IAOS Executive Committee

Given that we are expecting the attendance of several hundred attendees (including the heads of statistical organisations from around the world, as well as senior officials from international organisations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and central banks), the Conference is shaping up as a wonderful opportunity to influence official statistics in this very relevant domain.

IAOS

Conference Organisation – Progress Report

Thus far, the progress of preparations for the 2006 IAOS Conference has been excellent. The Conference has secured two excellent keynote speakers: Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland (Director-General Emeritus of the World Health Organization, as well as former Prime Minister of Norway) and Mr. Donald J. Johnston (retiring Secretary General of the OECD). The Conference Programme has reached near-final form and most of the invited contributors have been identified.

Registrations are moving along at an excellent pace. However, at the time of writing, many spaces remain available. We ask those wishing to attend to book early to avoid any disappointment. The Social Programme is also taking shape. In addition to the gala banquet at the National Gallery of Canada and other luncheons, the Spousal Programme tour to visit Ottawa's museums and other attractions will certainly be of interest. There is also a planned tour to the village of Mont Tremblant, a world-class ski and golf resort nestled in a European village-type setting in the Laurentian Mountains, not far from Ottawa.

The 2006 IAOS Conference Ottawa website ( www.iaos2006conf.ca ) will have more definitive information in the weeks to come. In the meantime, please be sure to consult the website for more information on all aspects of the event, including the Programme and Agenda, general information on the Conference venue, tourism information on the host city, travel tips and details on accommodations and sites of interest. An online registration form is provided for prospective attendees.

Members interested in presenting contributed papers related to topics on the Programme can either contact the designated session Organiser or Mr. Denis Desjardins, the Statistics Canada contact ( denis.desjardins@statcan.ca ).We look forward to seeing you at the 2006 IAOS Conference Ottawa.
Conference Details: www.iaos2006conf.ca

To coincide with the IAOS Conference, a special ISI Briefing Seminar for Chief Statisticians will be held on 4^th and 5^th of September. The complexity of the international statistical system is considerable. Newly appointed Chief Statisticians, who come from academic backgrounds or other fields of government or the private sector, often find the maze of international arrangements rather perplexing.

The seminar has two main objectives:
• to provide Chief Statisticians with an inside look at the complex system of international statistical organisations and arrangements;
• to address contemporary challenges faced by NSOs, in particular the management of a National Statistical Office and statistics system in a continuously changing environment.

Newly appointed Chief Statisticians may wish to benefit from this Seminar rather early, during the first year of their term in office.

Further details are available from the ISI or via the link on the IAOS Conference website at www.iaos2006conf.ca.

ISI 2007 IAOS Programme

The most up-to-date version of the Programme for the 2007 ISI Lisboa Session can be found in the previous issue of the ISI Newsletter (Volume 30, Number 1, February 2006). The list of the IAOS Programme session titles and organisers is on pages 26 - 28.

Special to IAOS Members

The Statistics Canada publication Survey Methodology can be subscribed to by all interested IAOS members at a reduced rate of € 30 for two issues per year. Please contact Mrs. Margaret de Ruiter-Molloy (@cbs.nl) at the ISI Permanent Office if you would like to subscribe to Survey Methodology. Statistics Canada is now also providing free dissemination of Survey Methodology, as well as its other publications, via the Statistics Canada website at http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/downpub/freepub.cgi.

IAOS

Future Programmes

Future activity will be concerned with the organisation of the subsequent 2008 IAOS Conference (venue still to be decided) and the 2009 ISI Session in Durban, South Africa. Members who may have suggestions about the 2008 and 2009 Conferences are invited to send their comments to IAOS President Brian Pink.

Future Events

1. 2006 IAOS Conference, September 2006, Ottawa, Canada
2. 2007 ISI Session, August 2007, Lisbon, Portugal
3. 2008 IAOS - to be announced
4. 2009 ISI Session, August 2009, Durban, South Africa

If you have any suggestions on items for inclusion in future editions of the Newsletter, please contact Paul J. Crowley.

IAOS

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

Submitted by Wendy Thomas

  Call for papers:
Globalization Impact on Regional and Urban Statistics

The International Statistical Institute / International Association for Urban and Regional Statistics’ Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics (SCORUS) are pleased to announce the main call for papers for their 25^th Conference on Urban and Regional Statistics and Research that is currently accepting paper on the Conference theme “Globalization Impact on Regional and Urban Statistics”. The 25^th SCORUS Conference on Regional and Urban Statistics and Research will be held at Wrocław University of Economics in Poland on 30^th August - 1^th September 2006.

The Conference consists of invited paper sessions in the following major topic areas (please see the Conference website http://www.scorus2006.ae.wroc.pl/index.php for detailed topic information):
• Regional patterns of foreign direct investment
• International cities as poles of economic growth
• Regional effects of international migration
• Location, agglomeration and clustering
• Functional regions
• The role of international organizations in understanding globalisation
• China [Session in Chinese; devoted to the main interests of the Chinese audience]
• Measuring inequality at the local level
• Regions of the world and their role in impact on the global economy
• Geographical analyses: making the most of existing data
• Measuring the urban labour market impact of globalisation and tertiarisation [organised by Dr. Uwe Neumann]
The invited session proposals deadline is 23^rd June 2006.
For a paper to be considered for the invited paper sessions, an abstract needs to be submitted by the 10^th July 2006 as detailed below.

In addition to the invited paper sessions, papers may be submitted up until the 20^th August 2006 for inclusion in the contributed paper sessions. Papers are especially welcome in the following areas:

Standardisation in regional and urban statistics:
• Building the framework for comparative city and regional standards
• Measuring and understanding change in international comparative regional statistics on social cohesion and economic
diversity
• Quality assurance in regional and urban statistics
• Standard social and regional indicators reference systems
• The comparability of international city statistics
• Internationally comparable regional statistics
• Methodological development in urban and regional statistics

Urban development:
• Civic involvement and the impact of ICT e-Government for the future
• The role of foreign population for urban development
• Urban development measurement
• Urban violence, crime statistics
• Urbanisation and segregation
• Youth integration into urban society
• Culture statistics:
• Toward the cultural society: Cultural, recreational and educational statistics

Local / regional policy:
• Local and regional planning and forecasting
• Statistical support for regional economic policy

Urban / rural distinctions:
• Measuring the dichotomy between urban and regional development
• Structures in urban and rural economies

Economic growth and regional convergence:
• Regional competitiveness: comparative advantages and unused resources
• Regional convergence in political entities (European Union)

Abstracts should be sent to both:
Chair Scientific Programme:
Dev Virdee Dev.Virdee@ons.gsi.gov.uk

Local Organiser:
Anna Krol anna.krol@ae.wroc.pl

Deadlines
23^rd June 2006 - invited paper sessions proposals.
10^th July 2006 - abstracts submissions for invited paper sessions.
20^th August 2006 - abstracts submissions for contributed paper sessions.

