, 19-21 June)

Organized in co-operation with the "International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC)", "Society for Computational Economics" and ERCIM Working Group on "Computing & Statistics"

Main sponsor: Journal of "Computational Statistics & Data Analysis", Elsevier (The Official Journal of the IASC).
Computational and financial econometrics have been of interest for a wide variety of researchers in economics, finance, statistics, mathematics and computing. Financial time series analyses focus on asset valuations over time with emphases on option pricing, volatility measurement, and modelling market microstructure effects. Apart from theoretical developments, financial time series analyses also have a high empirical content. The computational aspects of such analyses are of crucial importance since one typically deals with high-dimensional problems and large numbers of observations. Existing algorithms often do not utilize the best computational techniques for efficiency, stability, or conditioning. Furthermore, environments for conducting econometrics are inherently computer based. Integrated econometrics packages have grown well over the years, but still have much room for development.
The CSDA has published several special issues on Computational and Financial Econometrics that have addressed computational and numerical methods used in solving theoretical and practical issues associated with econometric algorithms, the impact of computing on econometrics, specific applications involving computing and econometrics, and data analytic methods in finance. These special issues indicate the importance of computing in econometrics and highlight research opportunities that exist in this discipline.
This workshop invites presentations that contain computational or financial econometric components. The organization of sessions and minisymposia are encouraged.
Papers containing strong computational statistical or econometric components or substantive data-analytic elements will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed special issue of the journal Computational Statistics & Data Analysis.

Keynote Speakers:
Oliver Linton, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK;
Herman Van Dijk, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Co-Chairs: A. Amendola, D. Belsley, E.J. Kontoghiorghes and M. Paolella.

International Program Committee: G. Barone-Adesi (CH), L. Bauwens (BE), M. Binder (GE), S. Boyarchenko (NL), C. Chen (TW), J. Coakley (UK), C. Croux (BE), R. Davidson (CA), I. Demetriou (GR), K. Fokianos (CY), P. Foschi (IT), C. Francq (FR), A.-M. Fuertes (UK), G. Gallo (IT), M. Gilli (CH), Z. Hlavka (CZ), M. Juillard (FR), G. Kapetanios (UK), D. Kuhn (UK), L. Khalaf (CA), C. Kleiber (CH), O. Linton (UK), A. Luati (IT), T. Lux (GE), J. MacKinnon (CA), D. Maringer (UK), S. Mittnik (GE), I. Moustaki (GR), Y. Omori (JP), M. Ooms (NL), S. Paterlini (IT), D.S.G. Pollock (UK), Z. Psaradakis (UK), T. Proietti (IT), M. Riani (IT), E. Ruiz (ES), B. Rustem (UK), W. Semmler (GE), M. Schroeder (GE), O. Scaillet (CH), S. Siokos (UK), G. Storti (IT), H.K. Van Dijk (NL), M. Wagner (AT), J. Walde (AT), P. Winker (GE), A. Zeileis (AT), Z. Zhang (USA), M. Wolf (CH).

Single page plain text abstracts should be electronically submitted before the deadline.
For further information, refer to the Conference website:
http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/cfe08, or please contact: matrix@dcs.bbk.ac.uk.
The workshop will take place jointly with the ERCIM working Group meeting on Computing & Statistics:
http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/ercim08.

The COMPSTAT 2010 Symposium will take place in Paris. The meeting is scheduled for August 23^rd to 27^th, in the premises of Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), located in the heart of Paris (http://www.cnam.fr/).
The Conference will be organized by CNAM statisticians with the support of INRIA, the French National Institute in Computer Science and Control (http://www.inria.fr/index.en.html).
Besides the main Conference, a satellite meeting or a tutorial will be organized at INRIA Rocquencourt Research Unit, a campus near Versailles a few kilometres from Paris.
Local Organizer: Gilbert Saporta (saporta@cnam.fr).

VI. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring to B.D. Allison

David B. Allison, PhD, Professor of Biostatistics and Head of the Section on Statistical Genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health, has been given the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). There are only 10 individual winners selected each year.
David Allison is an Associate Editor for CSDA, the official journal of the IASC.
This Award, the nation’s highest for mentoring in science, engineering and mathematics, and given by the President of the United States, recognizes ten individuals and one organization that have demonstrated a commitment to mentoring students and increasing the participation of minorities, women and disabled students in science, technology, mathematics and engineering. Allison was honoured at a White House ceremony on November 16^th.

International Association for Statistics Education

Preliminary Notice
The 2010 International Conference on Teaching Statistics will be held in the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 11-16. It is being organised by the IASE and the Statistical Society of Slovenia. The venue will be the Ljubljana Cultural and Congress Centre.
Statistics educators, statisticians, teachers and educators at large are invited to contribute to the Scientific Programme. Types of contributions include invited papers, contributed papers and posters. A person may not present more than one Invited Paper at the Conference, although the same person can be co-author of more than one paper, provided each paper is presented by a different person.
Voluntary refereeing procedures will be implemented for ICOTS-8. Details of how to prepare manuscripts, the refereeing process and final submission arrangements will be announced later.

