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International Association for Official Statistics 

		Editorial Address	rob.edwards@abs.gov.au   Additional address details forthcoming in the next issue of the Newsletter
		President	Heli Jeskanen-Sundström, Statistics Finland, FIN-00022 Statistics Finland, Finland Tel: +358 9 1734 3389 – Fax: +358 9 1734 2442 E-mail: heli.jeskanen-sundstrom@stat.fi
		Website	http://tilastokeskus.fi/iaos

Index IAOS

Recent Activities

Changes to the IAOS Websites

Revitalising the IAOS

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics (SCORUS)

Heli Jeskanen-Sundström Reports: 

Recent Activities

Recent IAOS activities have largely centred on the following topics:

• Carrying out IAOS activities during the 54^th Session of the ISI in Berlin, in August 2003.
• Planning of the IAOS/IASS Conference on “Poverty, Social Exclusion and Development” 
• Planning of the IAOS activities for the 55^th Session of the ISI to be held in Sydney, 5-12 April 2005 and the two IAOS Satellite meetings
• Changes to the IAOS websites 
• Revitalising the IAOS

IAOS Executive Committee
Officers for the period 2003-2005 are:
President Heli Jeskanen-Sundström (Finland)
President-Elect Hermann Habermann (USA)
Vice-Presidents Ida Stamhuis (The Netherlands)
Hussein Shakhatreh (Jordan)
Pali Lehola (South Africa)
Rob Edwards (Australia)
SCORUS Representative Derek Bond (United Kingdom)
Treasurer Daniel Berze (Director of the ISI)

IAOS General Assembly, Berlin 18^th August 2003

The IAOS General Assembly had its meeting during the 54^th ISI Conference in Berlin. Mr Paul Cheung, President of the IAOS, presented the Executive Committee’s report on the activities during the period 2001-2003. The financial report presented at the meeting showed a sound financial result. During this period, the IAOS organised two successful conferences. The conference with the topic on “Statistics for the Information Society” was hosted by the Japan Statistical Bureau and the Japan Statistics Centre, it was held in Tokyo in August 2001 as a Satellite Conference to the 53^rd ISI Seoul Session. The topic of the second conference was “Official Statistics and the New Economy” and it was hosted by the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom in London in August 2002. 

The General Assembly accepted the plans to hold a joint conference with the IASS on the topic “Poverty, Social Exclusion and Statistics” in 2004 and to organise two Satellite meetings during the 2005 Sydney ISI Session, in New Caledonia and in New Zealand. GA also discussed the draft IAOS scientific programme for 2005 Sydney ISI Session. 

At the GA meeting, there was a lively discussion about the membership issues and “revitalising the IAOS”.

Finally, the new Executive Committee was elected. The members of the outgoing Executive Committee were thanked for their very much appreciated work done on behalf of the IAOS. The outgoing members are: Paul Cheung, Siu Ming Tam, Irena Krizman, Maria Carré, Farhad Mehran and Markandey Rai. 

The 54^th Session of the ISI Conference in Berlin

The 54^th ISI Session was held in Berlin on 13-20 August 2003. The IAOS Sessions were organised by the programme committee under the leadership of Siu-Ming Tam. The IAOS sessions comprised the following topics:

• IAOS Forum: knowledge and competence management in national statistical organisations
• The measurement of economic progress
• Micro data – managing the dilemma between access, privacy and confidentiality
• Managing and maintaining the independence and integrity of national statistics – experience of developed and developing countries
• New directions in social statistics
• Measuring the performance of National Statistics Offices
• Intra-city differentials and their measurement issues
• Impact of migration on urban areas

All the meetings had a great success. They were well organised and had a large number of interesting presentations. Consequently, the meetings were attended by lot of people and there were many lively discussions. Many thanks to Siu-Ming and all the organisers and contributors!

IAOS/IASS Conference: Poverty, Social Exclusion and Development

The Department of Statistics from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan kindly offered to host this joint IAOS/IASS Conference, which is scheduled to be held on 29 November – 1 December 2004, in Jordan. You will get more information about the Conference via the IAOS and the Conference’s own websites later on. For further questions at this stage, please contact 
The Local Organiser: Dr Hussein Shakhatreh, Director General of Statistics
e-mail: hshakhatreh@dos.gov.jo  or 
Scientific Programme Committee: Alain Azouvi (Chair) 
e-mail: alain.azouvi@wanadoo.fr 

IAOS Programme for the 55^th ISI Conference in Sydney 

The ISI Programme Co-ordinating Committee met during the 54^th ISI Conference to discuss the scientific programme for the 55^th ISI Conference in Sydney (Australia), which will take place from 5 to 12 April 2005. The tentative list the IAOS Invited Papers meetings, prepared by the IAOS Scientific Programme Committee chaired by Fred Ho, is the following:

• IAOS Forum
• Impact of the “international indicators of development” movement on national statistical programme priorities
• Statistical measurement issues requiring collaboration among NSOs
• Statistics on international migration
• Response burden and public cooperation in statistical surveys
• The role of official statistics in innovation, knowledge management and development of the new economy
• The regional and urban dimension of official statistics: small area statistics and data of particular relevance to regional and urban planning 
• Standards for regional and urban indicators
• Asian Statistical Forum

The IAOS also looks forward to organising some meetings together with the other ISI Sections, like IASS, IASE and the Irving Fisher Committee, on topics of the joint interest. If you want to get more information on the IAOS Programme at this stage, please contact Fred Ho: e-mail: fwhho@censtatd.gov.hk 

IAOS Satellite Meetings during the 2005 Sydney ISI Session

Preparations are ongoing to organise two IAOS Satellite meetings during the 2005 Sydney ISI Session. New Caledonia will host a Satellite meeting before the ISI Session on the topic “Issues for Official Statistics from Small Economies”. This will be held in Noumea between 31 March – 2 April, 2005. The second meeting will be held after the ISI Session in New Zealand and it will be hosted by Statistics New Zealand. The tentative topic is “Statistics on Small Populations”. More information will be available later on.