The 25^th SCORUS Conference on Regional and Urban Statistics and Research will be held at Wrocław University of Economics in Poland under the theme Globalization Impact on Regional and Urban Statistics

Registration is now open!

For further details and online registration form, see: http://www.scorus2006.ae.wroc.pl/index.php

ISI Lisbon Session 2007

SCORUS Contribution

SCORUS is organising two invited paper sessions at the next ISI Session in Lisbon:

• IPM19 International comparative city and regional statistics on social cohesion and economic diversity
  Organiser: Dominic Leung

• IPM20 Urban, regional and migration research: New approaches

Topics for the contributed paper sessions are welcome.

IAOS
Top

International Association for Statistical Computing

		Editorial Address	Paula Brito, IASC Scientific Secretary, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-464 Porto, Portugal Tel: (+351) 225571233; Fax: (+351) 225505050 E-mail: mpbrito@fep.up.pt
		President	Gilbert Saporta, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Chaire de Statistique Appliquée, 292 rue Saint Martin, 75141 Paris cedex 03, France Tel: +33-1 40 27 22 68 ; Fax: +33-1 40 27 27 46 E-mail: saporta@cnam.fr
		Website	IASC website: http://www.iasc-isi.org CSDA SSN website: www.csdassn.org

I. Honorary Doctorate to Stanley P. Azen

IASC is proud to announce that its Past President Professor Stanley P. Azen will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering and Economics of Innovations by the Department of Economics and Statistics of the University of Salerno. Professor Azen, Division Chair in Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California, will receive the award in recognition of his many outstanding contributions to biomedicine and computational statistics. Professor Azen is the founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Computational Statistics and Data Analysis (CSDA), the official journal of the IASC.

Founded in the 9^th Century, the University of Salerno is one of the oldest medieval Universities and has a medical tradition going back centuries, with one of the earliest and greatest medical schools of the Middle Ages.
The honorary degree will be presented to Professor Azen at a reception on Saturday, September 2, 2006, during the 8^th Workshop of the ERCIM Working Group on Matrix Computation and Statistics to be held in Salerno, Italy.
Further information can be obtained from Professor Alessandra Amendola, Professor Cira Perna and Professor Michele La Rocca. (E mail: alamendola@unisa.it, perna@unisa.it, larocca@unisa.it)
Information on the Salerno Meeting can be found at the following URLs:
ERCIM meeting:
http://www.dimat.unina2.it/ercim/8thworkshop.html 
University of Salerno: http://www.unisa.it

IASC

II. COMPSTAT 2006

The 17^th Conference of IASC-ERS, COMPSTAT 2006, will be held in Roma, from August 28^th to September 1^st, 2006, organised by the Dipartimento de Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate of La Sapienza, Università degli Studi di Roma.
The provisional programme comprises two keynote lectures, fourteen invited sessions, four special solicited sessions and one joint tutorial.

Keynote lectures will be addressed by A. Agresti, on Inference for Discrete Data; Y. Escoufier, on Operator Related to a Data Matrix; M. Greenacre, on Data Visualization; and G. Kitagawa on Time Series Analysis. A tutorial, on Statistical Signal Extraction and Filtering, will be presented by DSG Pollock (Queen Mary, University of London) and T. Proietti (Università degli studi di Udine, Italia).
More information can be found on the COMPSTAT website: http://w3.uniroma1.it/compstat2006.
The following Satellite Conferences are announced (see below for details on each one):
• KNEMO – Workshop on Knowledge Extraction and Modeling ( http://www.knemo.unina.it ). Organised by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Naples - Federico II. Villa Orlandi, Island of Capri, Italy, September 4^th - 6^th, 2006.
• Workshop on Data and Information Visualization
( http://appel.rz.hu-berlin.de/Zope/ise_stat/wiwi/ise/stat/forschung/veranstaltungen/div2006 ).
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Berlin, Germany, August 23^rd - 25^th, 2006.
• 8^th Workshop of the ERCIM Working Group on Matrix Computations and Statistics
( http://www.dimat.unina2.it/ercim/8thworkshop.html ). Salerno, Italy, September 2^nd - 3^rd, 2006.
• International Conference on Statistical Latent Variables Models in the Health Sciences
( http://www.stat.unipg.it/forcina/shlav/shlav.html )
Perugia University, Perugia, Italy, September 6^th - 8^th, 2006.

IASC

III. International Workshop on Knowledge Extraction and Modeling (KNEMO'06)

The International Workshop on Knowledge Extraction and Modeling (KNEMO'06) ( www.knemo.unina.it ) will take place from September 4^th - 6^th, 2006, on the Island of Capri, Italy. It is organised by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy, and jointly sponsored by:
• IASC (International Association for Statistical Computing),
• INTERFACE (Interface between Statistics and Computing),
• IFCS (International Federation of Classification Societies).
The objective of the Workshop (a satellite event of COMPSTAT 2006 Conference in Rome) is to give an overview on the theme of "Knowledge Extraction & Modeling" with up-to-date lectures showing the state-of-art but also the most recent advances and future challenges. The Workshop is aimed at focusing on a theme that is not yet firmly established in literature or research. Namely, the Workshop is meant to address the analysis of "complex systems", where the difficulty of analysis is not only the availability of huge masses of data but also the complex structure of relationships. It is somehow the problem of extracting information from models, not just data. The challenge consists in considering the interaction between Knowledge Extraction and Modeling by investigating two possible directions: Knowledge Extraction from models, Knowledge Extraction by modeling.
The structure of the Workshop foresees keynote speakers who can provide lectures on the theme of interest from different points of view (data analysis, machine learning, statistical modeling, data mining, etc.), discuss among them and with the other attendees during the days of the Workshop, and then conclude the Workshop with a round table, where the results of the discussion hold and the thinking done during the Workshop, are expressed.

A group of scientists have been invited to discuss the theme of the Workshop during the forthcoming months that precede the Workshop. The idea is to collect all possible opinions from the known international leaders in the different fields of interest to the themes of the Workshop, and then produce a document that will represent the Manifesto of the Workshop. This Manifesto will comprise the leading thread that shall give life to the presentations and discussions held during the Workshop.
Among the scientists invited to the pre-Workshop discussion and tentative invited speakers:
Tomas Aluja-Banet (Spain), Stan Azen (USA), Helena Bacelar Nicolau (Portugal), Hans Bock (Germany), Amy Braverman (USA), Hamparsum Bozdogan (USA), Edwin Diday (France), Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (Italy), Wolfgang Haerdle (Germany), David Hand (UK), Henk Kiers (The Netherlands), Erricos Kontoghiorghes (Cyprus), Carlo Lauro (Italy), Yves Lechevallier (France), Alain Morineau (France), Alfredo Rizzi (Italy), Gilbert Saporta (France), Michael Schimek (Austria), Roberta Siciliano (Italy), Michel Tenenhaus (France), Rosanna Verde (Italy), Maurizio Vichi (Italy), Giorgio Vittadini (Italy), Ed Wegman (USA), Djamel Zighed (France).