Invited Papers
Invited Paper Sessions are organized within 10 Conference Topics. Session themes within each Topic are currently being discussed. The themes and Session Organisers with e-mail contact will be available on the ICOTS-8 website http://icots8.org/, under “Scientific Programme” by June 2008. Those interested in submitting an invited paper should contact the appropriate Session Organiser before December 1, 2008.

Contributed Papers
Contributed Paper Sessions will be arranged in a variety of areas. Those interested in submitting a contributed paper should contact either
Gilberte Schuyten (Gilberte.Schuyten@UGent.be),
John McKenzie (mckenzie@babson.edu) or
Flavia Jolliffe (F.Jolliffe@kent.ac.uk)
before September 1, 2009.

General Issues
It is important to know that all participants have to register for the Conference. Details about the registration procedure will be given later.
If requested, the IASE is normally happy to give permission for authors to submit their papers (or a more comprehensive version) to other journals. If this occurs, the author must seek approval of the Editors of the ICOTS-8 Proceedings and the IASE President. The paper must have an acknowledgement saying "This article was written for, and published in, the ICOTS-8 Proceedings and is reprinted (in revised form, if relevant) here with the permission of the IASE".
More information is available from the ICOTS-8 website at http://icots8.org/, which will continue to be updated over the next three years, or from the ICOTS IPC Chair John Harraway, (jharraway@maths.otago.ac.nz), the Programme Chair, Roxy Peck (rpeck@calpoly.edu) and the Scientific Secretary, Helen MacGillivray (h.macgillivray@qut.edu.au).

The Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ) is a peer-reviewed research journal of IASE and is published electronically twice a year. It is freely accessible at www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj or through the “publications” page of the IASE website: www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase.

Contents of Vol. 6, No. 1 (May 2007):
Luc Budé, Margaretha W.J. Van De Wiel, Tjaart Imbos, Math J.J.M. Candel, Nick J. Broers, and Martijn P.F. Berger: "Students’ Achievements in a Statistics Course in Relation to Motivational Aspects and Study Behaviour" .
James E. Corter and Doris C. Zahner: "Use of External Visual Representations in Probability Problem Solving".
Mark A. Earley: "Students’ Expectations of Introductory Statistics Instructors".

Contents of Vol. 6, No. 2 (November 2007):
Dustin L. Jones and James E. Tarr: "An Examination of the Levels of Cognitive Demand Required by Probability Tasks in Middle Grade Mathematics Textbooks".
Robert delMas, Joan Garfield, Ann Ooms, and Beth Chance: "Assessing Students’ Conceptual Understanding after a First Course in Statistics".
Scott R. Evans, Rui Wang, Tzu-Min Yeh, Jeff Anderson, Rammy Haija, Paul Madoc McBratney-Owen, Lynne Peeples, Subir Sinha, Vanessa Xanthakis, Natasa Rajcic, and Jiameng Zhang: "Evaluation of Distance Learning in an “Introduction to Biostatistics” Class: A Case Study".
Dirk T. Tempelaar, Sybrand Schim van der Loeff, and Wim Gijselaers: "A Structural Equation Model Analyzing the Relationship of Students’ Attitudes toward Statistics, Prior Reasoning Abilities and Course Performance".
Iddo Gal has reached the end of his four-year term as SERJ Co-Editor, and will be replaced by Peter Petocz who was appointed as Co-Editor for the years 2008-2011 by the IASE Executive Committee. Peter is Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at Macquarie University, Australia. He is an innovative statistics educator and also an accomplished researcher, who has published on pedagogical issues in statistics and mathematics education. Peter will soon begin working with Tom Short, who continues as Co-Editor through 2009.

The Journal is currently processing papers submitted for a special on research on Reasoning about Informal Statistical Inference, planned for November 2008. Guest Editors will be Dave Pratt (University of London, UK), and Janet Ainley (University of Leicester, UK). Overall, SERJ aims to advance research-based knowledge that can help to improve the teaching, learning and understanding of statistics, probability or related quantitative research methods, at all educational levels and in both formal (classroom-based) and informal (out-of-classroom) contexts. SERJ encourages the submission of quality papers, especially reports of original research (both quantitative and qualitative) and integrative and critical reviews of research literature. Papers should be written so as to make a definite contribution to current knowledge and have implications both for researchers and for practitioners interested in teaching/learning processes. All papers are reviewed internally by an Associate Editor or Editor, and are blind-reviewed by at least two external referees.
Inquiries and submissions should be sent to Co-Editor Tom Short: tshort@iup.edu. Details regarding possible paper types and submission processes are described in the Guidelines for Authors available on the SERJ website at www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj. Prior and current issues of the Journal can also be downloaded from this web page.