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Changes to the IAOS Websites

During the recent two years, the IAOS web sites have been managed by Statistics Singapore. Now, the responsibility of these sites will be taken over by Statistics Finland. The websites are opened on 31 October 2003 with the following address: http://tilastokeskus.fi/iaos .
During the transition period, there is a good opportunity to make changes and improvements according to the user’s wishes. So, all your comments will be welcomed by Mr. Markku Huttunen, Webmaster of Statistics Finland, e-mail: markku.huttunen@stat.fi 

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Revitalising the IAOS

During the ISI Berlin Session, the special meeting on “Revitalising the IAOS” was organised. The aim of the meeting was to discuss how we can ensure that the IAOS – also in the future – plays a vital and dynamic role in the field of official statistics. Due to the timeframe for the General Assembly discussions are always restricted as a result of the administrative matters, it was felt useful to continue the exchange of views at this open meeting. More than thirty participants were able to attend. The discussion was warmed up by Ms. Denise Lievesley, former President of the IAOS. 

As the background for the discussion were the concerns expressed by many members about the future of the IAOS, when the amount of the IAOS members is levelling off and the average age of present members is increasing. At the same time, the demands for official statistics and their quality are increasing and the needs for networking with the users of official statistics are becoming more and more important. The role and the profile of the IAOS are not very well known amongst the international statistical society, not even amongst our own members. The new electronic means to facilitate the activities and contacts amongst the members is not very efficiently used within the IAOS either. 

During the lively discussion, a number of new views and ideas were presented to strengthen the IAOS. The Executive Committee will work with these issues and later on, suggest a list of measures to the members. The discussion will then continue on the IAOS websites. Those members who are interested in receiving a more comprehensive (but totally unofficial) notes of the special meeting, and/or are interested to contribute to this work, are kindly requested to contact the author of this report.

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Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

A meeting of the SCORUS members during the 54th ISI Conference in Berlin resulted in the reorganisation of the Executive Committee for the period 2003/2005. The former Chair, Markandey Rai, and Vice-Chair, Derek Bond, were thanked for their promotion of SCORUS and its activities during the 2001/2003 period.

The current Executive Committee consists of: 
Derek Bond, Northern Ireland, Chairperson 
Wendy Thomas, USA, Vice-Chair 
Leila Lankinen, Finland, Editor of Cities and Regions 
Anna Milito, Italy 
Huang, Lang Hui, China 
Dominic Leung, Hong Kong 
Claus A. Woll, Denmark 

The upcoming issue of Cities and Regions features articles by Joanna Van Antwerpen, Uwe Neumann, and Mary Golenz. The next issue will bring together the major presentations and results of the Potsdam Conference organised in conjunction with the Deutsche Statistische Woche as a Satellite Conference of the 54^th ISI Conference in Berlin. For further information on Cities and Regions, contact the editor, Ms. Leila Lankinen leila.lankinen@hel.fi .

SCORUS continues its active role in organising Sessions for recent and future ISI and IAOS conferences. In addition to the Potsdam Satellite Conference, SCORUS organised two Sessions for the 54^th ISI Conference: 

• Intra-city differentials and their measurement issues (organiser Markandey Rai)
• Impact of migration on urban areas (organiser Klaus Trutzel)

In addition, two Sessions for the IAOS Conference in Jordan December 2004 are being organised, as well as Sessions for the 55^th ISI Conference in Australia in 2005. 

The two day Potsdam Satellite Conference was devoted to “Standards for Urban and Regional Indicators”. As centres of growth and focal points of social and economic problems, cities require sophisticated policies on multiple levels. They need a thorough understanding of the problems and the effectiveness of political measures designed to deal with them. The first goal of this conference was to highlight the political demand for urban and regional level statistics from a global, European, and statistical perspective, as well as examine both the structural and topical issues involved in the development of effective comparable indicators for a variety of issues. The second goal was to develop a strategy for involving a broader range of individuals in the development of urban indicators. The keynote speakers provided the framework within which the remaining conference took place:

• Nefise Bazoglu, UN-Habitat, Nairobi: "Urban indicators in the context of the UN Millennium Development Goals"

• Lewis Dijkstra, European Commission, Brussels: "European cohesion policy and urban statistics - Balancing information needs and political responsibility"

• Willem De Vries, UN Statistics Division, New York: "The case for internationally comparable urban and regional statistics"

The four workshops allowed participants to discuss a range of topics and develop a strategy for pursuing their work collectively through the development of a SCORUS Virtual Community. The workshops included:
Measuring social coherence of the resident population 
Organiser: Uwe Neumann, Germany
Policy measures for social coherence and integration and measuring their effects 
Organiser: Joanna Van Antwerpen, the Netherlands
Territorial reference of urban and regional phenomena 
Organiser: Derek Bond, Northern Ireland
Metadata for urban and regional statistics 
Organiser: Wendy L. Thomas, USA

Standards for urban and regional indicators are needed more than ever. SCORUS wants to contribute to the important task of developing standards for urban and regional indicators in a systematic way. The result of this conference has been the establishment of the SCORUS International Network for Regional and Urban Statistics at http://www.scorusnet.com . 

With this new site, SCORUS provides the platform for discussion of topics such as improving the international comparability of statistical data and developing international standards for urban and regional indicators by establishing a virtual community involving Internet bulletin and discussion boards for the exchange of information. It provides the forum for statisticians, planners and researchers interested in improving the knowledge base about cities and regions. Registration and participation is open to all interested parties.