Aside from the keynote speakers, tutorials will be ensured and, finally, research papers may be submitted and presented by other scientists who wish to contribute and do not necessarily come from the field of Statistics (e.g. computer science, machine learning, bioinformatics, etc., with a background related also to application fields).
For more information, please contact:
Professor Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
Dipartimento di Matematica e Statistica
Facoltà di Economia
Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II"
Via Cintia, 26 - Complesso Monte Sant'Angelo
80126 Napoli - Italy
E-mail: vincenzo.espositovinzi@unina.it

Web: www.knemo.unina.it

IASC

IV. Workshop on Data and Information Visualization

The Workshop, a satellite event of COMPSTAT 2006, is hosted by the Institute for Statistics and Econometrics of the School for Business and Economics, from August 23^rd to 25^th, 2006, at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The purpose of the Workshop on Data and Information Visualization is to provide a forum to exchange ideas, experiences and information about the latest developments of visualization, including links between theory and applications.

On August 23^rd, Professor Jerry Friedman from Stanford University, a leader in the field, will conduct a one-day interactive workshop on predictive data mining and decision trees and its applications in business and research. The target group are statisticians; business analysts and data miners working in research, marketing and fraud detection; managers of teams in such areas; academics with interest in applications.
The contributed papers will be published in a special issue of the Computational Statistics journal. More information is available at
http://appel.rz.hu-berlin.de/Zope/ise_stat/wiwi/ise/stat/forschung/veranstaltungen/div2006.

IASC

V. 8^th Workshop of the ERCIM Working Group on Matrix Computations and Statistics

The Eight Workshop of the ERCIM Working Group on Matrix Computations and Statistics will be held in Salerno (Italy), September 2^nd - 3^rd, 2006. It aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working in the areas of Statistics, Numerical Mathematics and Computational Science; to discuss recent developments in Scientific Computing Methods, Algorithms and Software Tools for Statistical Applications; and to foster exchange of ideas and collaboration amongst people working in these fields.

A plenary talk will be given by Jan Magnus (CentER, Tilburg University, The Netherlands), on “Sparse Matrix Computations and Statistics”. Bi-plenary talks will be given by Renato Coppi (Department of Statistics, Probability and Applied Statistics, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy) on “Two-way and Three-way Fuzzy Clustering” and Stephen Pollock (Department of Economics, Queen Mary College, London, UK) on “Polynomial Algebra, Matrix Algebra and Linear Filters”.
The Workshop is associated with Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (CSDA), the official journal of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC). Selected peer-reviewed papers will be considered for publication in the third CSDA special issue on Matrix Computations and Statistics.

Important Dates:
• Submission of abstracts: June 1^st, 2006
• Notification of acceptance: June 15^th, 2006
• Registration and hotel reservations: June 30^th, 2006
• Payment of early workshop fees: June 30^th, 2006
• Payment of regular workshop fees: August 31^st, 2006
All details concerning the Workshop, including contact addresses, instructions for registration and hotel reservations can be found at http://www.dimat.unina2.it/ercim/8thworkshop.html.
For any other questions, please contact ercim_workshop@unina2.it.

IASC

VI. International Conference on “Statistical Latent Variables Models in the Health Sciences”

The International Conference on “Statistical Latent Variables Models in the Health Sciences”, satellite of COMPSTAT 2006, will be held in Perugia, Italy, from 6^th - 8^th September 2006.
The primary objective of the Conference is to bring together statisticians from academia as well as other research institutions working on different theoretical aspects and relevant applications of latent variable models to the health sciences, and to provide a forum to share ideas, problems and methodologies. Potential participants could be biostatisticians, psychometricians and public health professionals active in the field of Latent Variable modelling and related methods.
The meeting is intended to serve as an interdisciplinary workshop to discuss theoretical and applied statistical issues concerning design, measurement and analysis, and to foster interaction among researchers who are likely to bring important interdisciplinary insights to the field. Thus, we hope that the Conference will be an occasion for people to present new ideas as well as problems that are worth considering for further investigation. Special attention will be given to encourage graduate students and new researchers to participate.

The Conference will last three full days and include invited lectures, organised sessions, contributed papers and poster sessions. Invited talks and organised sessions will be plenary. There will be two parallel sessions with oral contributions per day and a poster session. At the moment, the following Scientists have accepted to present invited talks:
David Cox (Oxford University, UK), James Robins (Harvard School of Public Health, USA), Sharon-Lise Normand (Harvard School of Public Health, USA), Nanny Wermuth
(Chalmers/Gothenburg University, Sweden), Martin Crowder (Imperial College, London, UK), Geert Molenberghs (Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium), Irini Mustaki (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece), Philip Hougaard (Biostatistics Department, International Clinical Research, Denmark), Bruce Lindsay (Pensylvania State University, USA).
The following people have accepted to organise an invited session (preliminary abstracts available):
Philip Broet (INSERM, France), Vèronique Sébille (Laboratoire de Biostatistiques, Université de Nantes), Svend Kreiner (University of Copenhagen), Mei-Ling Ting Lee (The Ohio State University, Columbus), Nozer Singpurwalla (George Washington University), Zhiliang Ying (Columbia University).
Links to abstracts of invited and organised sessions are now available from the Scientific Programme page on the Conference website.
Important Dates:
• Submission of printed abstracts: May 15^th
• Submission of papers for the web page: July 15^th
More information can be found on the conference website at: http://www.stat.unipg.it/forcina/shlav/shlav.html.

IASC

VII. IASC International Conference on
Statistics for Data Mining, Learning and Knowledge Extraction – Aveiro, Portugal, 2007

IASC is organising an International Conference on Statistics for Data Mining, Learning and Knowledge Extraction, as a Satellite Conference of the 56^th Session of the ISI. The Conference will take place in Aveiro, Portugal, from 30^th August to 1^st September 2007. Carlos Ferreira (University of Aveiro), Manuela Souto de Miranda (University of Aveiro) and Paula Brito (University of Porto) are in charge of the local organisation.

The Scientific Committee is composed of the following personalities: Carlo Lauro (Italy) Co-Chair; Gilbert Saporta (France) Co-Chair; Jaromir Antoch (Czech Republic); Stan Azen (USA); Ho Tu Bao (Japan); Pavel Brazdil (Portugal); Paula Brito (Portugal); Paolo Giudici (Italy); Erricos Kontoghiorghes (Cyprus); Gregory Piatetski-Shapiro (USA); Ed Wegman (USA); Djamel Zighed (France).
The purpose of this meeting is to foster the interaction of researchers in the interface between computational statistics, data mining, knowledge discovery and statistical learning. The meeting will consist of invited lectures, specialised sessions, contributed papers, posters and software demonstrations.