The Fifth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy SRTL-5

The Fifth Research Forum in a series of international research forums on statistical reasoning, thinking and literacy has just drawn to a close at the Centre for New Technologies Research in Education of the University of Warwick, England. This particular gathering of researchers has played an important role in advancing our understanding of the richness and depth of reasoning about informal inference, a natural development of previous foci on variability and distribution.
The Forum was sponsored by the Royal Statistical Society (UK), the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Section on Statistical Education, the Institute of Education, University of Warwick, and the School of Education, University of Leicester.
Twenty-four researchers in statistics education from seven countries shared their work, discussed important issues, and initiated collaborative projects in a stimulating and enriching environment. Sessions were held in an informal style, with a high level of interaction. With emphasis on reasoning about informal inference, a wide range of research projects were presented spanning learners of all ages, as well as teachers and practitioners in the workplace. These demonstrated an interesting diversity in research methods, theoretical approaches and points of view. As a result of the success of this gathering, plans are already underway for the next gathering (SRTL-6) in 2009.
The Research Forum proved to be very productive in many ways. Progress was made towards identifying the key elements of statistical inference and in locating the range of resources that might be brought to bear in supporting engagement with those powerful ideas. Several types of scientific publications will be produced including proceedings on the Forum’s website (http://srtl.stat.auckland.ac.nz/), papers in refereed journals, and a special issue of Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ), expected in 2008, with Dave Pratt and Janet Ainley as Guest Editors. These outcomes will all serve as a rich resource for statistics educators and researchers.
Dave Pratt (Institute of Education, University of London) and Janet Ainley (University of Leicester) led the local planning and organizing prior to the SRTL-5 gathering. Yvette Kingston, supported by Peter Johnston-Wilder and Theodosia Prodromou (all University of Warwick) ensured that the Forum ran smoothly and was able to meet its objectives. Thanks to the efforts of this group, participants were able to not only enjoy each other’s creative efforts during the Scientific Programme, but also to appreciate the local culture through a variety of social events that helped to build a sense of a community amongst the researchers.
For further information, please contact the SRTL Co-Chairs:
Joan Garfield, jbg@umn.edu
Dani Ben-Zvi, dbenzvi@univ.haifa.ac.il

Research and Development in the Teaching and Learning of Probability
Monterrey, Mexico – July 6-13, 2008

Probability and statistics education are relatively new disciplines. Both have only recently been introduced into mainstream school curricula in many countries. While application-oriented statistics is undisputed in its relevance, discussion about probability is more ambivalent. When probability is reduced to its classical conception, mainly based on combinatorics or its formal treatment in higher mathematics, it can be seen as irrelevant, and may be abandoned to leave only the statistical element of the stochastics discipline. However, we believe that there are some powerful arguments in favour of a strong role for probability within stochastics curricula.
We invite submissions related to the following topics:
Individuals’ corner
Students’ understanding and misunderstanding of fundamental probabilistic concepts;
Ideas of probability in young children.
Impact of technology
The use of technology for students’ learning of probability;
Using specific software to study probability and sampling distributions;
Special issues in e-learning.
Teacher’s corner
Teacher education on the topic of probability;
Teachers’ conceptions about teaching probability.
Fundamental ideas
The probabilistic idea of random variable; distribution, expectation;
The central limit theorem; convergence;
Bayes’ theorem and conditional probability; independence; exchangeability;
Probabilistic modelling – a probabilistic look at distributions.
Team Chairs
Manfred Borovcnik (Austria), manfred.borovcnik@uni-klu.ac.at
Dave Pratt (UK), d.pratt@ioe.ac.uk
Silvia Alatorre Frenk (Mexico), alatorre@solar.sar.net
Team members
Carmen Batanero (Spain), batanero@ugr.es
Wu Yingkang (China), ykwu@math.ecnu.edu.cn

Research and Development in the Teaching and Learning of Statistics
Monterrey, Mexico – July 6-13, 2008
Statistics education is a growing field of research and development at school and university levels. The topic group will focus on presenting and discussing recent research. Statistics at school level is usually taught in the mathematics classroom in connection with learning probability. Inferential statistics is based on basic understandings of probability. Our topic includes probabilistic aspects in learning statistics, whereas, research with a specific focus on learning probability is being discussed by Topic Study Group #13 of ICME.

We are open to all kinds of relevant research papers, but our specific focus will be on the following topics:
Students’ thinking and reasoning about distributions (including variability, comparing distributions);
Students’ making inferences from data (from informal inference to more formal inference, inference from sample to population or process, from data to context, role of models and probability);
Statistical literacy;
Role of technology (tools, applets, Internet);
Research on teachers and teaching of statistics.

The 2009 Session of The International Statistical Institute Durban, South Africa, August 16–22, 2009

The IASE sponsored Invited Paper Meetings for the 57^th Session in Durban are being organised by Helen MacGillivray (Australia, h.macgillivray@qut.edu.au). The IASE Programme Committee for ISI-57 has chosen the theme - Statistics Education for the Future. More information is available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/.