This new activity builds on the traditional SCORUS work of organising international and regional conferences and contributing to conferences of international organisations, allowing members to work effectively together between meetings.

Two upcoming conferences sponsored by SCORUS:

The 8^th Annual Berlin SCORUS meeting on "Statistics and the Help for Young People in Big Cities", 19-21 January 2004 in Berlin. The focus of the 2004 meeting is "The Family Situation". Organised by Prof. Elsner in co-operation with Statistisches Landesamt Berlin, it is sponsored by a training institution of the Senate of Berlin situated in the Hunting Castle of Glienicke. Unlike the larger Biennial SCORUS Conference, this meeting is restricted to fifty selected participants, from a variety of countries. This restriction in the number of participant allows us to engage in important discussions between social workers, people from youth administration, university personnel (working on urban and regional problems), employees from research institutions and official statisticians, in order to get real results from the conference. For additional information, see www.statistik-berlin.de .

The SCORUS 24^th Biennial Conference on Regional and Urban Statistics: Understanding Change, taking place at the University of Minnesota (USA), 19-21 May 2004. The call for papers will be posted by 1 October 2003. For additional information, visit the conference website at http://www.pop.umn.edu/scorus .

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International Association for Statistical Education

	Editorial Address		Susan Starkings, Learning & Development Centre, South Bank University, Borough Road, London SE1 0AA, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7815 7455 Fax: +44 (0)20 7815 6464 E-mail: starkisa@lsbu.ac.uk
	President		Chris Wild, Department of Statistics & Mathematics, Education Unit,  The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.  Tel: +649 373 7599, Fax: +649 373 7018 E-mail c.wild@auckland.ac.nz  Website: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/showperson.php?firstname=Chris&surname=Wild
	Website		http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/

 

Index IASE

Address of Incoming IASE President, Chris Wild to IASE General Assembly

IASE Review is Now Electronic

ICOTS-7 Working Cooperatively in Statistics Education, Brazil, August 2006

Forthcoming Conferences with Statistics Education Components

 

Address of Incoming IASE President, Chris Wild to IASE General Assembly, 
18 August 2003 

On taking over the helm of the IASE, I see that our outgoing President Carmen Batenero has left it in very good heart. Sure we have some slight financial hiccups from causes beyond our control, but much more importantly, we have good teams of volunteers doing great work. Carmen has worked incredibly hard for the IASE. I have never met anyone who works harder than Carmen. Of course, the great thing about the IASE structure is that Carmen automatically continues on the Executive as Past President for a further two years. She has also taken on the primary leadership role for ICOTS 7, which is to be held in Brazil in July 2006. Hopefully you have already put it in your diary!

The two most important things we are doing in the IASE are, I think, the ICOTS series of conferences and our new journal SERJ. The ICOTS series has a proud history of success and the journal is gathering momentum. It takes a little while to establish a profile and change a culture, where a substantial amount of publishing has been in hard-to-find edited volumes to one where almost all publishing is in key journals that, particularly in SERJ’s case, everyone can obtain. A new project that shows a new way forward is the International Statistical Literacy Program with its annotated directory of resources.

It is an exciting time to be in statistical education. It is a time of ferment and new possibilities. Some of these were vividly shown in our very successful IASE Satellite Conference entitled Statistics and the Internet. In fact, the conference ranged much more widely than that. However, while exciting possibilities and their implementations are beginning to abound on the Internet, or in other words possibilities tend to infinity, the time we have left in our days to pursue them is tending to zero.

So, what we now need from the Internet is selection from profusion, guiding our footsteps towards those few gold nuggets whose glitter is concealed by the dross. Over the next few years, I would like to see the IASE webpages become the primary source for information and comment about statistical education resources. The model must be, I think, the divide-and-conquer model that we are following with the ISLP webpages – subdivide the landscape into specialties that are small enough for individual volunteers to realistically stay on top of. Nothing else is sustainable.

The IASE is a missionary arm of the ISI – reaching out to non-statisticians, and youth in particular, to bring them into the fold. We are here because we believe that good statistics, and creative but disciplined statistical thinking, can bring substantial benefits to society and we want to be a part of making that happen.

In his opening address, outgoing ISI President Dennis Trewin was worried about the greying of the ISI. Insofar as the greying of the ISI is due to the greying of the profession, the only solution is the infusion of young blood. This, in turn, results from the recruitment and retention of students through stimulating education programmes with clearly signposted career paths. This is not something to be left just to the IASE members. Every member of ISI or any of the ISI sections should be concerned about educational outreach. By “concerned”, I do not mean “worried”. Lamentations, the tearing out of hair and the rending of garments helps nobody. I mean actively contributing, feeding their colleagues at the educational coalface with ideas, stories, case studies, data sets and research projects – with excitement for statistics and what it can do. Our current students, and any more that we might be able to attract, are the future life blood of your profession and your professional organisations, so you too need to assist in ensuring that that life blood flows ever more strongly. 

If the IASE is falling short in some area that you care about – perhaps you think it is too fixated on that first university course – then maybe it is because you are not in there leading the charge for another priority. My conception of the IASE is very simple – we will do anything that advances statistical education, where we can find a champion to lead and volunteers to help. We need each and every one of you as a champion or a volunteer.

The last thing I want to do is make an announcement. The incoming Executive of the International Association for Statistics Education has voted to confer life membership on Former Presidents Maria-Gabriella Ottaviani and Brian Phillips. 
They have been volunteers and champions par excellence for the IASE, providing outstanding leadership of the IASE and arduous conference organisation far above and beyond the call of duty for many years. We wish to make them lifetime members to honour them and thank them for those many contributions. Gabriella and Brian would you mind rising and taking a bow.