Contributions related to the following list of topics are welcome: Aggregation of predictors (bagging, boosting...), Association rules, Business Intelligence, Classification and Discrimination, Clustering, Computational Statistics, Data streams and dynamic data mining, Data warehousing, Data mining for social network analysis and graph-structured data, Data Visualization, Dimensionality Reduction, Foundations of data mining, Functional Data Analysis, Interactive and online data mining, KDD framework and process, Knowledge management, Machine Learning including feature selection and feature construction, learnability and separability, Metadata and Data Representation, Mining complex and multimedia data, Multivariate Data Analysis, Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms, Pattern Recognition, Quality measures, Robust Data Mining, Sampling in huge data bases, Search engines, Software, Statistical Matching, Missing Data, Imputation, Support Vector Machine, Textual Data Analysis and Information Retrieval, Web Mining.

More information will appear in the near future on the Conference website, http://www.ua.pt/iasc2007.
Aveiro is located between Lisbon (244 km) and Porto (68 km) on a plain region on Portugal’s coastline. It is a lively city and an important region of business and enterprise. The main characteristic of the surrounding area is an extensive lagoon ("ria") covering some 11,000 hectares between the land and the ocean. Both international airports in Lisbon or Porto can get people relatively fast into the city; Porto’s airport is only about one hour by car, from Lisbon the trip takes about two-and-a-half hours. The city is easily accessible by car or by train.
The University of Aveiro ( http://www.ua.pt ), founded in 1973, is currently one of Portugal's leading institutions of higher education. It enjoys an excellent reputation for academic excellence, innovation, state-of-the-art technology and cultural intervention.

IASC

VIII. COMPSTAT 2008

COMPSTAT 2008 will take place in Porto (Portugal). Paula Brito, IASC Scientific Secretary, is Chair of this Conference. The Local Organising Committee is now starting its activities. Further news is promised for next August in Rome.

IX. 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 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 will be held in Yokohama, Japan, from December 5^th - 8^th, 2008. The Conference is jointly organised by the IASC 2008 Executive Committee, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and the Japanese Society of Computational Statistics. Information can be found at
http://www.iasc-ars.org/IASC2008.

IASC
Top

International Association for Statistical Education

	Editorial Addresses		Andrej Blejec, National Institute of Biology, Vecna pot 111 POB 141, Sl-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tel: +386 1 423 33 88, Fax: +386 1 2412 980 E-mail: andrej.blejec@nib.si and K. Laurence Weldon, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6 Tel: +1 604 291 3667, Fax: +1 604 291 4368 E-mail: weldon@sfu.ca
	President		Gilberte Schuyten, Department Data Analysis University Ghent, H. Dunantlaan 1, B-9000 Gent, Belgium Tel: +32 92 64 63 86, Fax: +32 92 64 64 87 E-mail: gilberte.schuyten@ugent.be Website: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/members/profile_view_ind.php?id=545
	Website		http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/

Forthcoming IASE Activities

ICOTS-7: Working Cooperatively in Statistics Education

Information about Registration, Accommodation, and Tours, Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, July 2 - 7, 2006
Local Organisers: Pedro Alberto Morettin (Chair), Lisbeth K. Cordani, Pedro Silva, Clélia Maria C. Toloi and Wilton de Oliveira Bussab.

IPC Executive Committee:
Carmen Batanero (Chair), Susan Starkings (Programme Chair), Allan Rossman and Beth Chance (Editors of Proceedings), John Harraway (Scientific Secretary) and Lisbeth Cordani (Local Organisers Representative).

The International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI) are organising the Seventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-7), which will be hosted by the Brazilian Statistical Association (ABE) in Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, July 2 - 7, 2006.

Information about ICOTS-7 is on the website: http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/icots7/icots7.php and, in particular under the "Registration" tab, there is information about registration, accommodation and tours.

Although the ICOTS-7 information is on the website, we draw your attention to the following: There are reduced fees for IASE/ISI members, and participants from Latin American or Developing Countries.

There is a programme for accompanying persons – some details are given on the web page. Accompanying persons may choose what they wish to attend and pay for the items they choose while in Salvador. There are some details on the web page about the pre-arranged tours.

Contributed by the Editors

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

The University of Warwick, Coventry, U.K., August 11-17, 2007
Reasoning about Statistical Inference:
Innovative Ways of Connecting Chance and Data
The Forum's focus will be on informal ideas of inference rather than on formal methods of estimation and tests of significance. This topic is emerging from the presentations and discussions at SRTL-3 and 4 and is a topic of current interest to many researchers as well as teachers of statistics. As new courses and curricula are developed, a greater role for informal types of statistical inference is anticipated, introduced early, revisited often, and developed through use of simulation and technological tools. We encourage research papers that address reasoning about statistical inference at all levels of education including the professional development of elementary and secondary teachers.

We encourage submission of research papers that address questions such as the following:

1. What are the simplest forms of statistical inference that students can understand?
2. How does reasoning about statistical inference develop from the simplest forms (informal) to the more complex ones
(formal)?
3. How can instructional tasks and technological tools be used to promote the understanding of statistical inference?
4. What are sequences of activities that can help student develop a conceptual understanding of statistical inference?
5. What types of misconceptions are found in students’ reasoning about statistical inference?
6. What types of foundational knowledge and reasoning are needed for students to understand and reason about statistical
inference?
7. How do students develop an understanding of the language used in describing statistical inference (e.g., significance,
confidence)?
8. How does an understanding of statistical inference connect and effect understanding of other statistical concepts?
9. What are useful items and questions to use to assess understanding of statistical inference?

The Local SRTL-5 Organisers:
Janet Ainley, janet.ainley@warwick.ac.uk
Dave Pratt, dave.pratt@warwick.ac.uk
SRTL-5 Website: http://srtl.stat.auckland.ac.nz/

Contributed by Dani Ben-Zvi

IASE

IASE Activities at the 56^th Session of the ISI

IASE organises several sessions at the 56^th Session of the ISI, to be held in Lisbon from 22-29 August 2007:
• Research on Reasoning about Distribution, Joan Garfield
• How modern technologies have changed the curriculum in introductory courses, Lucette Carter
• Preparing Teachers of Statistics, Allan Rossman
• Research on the Use of Simulation in Teaching Statistics and Probability, Rolf Biehler
• Optimising Internet-based Resources for Teaching Statistics, Ginger Holmes Rowell
• Observational Studies, Confounding and Multivariate Thinking, Milo Schield
• Teaching of Official Statistics, Sharleen Forbes
• Teaching of Survey Statistics, Steve Heeringa
• Studying Variability through Sports Phenomena, TBD
• Use of Symbolic Computing Systems in Teaching Statistics, Zaven Karian

IASE Organising Committee:
Allan J. Rossman (USA) arossman@calpoly.edu
Gilberte Schuyten (Belgium) gilberte.schuyten@UGent.be 
Chris Wild (New Zealand) c.wild@auckland.ac.nz

For more information, visit the ISI 56 website at http://www.isi2007.com.pt or contact members of OC.