Countries registered in the First International Statistical Literacy Competition so far

Registration for the First International Statistical Literacy Competition is going well. Two months before the deadline of February 28^th for the northern hemisphere, there are 17 countries represented. These countries, ranked by the number of teachers they have registered – from highest to lowest – are: South Africa, Portugal, Italy, China, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Spain, Mexico, Chile, United States, Colombia, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nigeria and Russia. Visit the competition’s website periodically for the updated list: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/competition. For each teacher registered, there will be several 10-18-year old students participating. Don’t miss the opportunity to encourage teachers in your country to register.
Countries in the southern hemisphere have a later deadline to compensate for the fact that their long summer vacation is during December and January. We anticipate many more countries to be represented, and the number of registrations to increase in those countries mentioned above.
Statistics South Africa is sponsoring all phases of the competition in South Africa, as well as coordinating it. It also has included the competition in the ISIBALO program, and will sponsor the final, where the winners from each country will compete. It is a great honour for the ISLP and all of us involved in the competition to have a host so dedicated to the promotion of statistical literacy, nationally and internationally, and to be part of the ISIBALO program. Statistics South Africa not only sanctions some of the best statistics in the country in order to make them “official”, but it also takes some of the best teachers in the country to Statistics education conferences and workshops. Statistics South Africa also took two of the eldest teachers in the country to dance and talk with other statisticians during ISI 56 in Lisboa, and to invite everybody to attend ISI 57 in Durban. These are teachers who have a school in their heart.

2009 Best Cooperative Project Award in Statistical Literacy: Call for Nominations
The International Statistical Literacy Project of the International Association for Statistics Education (ISLP/IASE), a Section of the ISI, is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2009 Best Cooperative Project Award in Statistical Literacy. The 2007 Award went to Project ALEA of Statistics Portugal (http://www.alea.pt).

This award is given every two years in recognition of outstanding, innovative, and influential statistical literacy projects that affect a broad segment of the general public and are fruit of the cooperation of different types of institutions (national statistical office and schools, schools and statistical societies, statistical societies and statistical offices, statistical societies, college, schools, etc.). A project making a good candidate for this award should have the following characteristics:
a. It is currently alive and has potential to remain so in the future, that is, the project is currently being maintained. Projects that stopped being maintained in the past should not apply.
b. Access to the project resources and membership in the project is free to all.
c. Educates on concepts of statistical theory and data analysis, their use in the development of information about countries and societies, and their application in a broad spectrum of disciplines and areas of society, with concern towards modern data handling, experimentation, and graphical methods.
d. Has content that are pedagogically sound for a general audience (adult and youth, media and statisticians, teachers and students, social and natural sciences).
e. Involves two or more institutions that would usually not work in cooperation. Examples are projects that involve the cooperation between a national statistical office, a school and a government education office, like the ALEA Project, winner of the 2007 award. (Other examples are cooperation among universities and schools, or schools and statistical societies or media experts, statistical societies, national statistical offices, schools, and combinations thereof.)
f. It is attractive to a broad audience, i.e., it has a “fun” appeal to it, invites to enter and learn, read and use the project on a daily basis as a source of knowledge and information. Some characteristics that make it such are: Color, variety, easy to find material, dynamism, updated, sound pedagogy, contemporary subject matter, interactivity.
g. Has archives that are widely available. For example, if there is a regularly run contest, past winners should be known. If current events have been interpreted statistically in the past, those interpretations should be easy to access.
h. Has international outreach and makes creative use of available resources. For example, a web page in English would help the dissemination of the resources to many countries.

To nominate a project, interested parties must submit a nomination letter and/or questions to Juana Sanchez, Director of the ISLP (jsanchez@stat.ucla.edu), no later than February 28th, 2009. In your letter, please explain how the project nominated satisfies all the characteristics described above. If the project does not have a web page, the ISLP reserves the right to request additional information. Projects will be evaluated by a panel of international statistical literacy experts selected by the ISLP during the spring of 2009. The winner and finalists will be announced during the ISLP open meeting at the ISI Session in Durban, South Africa, in August 2009.
The website of the contest is http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/bestproject.

We are very pleased to congratulate Statistician General of South Africa, Pali Lehohla for the award he received from the South African Statistical Association for his contributions to the improvement of statistical literacy in South Africa. The award was given to him during the inaugural session of the 50th Annual Conference of the South African Statistical Association, 29th October-2nd November in Misty Hills Conference Center, Muldersdrift, South A frica. The South African Statistical Association Education Committee works in close cooperation with Statistics South Africa to promote statistical literacy in the country.
The ISLP web page has more information on these news items and many others. Visit us at
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/.