IASE Satellite Conference on Statistics Education and the Internet

Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany, August 11-12, 2003
The Conference was held just before the 54th Biennial Meeting of the International Statistical Institute. The venue provided by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development was an ideal facility for the Conference. Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute gave a short opening address. Seventeen invited speakers presented talks related to our theme “Statistics Education and the Internet” – these talks were presented to the plenary sessions of sixty registrants. In addition, a two hour time slot was reserved for fifteen poster sessions also directed to this same topic. Twenty two registrants were welcomed as new IASE members.
Information about the meeting can be seen on http://www.ph-ludwigsburg.de/iase/ .

The CD of the proceedings was produced and distributed to all registrants. It contained all the invited papers and abstracts of the contributed poster sessions. The proceedings are also available on the website
  www.ph-ludwigsburg.de/iase/proceedings  so they are available for anyone interested but who could not participate. 

The conference was organised by the IASE in cooperation with:

• International Statistical Institute
• Stochastics Section of the German Society for Mathematics Education
• German Mathematical Association (special interest group on Probability and Statistics)
• German Statistical Society
• Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development

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IASE Review is Now Electronic  

At its meeting in August, the IASE Executive Committee decided to make the annual IASE Review electronic. If you are an IASE member and have not received a copy electronically by 15 December 2003, you can download a copy from the IASE Publications website at http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/pubshomepage.htm . If you do not have Internet access, please contact Carol Joyce Blumberg at cblumberg@winona.edu  or at Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Winona State University, Winona MN 55987-5838, USA or by fax at +1-507-457-5376, and a copy will be sent to you via your choice of e-mail or regular mail.

The major reason for people not receiving a copy of IASE Review electronically is that proper e-mail addresses have not been sent to the ISI Permanent Office. So, if you did not receive the IASE Review electronically, please send your e-mail address to Margaret de Ruiter-Molloy at @cbs.nl.

 International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) Update

Resource pages on all aspects of statistical literacy are now fully operational with a Table of Contents for each page and a search engine. Please go to http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/islplist.htm  for a complete listing of the webpages. The next stage in the project is to find more resources in languages other than English and to translate the main pages of the ISLP website into languages other than English. If you know of websites, articles, books, etc. in any language that have not already been included on the webpages or if you are willing to translate webpages into other languages, please contact Carol Joyce Blumberg at cblumberg@winona.edu  or at Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Winona State University, Winona MN 55987-5838, USA or by fax at +1-507-457-5376.

ICOTS-6 Proceedings to be Available Soon on the Internet

There are plans to make the ICOTS-6 (International Conference on Teaching Statistics 6) Proceedings available soon for free, at least to IASE members, on the Internet. When the conversion from CD to the Internet is complete, a link will be provided on the IASE publications webpage at http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/pubshomepage.htm . At the moment, the CD is available at cost of postage from Brian Phillips ( bphillips@swin.edu.au ). 

Papers from IASE-sponsored Session on “Using the History of Statistics to Enhance the Teaching of Statistics”

The papers from the IASE-sponsored session on “Using the History of Statistics to Enhance the Teaching of Statistics” at the Joint Statistical Meetings held on 7 August 2003 are now available at http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/jsm2003.htm . Also included is a list compiled by Herb David of books on the history of statistics. 

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ICOTS-7 Working Cooperatively in Statistics Education, Brazil, August 2006

The International Programming Committee, for the above Conference, is as follows:
Chair: Carmen Batanero (Spain), batanero@ugr.es 
Programme Chair: Susan Starkings (UK), starkisa@lsbu.ac.uk 
Editors of Proceedings: Allan Rossman (USA), arossman@calpoly.edu  and Beth Chance (USA), bchance@calpoly.edu 
Scientific Secretary: John Harraway (New Zealand), jharraway@maths.otago.ac.nz 
Local Organisers Representative at the IPC: Lisbeth Cordani (Brazil), lisbethk@terra.com.br 

Topic and Topic Convenors are:
Topic 1. Working cooperatively in statistics education
Lisbeth Cordani (Brazil) accepted, lisbethk@terra.com.br 
Mike Shaughnessy (USA), mike@mth.pdx.edu 

Topic 2. Statistics Education at the School Level
Dani Ben-Zvi (Israel) , dbenzvi@univ.haifa.ac.il 
Lionel Pereira (Singapore), lpereira@nie.edu.sg 

Topic 3. Statistics Education at the Post Secondary Level
Martha Aliaga (USA), aliaga@umich.edu 
Elisabeth Svensson (Sweden), elisabeth.svensson@esi.oru.se 

Topic 4. Statistics Education/Training and the Workplace
Pedro Silva (Brazil), pedrosilva@ibge.gov.br 
Pilar Martín-Guzmán (Spain), pilar.guzman@uam.es 

Topic 5. Statistics Education and the Wider Society
Brian Phillips (Australia), BPhillips@groupwise.swin.edu.au 
Phillips Boland (Ireland), Philip.J.Boland@ucd.ie 

Topic 6. Research in Statistics Education. 
Chris Reading (Australia), creading@metz.une.edu.au 
Maxine Pfannkuch (New Zealand), pfannkuc@scitec.auckland.ac.nz 

Topic 7. Technology in Statistics Education
Andrej Blejec (Slovenia), andrej.blejec@uni-lj.si 
Cliff Konold (USA), konold@srri.umass.edu 

Topic 8. Other Determinants and Developments in Statistics Education 
Theodore Chadjipadelis (Greece), chadji@polsci.auth.gr 
Beverley Carlson (USA), bcarlson@eclac.cl 

Topic 9. An International Perspective on Statistics Education
Delia North (South Africa), delian@icon.co.za 
Ana Silvia Haedo (Argentina), haedo@qb.fcen.uba.ar 

Topic 10. Contributed Papers
Joachim Engel (Germany), Engel_Joachim@ph-ludwigsburg.de 
Alan Mc Lean (Australia), alan.mclean@buseco.monash.edu.au 

Topic 11. Posters
Celi Espasandín López (Brazil), celilopes@directnet.com.br 

So far, the Local Organising Committee consists of the following people:
Pedro Alberto Morettin (Brazil), local Chair, pam@ime.usp.br 
Lisbeth K. Cordani (Brazil), lisbeth@maua.br 
Clélia Maria de C. Toloi (Brazil), clelia@ime.usp.br 
Wilton de Oliveira Bussab (Brazil), bussab@fgvsp.br 

To see what was held at our previous conference, ICOTS-6, you can visit the following website http://icots6.haifa.ac.il/icots6.html .