Contributed by Allan J. Rossman

IASE Satellite Conference on Assessing Student Learning in Statistics

(Prior to ISI 56 Lisboa 2007, Guimaraes, Portugal)
Conference Committee
• Brian Phillips (Australia) (Joint Chair and Joint Chief Editor) bphillips@swin.edu.au
• Beth Chance (USA) (Joint Chair) bchance@calpoly.edu
• Allan Rossman (USA) arossman@calpoly.edu
• Ginger Rowell (USA) rowell@mtsu.edu
• Gilberte Schuyten (Belgium) gilberte.schuyten@ugent.be 
• Larry Weldon (Canada) (Joint Chief Editor) weldon@sfu.ca

Local Organiser:
Bruno C. de Sousa (Portugal) bruno@mct.uminho.pt

Theme
This Satellite Conference invites papers on all aspects of assessing student learning in statistics. For example, we expect to have papers on writing effective exam questions, on exam implementation strategies, and on alternative assessment methods such as projects, lab assignments, and writing assignments. We also encourage submissions on how to use assessment to improve student learning, and on developing and administering assessment items to conduct research into student learning. Proceedings will be available free at the publication page of IASE.

Contributed by Brian Phillips

  IASE

Joint ICMI/IASE Study

Statistics Education in School Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education
The aim of this study is to reflect on the detail of statistics teaching at the school level: more particularly, to consider the training of mathematics teachers to face the challenge of teaching statistics. It is intended to develop some recommendations and produce materials that can be used in the training of both prospective teachers at the university level, and for in-service teachers who had never had adequate preparation for teaching school statistics.

The Study Conference will be merged with the IASE Round Table Conference in 2008, and will be held at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico ( http://www.mty.itesm.mx ), in July 2008.

Open Informative Meeting at ICOTS (Thursday 6^th, 12:30-14:00): The aim of this session is to present the state of planning for the Joint ICMI/IASE Study and receive suggestions from IASE members to better focus the Discussion Document. Anyone interested is invited to attend.

International Programme Committee:
• Carmen Batanero (Spain)
• Bernard Hodgson (Canada; ICMI representative)
• Allan Rossman (USA; IASE representative)
• Armando Albert (México; ITSM representative)
• Dani Ben-Zvi (Israel)
• Gail Burrill (USA)
• Doreen Connor (UK)
• Joachim Engel (Germany)
• Joan Garfield (USA)
• Jun Li (China)
• Maria Gabriella Ottaviani (Italy)
• Maxine Pfannkuch (New Zealand)
• Mokaeane Victor Polaki (Lesotho)
• Chris Reading (Australia)

Local Organising Committee: Blanca Ruiz (Chair), Tomás Sánchez, Armando Albert

More information is available from Carmen Batanero, batanero@ugr.es or from http://www.ugr.es/~icmi/iase_study.

Contributed by Carmen Batanero

IASE

Proceedings of SRTL-4

Reasoning About Distributions:
A Collection of Current Research Studies
We are pleased to announce the publication of Reasoning about Distributions: A Collection of Current Research Studies, a unique CD that contains research papers on reasoning about distributions presented at the Fourth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL4) held in July 2005 at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Many of these papers (all written in English) contain video segments (in English or with English subtitles) of student or teacher interviews, or learning interactions. The video segments and research studies provide a rich resource for researchers and teachers. Note: revised versions of some of these papers will appear in a special issue of the IASE Statistics Education Research Journal in November 2006. However, they will not contain video links and not all papers in the CD will be in this issue.

Due to ethical agreements with participants in the research studies, the video segments included on the CD are to be used only for research purposes. For any other purpose (e.g., professional development), permission must be obtained from individual authors. The CDs are available for a minimal cost that covers materials and postage. They may be purchased from Dr. Katie Makar at the University of Queensland (Australia). The total cost including shipping in Australia and New Zealand is A$20 and the total cost for shipping overseas is A$25 or US$20. Please make checks (in Australian or US dollars) payable to Katie Makar (SRTL4). Bank transfers can be arranged.

Mail checks to:
Dr. Katie Makar (SRTL4), School of Education, SBS Bldg 24, University of Queensland QLD 4072, Australia

Contributed by Joan Garfield

Information on International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP)

In order to improve the usefulness of the ISLP web pages, we are conducting a survey of users and potential users of these web pages. If you have not yet filled out this (anonymous) survey, please go to
 http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/survey.htm.

For those unfamiliar with the ISLP, its mission is to provide those interested in statistical literacy with information and resources, and to aid them in the development of statistical literacy around the world. Presently, the major focus has been on web pages that list these resources in useful groupings. For each resource, a few sentences are given that describe that item, and complete access or ordering information is given. The emphasis is on items available for free on the Internet.

As you may be aware, the web pages of the International Statistical Literacy Project have been on the Internet for three years now.

So, several of the page coordinators have decided to step down. Hence, we are seeking new page coordinators or co-coordinators for several of the pages. In particular, coordinators or co-coordinators are needed for the General Resources, Primary Level, Secondary Level, Adult Learner, Teacher Training, and Journalists and other Mass Media web pages. To explore these pages and the other pages of the website, go to http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/islplist.htm. 

We would like to expand the material on the web page ( http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/islpart.htm ) that has publicly available newspaper and Internet articles and reports (both good and bad) that can be used when teaching statistics. If you have any good articles or reports (especially from countries other than the USA), please submit the articles, along with an approximately 3- to 5-sentence paragraph of how they can be used when training teachers, to Eunice Goldberg at egoldberg@nl.edu. Please make sure to include a complete reference to where the article is located and, if possible, information on who needs to be contacted to get permission to reproduce the article on our website.

Finally, the website mostly contains resources in English. If you know of any applicable resources in a language other than English, please send me (at cblumberg@winona.edu; Fax: +1-507-4575376) a description of the item in the language of publication. Also, include an English translation of the description.

Descriptions of items in English are also welcome and can be sent either to me or to the appropriate page coordinator ( http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/islpcoord.htm ). Please feel free to contact me directly, or by using the ( http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/survey.htm ) survey form, with any suggestions that you have for the ISLP and its web pages.

Contributed by Carol Joyce Blumberg

IASE

Guy Lecturer

Susan Starkings has been appointed Guy Lecturer for 2006. A Guy Lecturer is appointed by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) each year and prepares the ‘RSS Schools Lecture’. This lecture is aimed at sixth form students and draws out the importance and widespread applicability of statistics in a serious yet accessible and entertaining way. The official delivery of this lecture takes place once in the year, and it is available to other schools that request it for repeat deliveries.

Susan’s lecture for 2006 is entitled “Can you see the wood for the trees? Survey, sampling, estimation and approximation”. It looks at the decision-making process on how to assign a value to trees using surveys, sampling, estimation and approximation. A brief summary can be found on the RSS web page http://www.rss.org.uk/main.asp?page=2179.