International Association of Survey Statisticians

It is both an honour and a big challenge to preside over the IASS after Gordon Brackstone’s presidential term. He directed the activities of our Association to high standards of excellence, provided a steady leadership and certainly knew how to get the best from collaborators in the Associations’ Executive Committee, Council and membership. I hope that all members will join me in giving Gordon due recognition for his services to the IASS and a big THANK YOU.
Time also to thank outgoing members of the Executive, Vice-Presidents John Kovar and Jelke Bethlehem, and Scientific Secretary Lilli Japec, for their many contributions to the IASS during the past 2½ years. John will now be busy running the ISI Programme Coordinating Committee for ISI Durban in 2009, a challenging role for which we wish him well.
I welcome aboard our elected members of the Executive: Pierre Lavallée and Seppo Laaksonen, as Vice-Presidents, and Steve Heeringa as Scientific Secretary. In addition to contributing to the other activities and debates within the Executive, Seppo agreed to look into ways of improving our network of country representatives, Pierre will look after the scientific meetings activities, and Steve will coordinate the short course programme for ISI 2009 in Durban – see the call for course proposals presented later in this issue. Susan Linacre also joined our Executive as President-Elect, to serve as President from 2009-2011. Congratulations, Susan, and welcome.
Thanks are also due to outgoing Council Members Pascal Ardilly, J-J. Droesbeke, Guido Ferrari, Linda Hewitt, Naman Keita and Hiek Som. Remaining Council Members (2005-2009) Giuliana Coccia (Italy), Geoffrey Lee (Australia), Leila Mohadjer (United States), Sarah M. Nusser (United States), Don Royce (Canada) and Wei Juan (China) are now joined by incoming Council Members (2007-2011) Jairo Arrow (South Africa), Louise Bourque (Canada), Kathryn Inglis-Clark (Australia), Dalisay Maligalig (Philippines), Paul-André Salamin (Switzerland), and Shyam Upadhaya (Nepal). Such diversity of geographic and professional representation in the Council shall ensure that our decisions and actions reflect the core values and goals of our Association. I welcome the opportunity to work together with such a distinguished group of Survey Statisticians from all over the world.
Last but not the least, we continue to enjoy the generous support of INSEE in France from our Executive Director, Michel Péronnet, and Secretariat, with Anne Marie Vespa and Claude Olivier, for which we are also very grateful. I shall soon visit them in Libourne to discuss ways in which we can improve the services and communications with our membership.
I hope those of you who attended the ISI Session in Lisboa enjoyed it as much as I did. The 14 Invited Paper Meetings (IPMs) organised or co-organised by the IASS Programme Committee under David Steel were all well attended. We thank David, all the members of his Programme Committee, together with organisers, authors and discussants who worked to make them a success story. As many of you will know, preparations for the IPMs to be organised or co-sponsored by IASS during the 2009 meetings in Durban are well underway under the leadership of our council member Leila Mohadjer, and a list of the topics for these sessions appears later in this issue. The full list of topics for IPM sessions appeared in the October issue of ISI Newsletter, and is available from the ISI website at (http://isi.cbs.nl/Nlet/NLet073.htm).
I am pleased to announce that council member Geoff Lee agreed to Chair the IASS Programme Committee to prepare the programme of IASS invited paper meetings for the Dublin Session of the ISI in 2011. Geoff will now appoint his Committee to work towards this goal. Those wishing to contribute to this objective, please feel free to get in touch with him directly.
Let me use my first letter as President to set out some goals and ideas for my term in office. This is meant to provide all members with a chance to know what we intend to do, and to contribute their views, criticisms and suggestions.
I wish to increase IASS´s membership and participation in all activities promoted by the Association. Members are therefore encouraged to take an active role in recruiting new members. If each one of us commits to recruiting a single new member, we could quickly double the membership!
I believe that membership to IASS is good value for money: discounted subscription to the two excellent journals: Survey Methodology and the Journal of Official Statistics; cheaper registration fees to the ISI Sessions and all other meetings organised by our Association; excellent newsletter and website; the opportunities to take the short courses we offer in combination with the ISI Sessions every two years; networking in general, as well as contact opportunities with the leaders in our field from around the world, are just a few of the benefits of membership that you can use to attract fellow statisticians to become members. If you think that there are other services we could aim to provide members with, please let us have your ideas and suggestions. Meanwhile, please help to recruit at least one new member for IASS: at just € 10 for those in developing countries, or € 20 for other members, this is a very attractive membership package. The registration form can be found on our website (http://isi.cbs.nl/iass/).
One of the rich parts of our activities is the programme of professional and scientific meetings that we either organise independently or co-sponsor with sister societies. Just after the ISI Session in Lisboa, we sponsored the Satellite Meeting on “Innovative Methodologies for Censuses in the New Millennium”, which took place in Southampton, UK. Papers and presentation materials from this Conference are available from http://www.s3ri.soton.ac.uk/isi2007/programme.php. It is time to consider ideas for similar satellite meetings to take place around the time of the Durban Session in 2009. Ideas and proposals for such meetings are welcome. Members are also invited to be proactive in proposing, promoting and taking an active part in the Association’s activities. Do let us know if you have suggestions about activities that we could sponsor or help to promote and organise.
Let me now turn to the publication of our newsletter. Steve Heeringa (Editor) and Gail Arnold (Production Manager) have taken care of The Survey Statistician over the past 4½ years. We must pay tribute to their dedication and competence, which is evident in the quality we find in our newsletter. However, it is time to move on, since Steve is taking over as Scientific Secretary. I am very pleased to announce that Dan Hedlin (dan.hedlin@scb.se) and Annica Isaksson (anisa@ida.liu.se) from Sweden will be the new joint Editors of The Survey Statistician, starting with the June 2008 issue. We wish them well, and encourage you to send them any suggestions or contributions to our newsletter. In particular, I urge our country representatives and other collaborators to keep their country reports coming, so that we can all keep abreast of the developments and activities worldwide. We welcome members´ contributions in the form of short news articles, information about statistical activities in their countries, news of events and developments, as well as information education or professional opportunities that might be available and should be disseminated to the IASS membership. The new Editors will in due course set out their own plans for the newsletter
We are also fortunate to have Eric Rancourt continuing to look after our website (http://isi.cbs.nl/iass/allUK.htm). I plan to work closely with Eric to enhance our website even further, seeking to make it home to more services to our membership and to increase its use as a means to facilitate communication with and amongst the membership.
Let me finish this first letter by inviting you to help strengthen our Association by taking part and keeping in touch. I look forward to working with you all.