IASE ICOTS-7 PLANNING MEETING REPORT

The meeting was held on Tuesday, 19 August 2003, in Berlin and was co-Chaired by Susan Starkings and Carmen Batanero. 
It was agreed that there will be two different websites connected with each other at the Conference:

• The local website will be located in Brazil and will be maintained by the local organisers. It will include information about the venue, city of Salvador and country, local facilities, social programme and tours, as well as contact with statistics education institutions in Brazil. It will provide on-line registration.
• The IPC website will be located in New Zealand, and will be maintained by John Harraway. It will contain details about the scientific planning and will be updated frequently. We hope to be able to provide a website similar to the one prepared for ICOTS-6.

We expect to have the two websites up and running by the end of the year.
It was also agreed to try and encourage Latin American participation. ICOTS-7 is seen as a main opportunity to have a real impact in statistics education in Latin America. It was suggested to try to find different ways to increase participation from this region. This includes the following actions:
Including Sessions and presentations in themes that are of particular interest /relevance to the region. The IPC will try to get the help from the local organisers to identify these themes, but help from Topic Convenors is also welcome.
Inviting Latin American Sessions Organisers and Speakers
Organising teachers’ workshops in thePortuguese language. We will try to get help from different local institutions/statistics educators to organise these workshops, as well as funding from international agencies.
Encouraging people to bring Portuguese/Spanish transparencies for their presentations or/and trying to get translations for the transparencies.
Organising some bilingual plenary session/panel (with translation) 

The Third International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL-3) 

The third research forum in a series of international research forums on statistical reasoning, thinking and literacy was held at the Teachers College Institute of the University of Lincoln-Nebraska, USA, from July 23-28, 2003. This particular gathering of researchers has played an important role in advancing our understanding of the richness and depth of reasoning about variability, a key focus of statistics education.
The forum was sponsored by Teachers College Institute of the University of Lincoln-Nebraska (UNL), Department of Educational Psychology at UNL, Faculty of the Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Education Program at UNL, the IASE Statistical Education Research Group, the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics Education and Vanderbilt University.

Eighteen researchers in statistics education from six 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 variability, a wide range of research projects were presented spanning learners of all ages, as well as teachers. 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 of SRTL-4 in 2005.

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, papers in refereed journals, and a special issue of Statistics Education Research Journal is expected in 2004. An additional product of the meeting will be a new SRTL website http://srtl.haifa.ac.il/ , which will include a variety of resources. These will all serve as a rich resource for statistics educators and researchers.
Bill Mickelson (UNL) took care of all aspects of local planning and organising prior to the SRTL-3 gathering. During the research forum, he was very resourceful in attending to all needs of the programme and the participants regardless of this being a time-consuming and labour intensive task. Beyond the scientific programme, participants took part in a variety of social events and local excursions that helped to build the sense of a community amongst the researchers and enjoy the beauty of Lincoln and its immediate surroundings.

For further information, please contact the SRTL Co-Chairs:

Joan Garfield, jbg@umn.edu 
Dani Ben-Zvi, dbenzvi@univ.haifa.ac.il 

The 2006 NCTM YEARBOOK, Thinking and Reasoning with Data and Chance

The 2006 Yearbook Editorial Panel extends an invitation to submit articles for its yearbook, Thinking and Reasoning with Data and Chance. Potential authors should submit a first draft of their proposed manuscript by 1 March 2004. Preference will be given to drafts of complete papers, although an outline of a paper will be considered, provided it includes the introduction and the development of one or more sections of the proposed manuscript. Contributions from classroom teachers are particularly encouraged.

Editorial decisions are made by the members of the 2006 Yearbook Editorial Panel: Gail Burrill (Issue Editor), Portia C. Elliott (General Editor), Floyd Bullard, Alfinio Flores, Sister Alice Hess, James Landwehr, and Christine Pateracki.

Suggested Topics for Articles

To help authors focus their papers and yet accomplish the broad objective of this yearbook, the Editorial Panel has identified three major categories: what we teach and why; how we teach and why; and issues and reflections. Each category includes subtopics and a set of questions intended to prompt potential papers that would contribute to the goals of the yearbook. The list is intended to offer guidance and not to be exhaustive. Papers can overlap among the areas and may include topics not listed, but that are directly related to teaching and learning statistics and probability. The ideas that are important in framing the message in the yearbook are identified by a variety of terms: data analysis, statistics, quantitative literacy, chance, probability. The intent is not to focus on a definition, but to encompass the ideas reflected in all these terms. 

We anticipate that the majority of manuscripts that appear in the 2006 Yearbook will be no more than eighteen double-spaced typewritten pages in length, including examples, illustrations, and a bibliography. (A “page” for this yearbook is considered to contain 26 lines with 72 characters on each line.) For detailed instructions, see “Instructions for the Submission of Manuscripts” on NCTM’s website www.nctm.org/publications/edu_publish.htm  or for further information, contact 
Gail Burrill -email: burrill@msu.edu  or Portia Elliott e-mail: pelliott@educ.umass.edu .