Contributed by the Editors

IASE Website

Visit the IASE website: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase! It is a valuable resource of statistics education information. In the past few months, the website has become richer in the extensive list of links and publications. The “Links” section provides links categorised in several groups: Research, Learning, Assessment, Curriculum Guidelines, Bibliographies, Discussion lists, Indexes and Abstracting Services, Major Journals, Other Journals, Newsletters, Publishers, Datasets, Java Applets, Software, Statistical Calculators, Organizations, International Agencies and Non-Profit Organizations. Each group provides links to interesting and useful pages for statistics educators and researchers. The other interesting link is the “Publications” section, which has a list of IASE past publications and links to many other sites. Of special interest is the Dissertations in the Stats Ed section. The IASE is beginning to build what we intend to become a comprehensive archive of doctoral dissertations in Statistics Education. We have to thank Chris Wild for the careful updating and maintenance of the IASE web pages.

Contributed by the Editors

IASE
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International Association of Survey Statisticians

	Editorial Address	Lilli Japec, Scientific Secretary IASS, R&D Department, Statistics Sweden, Box 24 300, 104 51 Stockholm, Sweden Tel: +46 8 5069 4794 Fax: +46 8 5069 4599 E-mail: lilli.japec@scb.se
	President	Gordon Brackstone, 78 Charing Road, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K2G 4C9 Tel.: +1 613 224 0513 Fax: +1 613 951 1394 E-mail : gordon.brackstone@sympatico.ca
	Secretariat	Michel Péronnet, Executive Director Claude Olivier, Secretary INSEE/CEFIL, 3 rue de la Cité, 33500 Libourne, France. Tel.: +33 5 5755 5600 Fax: +33 5 5755 5620 E-mail: michel.peronnet@insee.fr E-mail: claude.olivier@insee.fr
		Anna Maria Vespa, Executive Secretary, Centre d’Etudes 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

Message from the IASS President

Preparations for the 2007 ISI Session in Lisbon, and associated activities, are continuing on schedule. As usual, we are planning to organise short courses around the 2007 meetings. Our main challenge is to ensure that students from developing countries are able to attend these courses and we are seeking sources of financing for this purpose. If members have any suggestions in this regard, please make them known to our Scientific Secretary (lilli.japec@scb.se).

In the last Newsletter, we announced the appointment of Beverley Carlson, former IASS Vice-President as Chair of the Nominations Committee for the 2007 elections. I am now pleased to announce that IASS members Oztas Ayhan, David Bellhouse, Oliver Chinganya, Anne-Marie Dussaix, Linda Hewitt and Gervacio G. Selda have agreed to serve on this Committee. I hope that IASS members will support the Committee by making known their suggestions for potential candidates for the 2007 elections of IASS Officers. Please convey these to Beverley ( carlsonb@un.org ) or to any member of the Committee.

I would also like to remind members that nominations for the 2007 Cochran-Hansen Prize for statisticians from developing and transitional countries are requested. Details are provided in the section on Awards, Prizes and Competitions. Please consider whether you know a qualifying young statistician who should be encouraged to submit an entry. Sarah Nusser ( nusser@iastate.edu ) can be contacted for further information.

The recent Q2006 Conference on Quality in Survey Statistics, hosted by the UK Office of National Statistics and Eurostat in Cardiff, Wales, at the end of April, provided an opportunity for the IASS to organise a panel discussion on The Role of Survey Statisticians in Managing Quality. This was a well-attended session that drew attention, among other issues, to the important role of survey statisticians in identifying cost-quality trade-offs and in communicating measures of quality in a way that users can understand. A wide range of other sessions during the Conference reported on progress in improving and managing various aspects of the quality of survey data.

Sadly, we have lost another pioneer survey statistician and long-time IASS member with the death of Joseph Waksberg in January. In addition to lending his name to a widely-used technique in telephone surveying, Joe enjoyed two long and distinguished careers, first at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and then at Westat.

Finally, I welcome any comments or suggestions you may have on IASS activities.

Gordon Brackstone
President, IASS

Message from the Scientific Secretary

In this issue of the ISI Newsletter, you will find information about ongoing IASS activities, such as the Lisbon short courses, reports from recent conferences and information about future conferences sponsored by the IASS. These activities aim at strengthening survey methodology on a global scale. There are also other organisations that have initiated activities to strengthen survey methodology. One such activity is the development of the ISO Standard for Marketing, Opinion and Social Research. This standard will influence the way many organisations conduct surveys within these areas. In the next issue of the ISI Newsletter, we will include more information about this ISO-standard. During recent months, we have seen three new journals evolving: The Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, http://jpc.stat.cmu.edu; The International Journal of Public Information Systems, www.ijpis.net; and Survey Research Methods, http://esra.sqp.nl/esra/journal. All these journals are of relevance to our field. You can read more about the latter journal below.

Future meetings of interest to IASS members include:
• The International Conference on Methodology of Longitudinal Surveys (MOLS 2006), Essex, UK, July 12-14, 2006. Website:
http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/ulsc/mols2006. 
• The International Conference on Establishment Surveys (ICES III), Montréal, Canada, June 18-21, 2007. Website:
http://www.amstat.org/meetings/ices/2007.
• The Second Baltic-Nordic Conference on Survey Sampling, Kuusamo, Finland, June 2-7, 2007. Website:
http://www.mathstat.helsinki.fi/msm/banocoss.
• Small Area Estimation SAE2007, Satellite Meeting to the ISI Lisbon Session, Pisa, Italy, September 3-5, 2007. Contact: Monica Pratesi ( m.pratesi@ec.unipi.it ).

Finally, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have suggestions or questions regarding any of the IASS activities.

Lilli Japec
IASS Scientific Secretary

IASS

Nominations for IASS Officers and Council Members

As Chair of the IASS Nominations Committee for 2007, I would like to invite IASS members to suggest suitable candidates for Officers and Council Members of the IASS. The elected candidates will take office during the August 2007 ISI Session in Lisbon. It is important to make your nominations as soon as possible in order for the Committee to complete its task by November 2006 and please take into account that in the summer season things slow down.

The Offices to be filled are the following:
The President-Elect for the period 2007-2009, who will then serve as President from 2009-2011. The President, who should be an elected member of the ISI, is responsible for implementing the policy and decisions of the IASS General Assembly and the Council to nurture and promote the Association and its objectives.

Two Vice-Presidents, who are members of the IASS, to serve for the period 2007-2009.

The Scientific Secretary, who is a member of the IASS, to serve for the period 2007-2009. The Scientific Secretary is responsible, under the guidance of the President and the Council, for co-ordination of the activities involved in arranging seminars, conferences and publications.

Six Council Members, who are members of the IASS, to serve for the period 2007-2011.

The President for 2007-2009, Pedro Silva of Brazil, and six Council Members who are serving for the period 2005-2009 were already elected in 2005. These Council Members are: Giuliana Coccia, Italy; Geoffrey Lee, Australia; Leyla Mohadjer, United States; Sarah M. Nusser, United States; Don Royce, Canada; and Wei Yuan, China.