This issue of the Survey Statistician follows the biennial transition to new leadership of the IASS. As the departing Editor of the Survey Statistician and the newly elected Scientific Secretary, I would like to begin my report by saying thank you to the IASS members who have assisted me in past activities and to those who prepared me for my new role. I wish to thank Anders Christianson, John Kovar, Eric Rancourt, Dennis Trewin, Claude Olivier, Lilli Japec and Gordon Brackstone for their editorial and production contributions to the Survey Statistician. A special note of appreciation is due to Gail Arnold who served as Production Editor for the Survey Statistician and did the lion’s share of the work in assembling and formatting each semi-annual issue since January 2004. As I move into new duties as Scientific Secretary, I wish to acknowledge the mentorship and support of Lilli Japec, IASS Scientific Secretary 2005-2007, and Pedro Silva, IASS President.
The principal role of the office of IASS Scientific Secretary is to support and promote the scientific exchange, education and training activities of our Association. To that end, I encourage you to send me information on conferences, workshops, web-based or in-person training resources that you feel might benefit the general IASS membership. I will see that this information is included in regular reports in the Survey Statistician and is also posted on the IASS website. Please send your notices to me by e-mail at sheering@isr.umich.edu.
Although IASS is not a direct sponsor, one Conference that might be of broad interest to IASS members is one on sample surveys and Bayesian statistics, which will take place in August 2008 in Southampton, UK. An item on this Conference appears in the ISI Calendar of Events (http://isi.cbs.nl/calendar.htm). Further information on this August 2008 Conference is available at http://www.s3ri.soton.ac.uk/ssbs08/.

The most significant educational activity of the IASS is the programme of short courses in Survey Statistics and Methodology that are offered immediately prior to the biennial meetings of the International Statistical Institute (ISI).
The IASS offered six short courses immediately prior to the formal opening of the 2007 ISI Lisboa Session. Several IASS members have already volunteered ideas for new courses that they feel would be a valuable addition to the pre-conference training programme for 2009. The IASS Executive is now actively planning for 2009 and is interested in hearing proposals for new short courses to be offered in Durban. If you have a short course topic that you feel would be a valuable addition to the Durban 2009 programme, please send a short proposal for the new course to Steve Heeringa (sheering@isr.umich.edu).
Proposals for new short courses need not be overly formal; however, it is important that your description of the course address each of the following areas:

Statement of special relevance to statisticians in developing and transitional countries, in particular junior statisticians from African countries that will be attending the 2009 ISI Durban Session.
Please submit your proposal for a new short course to Steve Heeringa (sheering@isr.umich.edu) by April 1, 2008. After that date, the IASS Executive will review the historical offerings and the new proposals and establish a preliminary programme of short courses for Durban 2009.

The IASS Programme Committee for the 57^th Session of the ISI was formed in the summer of 2006. The Committee includes the following members.

The Committee came up with an initial list of about 80 topics for the 2009 Invited Paper Meetings. In addition, suggestions were solicited from the IASS membership through announcements in the newsletter. The initial list was first reduced to about 35 topics by consolidating similar topics, and eliminating topics that were covered in recent ISI meetings. The Committee then created a final list of 23 topics that was submitted to John Kovar, the Chair of the 2009 ISI Programme Coordinating Committee, prior to the 2007 ISI meetings.
In creating our final list of topics proposed for the 57^th Session, we looked for a balance of theoretical and practical statistical topics. Preference was generally given to topics of wide and practical interest with an emphasis on new developments. In addition, special attention was given to topics addressing problems faced by developing countries, and especially topics of interest to southern Africa.
The Committee came up with a list of organisers and, in many cases, lists of potential speakers for the proposed topics with the goal of having a good geographic (including transitional and developing countries), gender, and age representation. However, in many cases, we were unsuccessful in bringing in organisers or speakers from developing countries as lack of resources prohibits these colleagues from travelling to Durban. In addition, the Committee actively engaged in discussions with other Sections, looking for opportunities to collaborate. The following is a list of proposed IASS sponsored (or co-sponsored) sessions as reported by the 2009 ISI Programme Coordinating Committee and included in the ISI Newsletter, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2007.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Committee members for all their efforts in putting together such a strong list of proposed topics for the 57^th Session. I appreciate the attention they gave to this task given their very busy schedules. I would like to thank Gordon for his guidance and support in organising the Committee and the subsequent activities, and many thanks to John Kovar for his effective leadership of the Coordinating Committee.