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Forthcoming Conferences with Statistics Education Components

The 10^th International Congress on Mathematics Education, July 4-11, 2004, Copenhagen

Chair: Mogens Niss icme10-IPC@ruc.dk 

The venue will be the Technical University of Denmark, located in a northern suburb of Copenhagen. The IASE will be collaborating in the organisation of specific statistics education activities in the Conference. The Conference website is : http://www.icme-10.dk/ .

History and Pedagogy of Mathematics, 2004 Satellite Conference of ICME-10, July 12-17, 2004, Uppsala, Sweden

Chair: Fulvia Furinghetti furinghe@dima.unige.it 
The HPM Satellite Conferences have taken place every year since 1984. It is a unique occasion to attend lectures, workshops, research reports from all over the world about the use of history in mathematics education and the history of mathematics. The participants to the HPM meetings are researchers in history, in mathematics education, and teachers who have experimented with the use of history in their teaching. For more information, visit the website at: http://www.mathedu-jp.org/hpm/index.htm .

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International Association for Statistical Computing

		Editorial Address	Joyce C. Niland, Ph.D., Chair of Division of Information Science, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA 91010, USA Tel: (626) 359-8111; FAX: (626) 303-5912 E-mail: jniland@coh.org
		President	Stanley P. Azen, Division of Biostatistics, Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA 90033 Tel: (323) 442-1810; FAX: (323) 442-2993 E-mail: sazen@usc.edu
		Website	http://www.stat.unipg.it/iasc/

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 Stanley Azen reports:

It is with great pleasure that I assume the position of President of the IASC. I have been active in the IASC over the past twelve years, commencing with the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis (CSDA) being selected in 1991 as the official journal of the IASC. Over the past two years, I have enjoyed working with the IASC Council, including my mentors, Jae C. Lee and Lutz Edler, Past-Presidents of the IASC. I will look forward to working with the ISI and the IASC Council, including the new Executive members: Gilbert Saporta (President-Elect), Moon Yul Huh and Michael G. Schimek (Vice-Presidents), Joyce Niland (Scientific Secretary), Patrick Groenen (Treasurer); and new Council members: Jaromir Antoch, James Gentle, Erricos Kontorghiorghes, Jung Jin Lee, Yuichi Mori and Vincenzo Esposito (newly elected members of the Council). Welcome aboard.

As part of my initiative, I hope to increase the international awareness of the IASC, increase membership to the IASC, and promote the involvement of young professionals in the IASC. In addition, as a professional musician, I would like to compose an IASC theme song with lyrics to be sung at subsequent meetings. Lyrics will reflect the computational/data analytic interests of the IASC, as well as the international profile of the organisation. Please let me know if you are interested in writing lyrics for the IASC theme song.

A. Outgoing Presidential Report at 2003 ISI Conference in Berlin. 

The IASC had productive meetings at the ISI Conference in Berlin. In his presentation, Jae C. Lee, outgoing President, reported that IASC has passed its twenty-fifth anniversary and has demonstrated, over the past two years, further internationalisation, which has led to an increase in membership. In addition, there have been a number of successful activities and conferences over the past two years. The new Elsevier contract for continuing CSDA as the official IASC publication has been signed, and a Co-Editor for Asia has been added. It is expected that IASC visibility will increase in Asian countries.

B. Reports from the European Regional Section (ERS) and the Asian Regional Section (ARS). 

The ERS Board Report was given by Gianfranco Galmacci. CompStat 2002 was held in Berlin and was very successful; 340 participants from many countries attended the meeting. CompStat 2004 will be held in Prague, organised by Jaromir Antoch. CompStat 2006 will be held in Rome, organised by Professor Rizzi. Vincenzo Vinzi, also on the CompStat 2006 Organising Committee, indicated that there would be close collaboration with the University of Naples group. A Satellite Meeting related to official statistics will be held just after the main meeting in Florence. In addition, a Tutorial may be held in Naples prior to the CompStat meeting. The planned Tutorial will be co-sponsored by the Interface (Ed Wegman as the contact person). Jae C Lee has signed an IASC contract with Physica-Verlag for publication of the proceedings for CompStat. 
The ARS Board Report was given by Yutaka Tanaka. The first ARS Conference was held last December in Buson; 170 participants from ten countries attended the meeting. Future ARS meetings are scheduled for Hong Kong in December 2005, and a joint CompStat/ARS meeting held in Osaka or Kyoto in August 2008, if the IASC and the ERS agree. 

C. Preparation for the 55^th ISI Sydney Session. 

At the IASC Council meeting in Berlin, John Eccleston, Chair of the IASC Organising Committee, passed out a list of proposed invited sessions, by contributor and ranked by interest level. The current list contains nine invited sessions proposed by the IASC and five shared sessions with other ISI sections. Discussions ensued during the ISI Conference with appropriate members of the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) and the Bernoulli sections to determine if they would like to participate in the shared proposals. Plans are to finalise this within a month. The next ISI meeting will include “Theme Days”. Proposed topics are Population Studies, Environmental Statistics, and/or Finance.
Since the Sydney ISI meeting will be held earlier in the year (April 2005), there will be less time for planning committees to prepare for the meeting. If there is interest in any satellite meetings hosted by IASC, this needs to be acted upon quickly (at least before the end of the year), as ISI approval is required. IASC could also offer a tutorial at the next meeting, sponsored by the ISI.