Gordon Brackstone, President of the IASS, has stated that the choice of future leaders is one of the most important tasks in any scientific organisation and our officers need to represent the full breadth of our Association, covering both its broad geographic range and interests. In putting forward your suggestions for the future Officers and Council Members of the IASS, please bear in mind the composition of the Council members who have already been elected to serve for the period 2007-2009. On behalf of the IASS Nominations Committee, I look forward to receiving your considered suggestions with as much background information as possible.
Please take care to propose candidates from countries that complement the current membership. Please send your nominations to me at carlsonb@un.org or through any of the other members of the IASS Nominations Committee:
Oztas Ayhan (Turkey), oayhan@rorqual.cc.metu.edu.tr
David Bellhouse, (Canada), bellhouse@stats.uwo.ca
Oliver Chingaya (Kenya), ochinganya@africaonline.co.ke
Anne-Marie Dussaix (France), dussaix@essec.fr
Linda Hewitt (Trinidad and Tobago), linhew@trinidad.net
Gervacio G. Selda (Philippines), ggseldajr@srtc.gov.ph

With best wishes,

Beverley Carlson
Chair Nomination Committee

Report from the International Conference on Telephone Survey Methodology II

In January, around 350 people gathered in Florida for the second International Conference on Telephone Survey Methodology. The Conference, chaired by Clyde Tucker, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, covered many interesting topics such as, organisation of call centers, sampling and weighting, interviewer effects and new technology. In his plenary speech, Clyde Tucker addressed the rapid changes in both telecommunications and the social and political environment, and how these changes have affected and might affect the way we do telephone surveys in the future. Mode effects were discussed in a number of presentations and results from studies comparing telephone surveys with, for example, web and face-to-face surveys were presented. One of the future challenges for many western countries is how to design mixed-mode surveys in a way that mode effects are minimised. Another interesting topic that was addressed was oral translations in multi-lingual surveys. It was illustrated how quality can be affected in a negative way when oral translations are used.

There were also four short courses offered as part of the Conference. The topics were survey quality, sampling, questionnaire design, and multilevel analysis. The invited papers presented at the Conference will be published in a Wiley monograph early 2007.

Lilli Japec
IASS Scientific Secretary

IASS

The International Conference on Methodology of Longitudinal Surveys (MOLS)

The IASS is sponsoring the International Conference on Methodology of Longitudinal Surveys that is being organised by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, UK, and will be held at Essex on 12-14 July 2006.
The Conference aims to bring together scholars and research professionals involved in the design, implementation and analysis of longitudinal surveys, to share methodological research findings and to discuss the state of the art in carrying out longitudinal surveys. The focus is primarily on surveys that involve collecting data from subjects on multiple occasions, though issues that arise in surveys that collect longitudinal data via retrospective methods may also be relevant.

Associated with the Conference are two one-day courses taking place on 11 July: “Handling incomplete data in longitudinal surveys” and “Multilevel modelling for longitudinal survey data.” Discounted rates are available for students.

Further details about both the Conference and the courses can be found on the Conference website:
 http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/ulsc/mols2006.

New Journal: Survey Research Methods

A new peer-reviewed journal, Survey Research Methods (SRM) has been set up under the auspices of The European Survey Research Association (ESRA). The journal, edited by Peter Lynn of the University of Essex, U.K., publishes articles in English that discuss methodological issues related to survey research. Two types of papers are in-scope:
- Papers discussing methodological issues in substantive research using survey data;
- Papers that discuss methodological issues that are more or less independent of the specific field of substantive research.

Topics of particular interest include survey design, sample design, question and questionnaire design, data collection, nonresponse, data capture, data processing, coding and editing, measurement errors, imputation, weighting and survey data analysis methods. The journal aims to be multidisciplinary. The journal will be published electronically and aims for a fast review and publication process, so that papers could be published within three months of initial submission.

Further information, including details of how to submit papers, can be found on the journal website,
 http://esra.sqp.nl/esra/journal.

Peter Lynn
Editor SRM

IASS

IASS Short Courses at the 56^th ISI Session, Lisbon 2007

The International Association of Survey Statisticians has developed a preliminary programme of short courses to be offered just prior to or after the 56^th Session of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, August 2007. Funding assistance for supporting statisticians from developing and transitional countries is being sought.

The following courses have been planned.

Course A: Workshop on Survey Sampling
Presented by: Colm O’Muircheartaigh and Steven Heeringa

The workshop will focus on practical aspects of sampling for household surveys. It will start from basic principles and build up to complex stratified multi-stage sample designs. It will cover the main sampling techniques and also such issues as sampling frames, weighting, and imputation. It will end with an introduction to variance estimation with complex sample designs.

Course B: Variance Estimation in Complex Surveys
Presented by: Wayne Fuller, Kirk Wolter, F. Jay Breidt and Anthony An

The purpose of this course is to provide training in variance estimation in complex surveys for survey statisticians, especially those from developing countries.
The course will cover methods of estimating variances for statistics, such as means, proportions, ratios, and regression coefficients. Variance estimation for imputed samples will be discussed. Both linearisation and replication methods will be presented. The use of computer software for computing variances of statistics from complex sample designs will be demonstrated and instruction will be given in practical applications. About one-half of the course will be devoted to computer implementation.

Course C: Workshop on Editing and Imputation of Survey Data
Presented by: John G. Kovar and Eric Rancourt

Surveys and censuses conducted by national statistical agencies, research institutes and other survey organisations suffer from various degrees of nonresponse even under ideal conditions. In order to try to alleviate the problems caused by nonresponse, editing and imputation methods are usually applied.
Since the process of editing and imputation is time and resource intensive, care must be exercised in controlling the efficiency as well as the effectiveness of the methods. The aim of this short course is to provide the students with an introductory level description and discussion of the methods of prevention, detection and treatment of nonresponse. Evaluation of such methods and their impact on the survey outputs will be highlighted. Existing edit and imputation software will be compared. Numerous examples will be provided to illustrate the material presented.

Course D: Introduction to Survey Quality
Presented by: Paul Biemer and Lars Lyberg

The course is designed for a broad audience that includes experienced survey researchers and practitioners who would benefit from a better understanding of the survey quality, as well as others with little prior experience in survey methods. It provides an introduction to the concepts, principles and terminology used in the study of survey quality. Accuracy is but one dimension, albeit a critical one, of a multi-dimensional framework that embodies survey quality. The course examines the goals of survey design with particular emphasis on minimising total mean squared error of key survey estimates, subject to costs constraints as well as constraints on some quality dimensions. The sources of survey error are discussed within this scheme, focusing on four major sources: coverage error, nonresponse, data processing error and measurement error. Methods that are most often used in practice for evaluating the effects of the survey error will also be covered.

Course E: Statistical Disclosure Control
Presented by: Anco Hundepool, Eric Schulte Nordholt and Peter-Paul de Wolf

The purpose of this course is to provide the participants with an understanding of the methodological aspects of Statistical Disclosure Control, to train them in solving problems on this topic and to demonstrate the ARGUS software. The meaning and impact of Statistical Disclosure Control can only be appreciated in the light of practical problems and policy related issues. Therefore, some attention is also paid to such topics without putting heavy emphasis on them. Topics covered include theory and methods on microdata, exercises on microdata, demonstration of Mu-ARGUS, theory and methods on tabular data, exercises on tabular data, demonstration of Tau-ARGUS, legal issues, on-site facilities and remote access.

Course F: Design and Analysis of Repeated Surveys
Presented by: David Steel and Craig McLaren

This course will consider the interaction between the design of a repeated survey and the methods used for estimation and analysis. The choice of rotation pattern will be considered in terms of the impact on the estimation of levels and changes. Composite and other forms of estimators will be reviewed and the interaction between design and estimation explored. Estimation of seasonally adjusted and trend estimates from repeated surveys will also be considered.

For further information, please contact:
Lilli Japec
IASS Scientific Secretary
lilli.japec@scb.se

IASS
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Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC)

		Editorial Address	Mr. Christian Dembiermont, Monetary and Economic Department, Bank for International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland Tel: +41 61 280 8313, Fax: +41 61 280 9100 E-mail: christian.dembiermont@bis.org and Ms. Madeleine Op't Hof, Monetary and Economic Department, Bank for International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland Tel: +41 61 280 8335, Fax: +41 61 280 9100 E-mail: madeleine.opt-hof@bis.org
		Chairman	Jan Smets, Executive Director, National Bank of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 2 221 2046, Fax: +32 2 2213239 E-mail: jan.smets@nbb.be
		Website	http://www.ifcommittee.org/

CPI Workshop

On the 20^th and 21^th of April 2006, the IFC hosted a very successful workshop entitled “CPI Measures: Central Bank views and concerns”. 37 CPI experts from 26 central banks and the IMF attended the workshop, which took place at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. Experiences and views were exchanged and lively discussions took place on a number of issues, including international methodological standards for CPI, inflation measures from the perspective of monetary policy and quantifying the measurement bias in CPIs. Issue notes and summaries of the discussions, as well as comparative tables, will be published in the next issue of the IFC Bulletin. As a result of the workshop, suggestions for future work will also be submitted to international groups dealing with international CPI methodology.

Forthcoming events

Preparation is in full swing for the Third IFC Conference scheduled for 3^rd and 31^st August 2006 at the BIS in Basel. The theme of the Conference is “Measuring the Financial Position of the Household Sector”. Participation is open to all central banks. More information on the Conference can be found on http://www.ifcommittee.org. The IFC will also contribute to a conference organised by the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) in September this year and will organise various meetings at the 56^th ISI Session in Lisboa.

International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

		Editorial Address	Bovas Abraham, Dept. of Statistics and Act. Sci., Univ. of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada N2L 3G1 Tel: +1-519-888-4567 Ext. 447 Fax: +1-519-746-1875 E-mail: babraham@math.uwaterloo.ca
		Chairman	Jan Smets, Executive Director, National Bank of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 2 221 2046, Fax: +32 2 2213239 E-mail: jan.smets@nbb.be
		Website	http://www.stats.wits.ac.za/isbis/

ISBIS-2007: August 18-20 Azores

ISBIS is planning a Satellite Meeting prior to the ISI biennial Session in Lisbon, Portugal. This Meeting will be on the island of Azores hosted by the University of Azores. The dates are August 18-20, 2007. Helena Bacelar-Nicolau ( hbacelar@netcabo.pt ) and Fernando Nicolau will handle all the local arrangements and Francisco Samanieago ( fjsamaniego@ucdavis.edu ) from the University of California, Davis, will be the Programme Chair. Other details will be announced as they become available. You may contact Bovas Abraham ( babraham@uwaterloo.ca ) for further information.

ISBIS Membership

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 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 http://www.stats.wits.ac.za/isbis or contact Bovas Abraham.
If you are already a member of the ISI you can become a member of ISBIS free of charge, provided you are not a member of another Section, by sending an e-mail to Margaret in the ISI Office (@cbs.nl). If you are already a member of another Section, you can add ISBIS membership for a small fee.

Journal Committee

ISBIS is looking into the possibility of having a journal for the Society. There have been some initial discussions and a small committee is looking into this issue.

ISBIS-5 Lima, Peru

The Fifth International Symposium on Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS5), organised by ISBIS (11-13 January 2006) in Lima, Peru, was a great success. Geoff Vining (Virginia Tech University) was the Conference Chair, Soren Bisgaard (University of Massachusetts) and Bovas Abraham were Co-Organisers. The Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos was our local host and Ricardo Lopez from San Marcos, Jaime Tavera and Carmen Tavera helped with local arrangements.

ISBIS5 provided a forum for presenting and exchanging ideas in several areas of business, financial, and industrial statistics including data mining, six sigma, quality management, design of experiments, statistical quality control, and reliability. Talks ranged from very applied to cutting edge research. There were about 135 participants altogether, with 65 from Peru, Ecuador and Columbia, and 70 from other countries (including Brazil and Mexico). There were approximately 30 Peruvian participants from the private sector. About 20 countries were represented! During the first 2 days, we had 20 invited sessions in English and 8 in Spanish. We also had 4 plenary talks, 2 in English and 2 in Spanish; all four talks were with simultaneous translation. On the third day, we had 3 panel sessions (with simultaneous translation): Future of Quality Technology, Six Sigma, and Business and Industrial Statistics in Latin America and Beyond. There was very active discussion from the floor.

The exchange of knowledge and experiences will continue to foster international collaboration in research and other technology transfer activities, and will provide opportunities in the future for dialogue between statisticians in Latin America and the international community.

Sessions in ISI-2007

ISBIS is sponsoring several invited sessions during the ISI Lisboa Session.

1. Risk-Utility Formulations for Statistical Disclosure Limitation Problems
Organiser: Alan Karr, National Institute for Statistical Sciences (NISS), USA ( karr@niss.org )
2. Stochastic Volatility Modelling: Reflections, Recent Developments and the Future
Organiser: E. Xekalaki, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece ( exek@aueb.gr )
3. Design of Experiments in Marketing and Advertising Testing
Organiser: Johannes Ledolter, School of Business, University of Iowa, Iowa, USA ( johannes-ledolter@uiowa.edu )
4. Issues in Business and Industrial Statistics in the Developing World (Panel Discussion)
Organiser: Jacky Galpin, University of Witswatersrand, South Africa ( jacky@galpin.co.za )
5. Statistical Issues in Wired, Wireless and Sensor Networks
Organiser: Lorraine Denby, AVAYA, USA ( ld@avaya.com )
6. Six Sigma: A Business Strategy or a Management Fad (Panel Discussion)
Organiser: Sung H. Park, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea ( parksh@plaza.snu.ac.kr ).

Bovas Abraham

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