IASS Related Invited Paper Meetings for the 57^th ISI Session, Durban, South Africa
Session number	Invited Paper Meeting Title	Committee(s) Responsible	Organizer Name, country, e-mail
IPM16	Comparing Poverty and Prices across National Boundaries - the ICP Programmed and Poverty PPPs	IAOS IASS Local Hosts	Mirriam Babita, South Africa,
IPM27	Uncertainty in Statistical Matching	IASC IASS	Mauro Scanu, Italy, ISTAT, scanu@istat.it and Tomas Aluja-Banet, Spain, tomas.aluja@upc.edu
IPM47	Designing and Conducting Surveys in Adverse Conditions (tentative title).	IASS GTC	To be determined, c/o Leyla Mohadjer, leylamohadjer@westat.com
IPM48	Sampling and Estimation Issues in Health Statistics	IASS Local Hosts	Wilton Bussab, Brazil, bussab@fgvsp.br
IPM49	Measuring and Assessing Respondent Load	IASS Local Hosts	Richard Penny, New Zealand, rnpenny@stats.govt.nz
IPM50	New Developments in Monitoring and Controlling Field Data Collection Activities	IASS	Dina Neiger, Australia,
IPM51	Recent Developments in Survey Methodology Research - Design and Estimation	IASS	Paul Smith, UK, paul.smith@ons.gov.uk
IPM52	Outliers in Complex Sample Surveys	IASS	Julie Gershunskaya, USA, and Partha Lahiri, USA, plahiri@survey.umd.edu
IPM53	Nonresponse Bias in Surveys	IASS	Jelke Bethlehem, Netherlands, jbtm@cbs.nl
IPM54	New Developments in Modeling and Analysis of Survey Data	IASS	Jay Breidt, USA, fjb@iastate.edu
IPM55	New Methodologies in Sampling Rare and Elusive Populations	IASS	Sanghamitra Pal, India,
IPM56	Modeling Business Data to Produce Small Area Estimation	IASS	Mike Hidiroglou, Canada, Mike.Hidiroglou@statcan.ca
IPM57	Integrated Household Surveys - Design, Implementation, and Estimation	IASS	Denise Silva, UK and Brazil, Denise.Silva@ons.gsi.gov.uk
IPM58	Issues In Price Index Methodology and Measurement	IASS	Sylvie Gauthier, Canada, Sylvie.Gauthier@statcan.ca
IPM59	Dissemination of Survey Results to Public	IASS	Tommy Wright, USA, twright@census.gov
IPM60	What Role, If Any, Should Weights Play in the Analysis of Survey Data	IASS	Phil Kott, USA, phil_kott@nass.usda.gov
IPM67	Models of modern data and metadata systems	GTC IFC IASS	To be determined, c/o Paul van den Bergh, Paul.Van-den-Bergh@bis.org
IPM97	Estimating demographic statistics with flawed vital registration systems	GTC IUSSP IASS	John Cleland, UK, john.cleland@lshtm.ac.uk

Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC)

The IFC organised a workshop on "The use of surveys by central banks” from 11 to 13 December 2007, in cooperation with the Centre for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA) and the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina. The workshop took place in Buenos Aires and focused on methodological issues and challenges faced by central banks in conducting surveys. Lively discussions took place among the 26 Latin American participants and 5 central bank experts from outside the region. The workshop also provided an excellent opportunity to market the IFC and its activities in the Latin American region.
This workshop in Buenos Aires was the second in a series of three IFC-organised workshops on this topic. The first took place in Pune, India, from 27 to 29 June 2007 in cooperation with SEACEN (the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre). A third workshop will be presented in cooperation with the Austrian National Bank at the Joint Vienna Institute from 18 to 20 March 2008. The results of these three workshops will be published in a future issue of the IFC Bulletin.

On 4 and 5 March 2008, the IFC will sponsor a workshop on "Securities statistics”. The event will be hosted by the IMF in Washington, D.C. The aim of the workshop is to identify issues that users and compilers of statistics in this area face and how existing international methodologies could be improved to assist them.

The fourth IFC Conference will take place on 26 and 27 August 2008 in Basel. The conference will focus on “Measuring financial innovation and its impact”. Themes that could be covered include: compilation of data on new financial instruments; measuring the impact of innovations on financial market activities; and new risk measurement and management practices in financial institutions. Participation is open to IFC institutional members, other central banks, as well as members of other ISI Sections and committees. Persons interested in submitting papers for the conference should feel free to contact the IFC Secretariat for more information.

The IFC will sponsor or co-sponsor 6 IPMs for the 57^th ISI Session in Durban in 2009, namely:

Furthermore, the IFC has identified topics for possible CPMs, some of which might be of particular relevance for the African region. The Committee will also consider holding a satellite meeting with central banks from the Southern African Development Community prior to the start of the ISI Session.

International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

ISBIS has now developed a Four-year Plan of activities for the period 2007-2011. This can be found on the ISBIS website, www.isbis.org. Several of the activities in the Plan are based on active collaboration with other professional societies, taking initiatives in Less Developed countries, and including younger members of the profession in the work of the Society.