D. Update on CSDA as the Official Journal of the IASC. 

I am pleased to report that the two-year impact factor of CSDA, published by the Institute for Scientific Information, has increased from 0.275 in 1997 to 0.374 in 2000 to 0.420 in 2001 to 0.458 in 2002. In addition, the number of submissions has greatly increased (by approximately 40%) and, thus, more papers/pages will be published in 2003. These positive changes were due to the excellent and creative work developed and implemented by the European Co-Editor, Erricos Kontoghiorghes. 
In 2001, we added eight new Associate Editors to the Editorial Board. During 2002, we added six additional Associate Editors In addition, we are also very pleased that the internationally recognised researcher, C.R. Rao, has joined the Advisory Board of the CSDA. In addition, at the 2003 meeting of the American Statistical Association, Prof. Bradley Efron (President of the ASA) has agreed to join the Advisory Board of the CSDA. 
Numerous Special Issues dedicated to computational statistics are in the “pipeline” that further enhances the objectives of the IASC. Since 2002, the following Special Issues have been published, are in press, or are in preparation:
1) Non-linear Methods and Data Mining 
2) Matrix Computations and Statistics 
3) Computational Econometrics 
4) Data Visualisation 
5) Recent Developments in Mixture Models
6) Partial Least-Squares 
7) Applications of Optimisation Heuristics to Estimation and Modelling Problems 
8) Statistical Data Analysis and Optimisation for Brain Research

As another benefit to IASC members, electronic tools provided by Elsevier Science provide access to past and current papers published in CSDA, as well as forthcoming papers to appear in CSDA. Availability of CSDA in ScienceDirect, www.sciencedirect.com , (which includes all issues as far back as the first issue of volume 1) signifies that papers published in the journal will henceforth benefit from a vast and rapidly growing readership, currently comprising around ten million scientists worldwide, bringing all scientific fields together. The ScienceDirect Articles in Press service provides immediate electronic publication of accepted typeset articles and author-proofed articles, ahead of print publication, ensuring rapid communication of an author’s work to the scientific community.

The MathematicsWeb ( www.mathematicsweb.org ), a web portal, is tailored for the mathematics and statistics community. It provides access to all mathematics and statistics journals in ScienceDirect, but also provides other free services, such as virtual journals, one of which is devoted to the topic of Biostatistics, and edited by IASC Past-President, Lutz Edler. Furthermore, MathematicsWeb provides news items for the mathematics and statistics community, and importantly, it gives access to a free mathematics and statistics pre-print server. 
Finally, the Statistical Software Newsletter (SSN—Section IV of CSDA) has been restructured to an electronic version appearing on the CSDA_SSN website, www.csdassn.org . The CSDA-SSN website will link with the IASC and ISI homepages, as well as with the CSDA homepage ( www.elsevier.com/locate/csda ). IASC News, Software News, and the Calendar of Events will migrate to the CSDA_SSN website. The website has been developed by James Baurley, a graduate student/staff member of Stan Azen’s Biostatistics Program at the University of Southern California. Section IV of CSDA will include a short SSN summary, as well as Book Reviews, to be edited by the Book Review Editor and IASC member, Walter Kramer.

D.1 Thanks to Allmut Hörman. 

Allmut Hörmann has stepped down from her role as SSN Editor, although she will supervise the process of collecting IASC news items to be distributed to the Web Manager. At the IASC Council meeting, a plaque was presented to Allmut by Stan Azen officially thanking her for all her contributions to the IASC over the past twenty-eight years. 

D.2. Planned New Directions for CSDA and its Impact on the IASC. 

Planned changes for CSDA, which will increase the visibility and directions of the IASC, include the addition of an Asian Co-Editor. The Asian Co-Editor will be responsible for handling manuscripts from countries associated with the Eastern Asian region, including Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, as well as India. The Asian Co-Editor should be pro-active in nurturing submissions from countries that have been under-represented in CSDA. It was recommended that Jae C. Lee, outgoing IASC President, be appointed as the Asian Co-Editor. I am pleased to announce that Jae C. accepted the invitation.
The CSDA Advisory Board and members of the IASC Council recommended that CSDA add associate editors with expertise in genomics, including both molecular and statistical bioinformatics. In addition, it was recommended that the description of the Aims of CSDA to include bioinformatics (gene expression, protenomics), and biomedical informatics (computational methods as applied to clinical research and genomics). Finally, it was recommended that CSDA be indexed in MEDLINE as it is publishing more articles of interest to biomedical researchers. 

ATTENTION IASC MEMBERS: 
Please note that all IASC members have free access on-line to CSDA upon paying their membership fee. Details are available at www.sciencedirect.com/csda .

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 International Association of Survey Statisticians

	President	Prof. Luigi Biggeri, ISTAT, Via Cesare Balbo, 16, 00184 Roma, Italy Tel. : +39 06 46731 E-mail : biggeri@istat.it
	Executive Director	Mr. Michel Péronnet, INSEE/CEFIL, 3, rue de la Cité, 33500 Libourne, France. Tel.: +33 (0)5 57 55 56 02 E-mail: michel.peronnet@insee.fr
	Secretariat	c/o Mme Claude Olivier, CEFIL (INSEE), 3 rue de la Cité, 33500 Libourne, France. Tel.: +33–5–5755–5600 — Fax: +33–5–5755–5620  E-mail: claude.olivier@insee.fr
	Executive Secretary	Anna Maria Vespa, Centre d’Etrudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII), 9 rue Georges Pitard, 75015 Paris, France.  Tel. :+33-1-53685571 Fax : +33-1-53685501 E-mail : vespa@cepii.fr
	Website	http://isi.cbs.nl/iass/index.htm

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IASS Management

During the ISI International Conference, Berlin 13-20 August 2003, the elected Council members started their mandate. The IASS new Council, elected earlier this year, for 2003-2005, is as follows: 

President: Luigi Biggeri (Italy)

President-Elect: Gordon Brackstone (Canada)
Vice-Presidents: Beverly Carlson (USA)
Alvaro Gonzalez-Villalobos (Argentina)
Scientific Secretary: Marina Signore (Italy)

Council members 2001-2005:

Kari Djerf (Finland)
David Fitch (USA-Guatemala)
Lidija Gligorova (Croatia)
Huang Langhui (China)
Moshe Sicron (Israel)
Awa Thiongane (Senegal)

Council members 2003-2007:

Pascal Ardilly (France)
J-J. Droesbeke (Belgium)
Guido Ferrari (Italy)
Linda Hewitt (Trinidad & Tobago)
Naman Keita (Mali)
Hiek Som (Cambodia)

Alain Charraud, Executive Director of IASS, left his functions after the Berlin session. The new Executive Director is Michel Péronnet who manages the CEFIL (Insee) of Libourne where the IASS Secretariat is located. Special thanks to INSEE which permitted the creation of the section in 1973 and continues to host and develop it. 
Congratulations and welcome to the new Council members. Special thanks are due for their commitment to Mr. Charoy, who served as President from 2001 to 2003, and all the other Council Members who concluded their term.

Statutory and Administrative Meetings, Berlin 2003 

The following IASS statutory and administrative meetings took place in Berlin: 
IASS Council meeting
IASS General Assembly
IASS Executive Committee meeting
IASS Programme Committee for the Sydney Session 2005
In addition some special meetings were organised, in particular concerning the IASS/IAOS Joint Conference (see below).

Summary of the Meetings

Mr Charoy reported on the activities carried on by the IASS during 2001-2003.
The number of active IASS members amounts to 1075 in 2003; it is similar to 2001 and 1999. 
A major undertaking concerned the improvement and the updating of the IASS membership database.
The "Survey Statistician" has a new editor Steve Heeringa. Many thanks to him for having accepted to ensure the life of the review in the coming years. The Association owes many thanks to Leyla Mohadjer who has been the editor for the past four years. In these years the review has considerably improved, even if some problems remain both with regard to contents and to the relationship with the Web-site. Eric Rancourt has replaced Fred Vogel as Web-site editor. 
The "IASS Jubilee Commemorative Volume - Landmark Papers in Survey Statistics" and the "Leslie Kish, Selected Papers" have been sent free of charge to all IASS members.
Lars Lyberg is preparing a second Jubilee volume collecting milestone papers on survey methodology.

Seppo Laaksonen reported on his work as Scientific Secretary 2001-2003 and in particular about the short courses on survey methodology held in Berlin (see below). Thanks are due to him for his valuable work.
Pedro Do Nascimento Silva is chairing the IASS Programme Committee for the ISI Conference, Sidney 2005. The Committee comprises 26 members from 12 countries. The Committee presented a proposal concerning the topics for the IASS invited paper sessions (see below). 

Short Courses, Berlin 2003

The IASS sponsored a programme of short courses which took place before and after the 54th ISI Session in Berlin. The courses were led by international high-level experts. The UN sponsored a number of participants from developing and transition countries.The courses were well appreciated with regard to either the number and the evaluations of participants .
The following courses were offered:

1. Workshop on Survey Sampling, held by Graham Kalton (Westat) and Steven Heeringa (University of Michigan); 37 participants.

2. Variance Estimation in Complex Surveys, held by Wayne Fuller (Iowa State University), Kirk Wolter (NORC), F. Jay Breidt (Iowa State University), and Anthony An (SAS Institute); 28 participants.

3. Introduction to Small Area Estimation, held by J.N.K. Rao (Carleton University); 33 participants.

4. Editing and Imputation of Survey Data, held by John G. Kovar (Statistics Canada) and Eric Rancourt (Statistics Canada); 34 participants.

5. Business Survey Methods, held by Mike Hidiroglou (Statistics Canada) and David Binder (Statistics Canada); 30 participants.

6. Designing the Optimal Questionnaire, held by Edith de Leeuw (MethodikA/Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and Don Dillman (Washington State University); 34 participants.

IASS Sessions, Sydney 2005

The IASS Programme Committee for the ISI Conference, Sidney 2005, chaired by Pedro Do Nascimento Silva, worked on a proposal for invited paper sessions. Some of them are jointly organised with other ISI Subsections.
The proposed topics are listed below: 
1. Developments in the Analysis of Longitudinal Survey Data. 
2. Use of Model Diagnostics in Survey Sampling. 
3. Calibration in practise. 
4. Quality measurement and reporting for surveys. 
5. Resampling methods for variance estimation in complex surveys. 
6. Experiences in data collection with internet surveys.
7. Inferential potentials of non-probability samples. 
8. Confidentiality Protection in National Statistical Offices.
9. Surveys of small and medium sized enterprises. 
10. Accounting for Practical Operational Constraints in the Design and Implementation of Sample Surveys. 
11. Estimation with rotating panel designs.
12. Challenges in the teaching of sampling (joint with IASE). 
13. Achieving high response rates in a climate of decreasing cooperation (joint with IAOS). 
14. Sample co-ordination to distribute response burden (joint with IAOS). 
15. Quality assurance approaches to conducting demographic surveys (joint with IAOS). 
16. Educating the Media on How Best to Report Survey Data (joint with IASE). 
17. Edit and Imputation Techniques For Censuses (joint with IASC). 

IAOS/IASS Joint Conference

The IAOS/IASS Joint Conference on “Poverty, Social Exclusion and Development” will be held in Jordan from 29 November to 1 December 2004. 
An additional day, on the same topic, is foreseen for Arab statisticians. To organise the latter, an ad hoc committee will be set up by the Department of Statistics (DOS) of Jordan.
The Programme Committee has already prepared a preliminary version of the Conference programme, which includes Keynote Speakers and contributed papers sessions. The scientific programme will be finalised by 30 October 2003.
IASS, together with IAOS, wants to acknowledge here the quality of the work carried out by the Chairman of the Programme Committee, Alain Azouvi.

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