ISBIS-2008 is an international symposium focusing on quantitative aspects of Banking, Insurance and Finance, and important statistical issues relating to productivity improvement and decision-making at all levels of business and industry. Many world leading quantitative financial analysts and industrial statisticians will be participating.
The symposium will be held in the beautiful medieval city of Prague (Czech Republic) from 1-4 July 2008.
ISBIS-2008 will cover, among others, the following major themes in the areas of, respectively, Quantitative Analytics for Banking, Finance and Insurance and Business and Industrial Statistics:
Modelling and Managing Portfolio Credit Risk
Structured Credit Products and Securitisation
Regulatory Issues in Banking, such as Basel II, internal rating systems, model validation
Integrating Market and Credit Risk Term
Structure Models Pricing and Hedging of Derivatives
Alternative Investments
Asset-liability modelling
Portfolio Management and Dynamic Portfolio Optimisation
Life Insurance
Pensions and Retirement Securities
Mortality Models and Securities
Regulatory Issues in Insurance, such as Solvency II, Solvency Tests
Energy and Power: Derivatives and Risk Management
Design of Experiments
Process Control
Reliability
Six Sigma and Other Quality Management Paradigms
Case Studies and Novel Statistical Applications
Information Technology and Network Modelling
Software Engineering
Chemometrics
Pharmaceutical Statistics
Large Data Sets in Business and Industry
New Developments and Applications in Data Mining and Machine Learning
Risk Analysis and Management
Market Research
Panel Discussions on current research and future needs/challenges

Authors will have the opportunity to submit extended versions of their papers for publication in a special edition of the Society's journal, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry.
ISBIS-2008 is being scientifically organised by:
ISBIS-2008 Director
Nicholas Fisher, ValueMetrics, Australia
nif@valuemetrics.com.au
Chair of International Scientific Program
George Michailidis, University of Michigan, USA
gmichail@umich.edu
Chair of Quantitative Analytics Program
Rüdiger Kiesel, University of Ulm, Germany
ruediger.kiesel@uni-ulm.de

ISBIS is sponsoring the 2008 International Conference on Applied Probability and Statistics (with emphasis in Business and Industrial Statistics). CAPS-2008 will be held at the Press Club in Hanoi, Vietnam, from December 1-3, 2008.
The first International Conference on Probability and Statistics and their Applications was held in Hanoi in 1999. Similar to that conference, CAPS-2008 aims to promote practical applications of probability and statistics, particularly in business and industry, and to strengthen international relations among researchers in these areas. Contributed papers to the Conference can be on Applied Probability or any area of Statistics. The Conference is of interest both to researchers and to practitioners from business and industry. Main topics:
Bayesian Statistics
Bioinformatics
Biomatics
Chemometrics
Computational and Graphical Statistics
Data Mining
Design of Experiments
Integrating Market and Credit Risk
Longitudinal Data Analysis
Mortality Models and Securities
Nonparametric Statistics
Portfolio Management
Pricing and Hedging of Derivatives
Reliability
Sampling Techniques
Six Sigma
Statistical Modelling
Statistical Process Control

CAPS-2008's confirmed keynote and invited speakers include Nick Fisher (ISBIS President), Vijay Nair (University of Michigan, USA), D.K.J. Lin (Penn State University, USA), and Pham Gia Thu (University of Moncton, Canada).
There will be an ISBIS Workshop on Statistics for Business and Industry on 30 November 2008. Other workshops are under consideration and will be announced shortly.
CAPS-2008 venue is one of the first-class conference facilities
in the heart of Hanoi and within walking distance from the magnificent Opera House, Hoan Kiem Lake, Ngoc Son Temple, St. Joseph Cathedral, Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, Hoa Lo Prison ("The Hanoi Hilton") and shopping outlets.
Call for papers and other useful information can be downloaded from: www.action-m.com/CAPS2008.
If you are interested in attending the CAPS-2008, please express your interest online:
www.action-m.com/CAPS2008/prereg_form.php.

One of the objectives of ISBIS is to develop and promote relationships among national and regional organizations involved in activities similar to those of ISBIS.
With this in mind, ISBIS is sponsoring the opening session plus four invited sessions at the XVIII Simposio de Estadística in Cartegena, Colombia, from 11-15 August 2008.
This symposium is the National Statistics meeting for Colombia and Venezuela. Stu Hunter is the featured speaker at the opening session. Bovas Abraham is organizing two sessions. Jim Simpson, the current Editor of Quality Engineering, is organizing another session, and Geoff Vining is organizing the fourth. Bill Meeker and Luis Escobar are teaching a short course on reliability.
The conference website is: www.ciencias.unal.edu.co/estadistica/simposio/index.html.

ISBIS is proud to officially announce the address of its new website. Although the site is still partly under construction, this is now the place to look for up-to-date information on the activities of ISBIS. All members are therefore kindly invited to update their favorite link to www.isbis.org.
Features still under development include a member-only zone with electronic access to the AMSBI-Journal, list of members by country, papers from past conferences and much more.
For further information on the website, or suggestions for its content, please contact Yves Grize (ISBIS President-Elect) at yves-laurent.grize@baloise.ch.

ISBIS membership is open to all individuals and organisations with a professional interest in any aspect of business, financial and industrial statistics, including:
Research, teaching, training and consulting;
Involvement in the use of statistics in areas such as quality and reliability improvement, software development, financial statistics, business and management, etc.
There are individual, institutional, and student memberships. Details and application forms can be obtained from the ISBIS website: www.isbis.org or contact Nicholas Fisher (nif@valuemetrics.com.au).
If you are already a member of the ISI and one of its Sections, you can add ISBIS to your membership for a small fee by sending an e-mail to Margaret de Ruiter-Molloy in the ISI Office (@cbs.nl).

ISI - INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE