Newsletter Volume 32, Number 2 (95) 2008 -ISI Sections

David Kendall passed away on Tuesday, October 23^rd, 2007, at the age of 89. (obituary)

David was heavily involved in the formation of the Bernoulli Society, and its activities were always a matter of great interest to him. The International Association for Statistics in the Physical Sciences (IASPS) had been conceived by Jerzy Neyman to systematically study statistical problems raised by applications in the physical sciences and in 1961, the association became a vital section within the International Statistical Institute (ISI). David's election in 1973 as President of IASPS was a clear sign of the worldwide recognition of his scientific contributions to the physical sciences. However, at that time, he could hardly know the role he would be playing in the creation of the Bernoulli Society. When David started his office, he quickly realized that it was increasingly difficult for IASPS to constrain its activities purely to the physical sciences. Many other applications of stochastic thinking suggested the creation of an opening to the universal nature of this methodology. It was his dream to gear the society into this broader assignment.

The desire of IASPS to broaden its interests was linked to the wishes of two other groups: firstly, the European Statisticians (ES) (Chair Jim Durbin) that had been active within the US-based Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), but wanted to acquire more independence. Secondly, the Stochastic Processes Committee (CCSP) (Chair Jef L. Teugels), created in 1972 at the initiative of Julian Keilson that was looking for a more international umbrella for its activities. Kendall quickly realized that a transformation of IASPS would be among the best possible solutions for most, if not all, of these aspirations. Early in July 1974, he was ready with a first draft of the necessary changes to the IASPS statutes. After some cosmetic changes, Kendall's proposal was accepted by the CCSP in June 1974 by the ES in August 1974 and then by the ISI Bureau on September 4^th, 1974. After the final approval by the membership of IASPS, the association ceased to exist on June 10th, 1975, and was immediately reconstituted into the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability.

I vividly remember how David Kendall transferred the presidential responsibilities to his successor David Blackwell during the ISI-session in September 1975 in Warsaw. Since he was very proud of his successful achievement, he often insisted that he should be referred to as the first President of the Bernoulli Society. David also remained a key person in the creation and the later activities of the Committee for Statistics in the Physical Sciences, started within the Bernoulli Society in Warsaw, to take care that the original interests of IASPS would not go astray within the broader mission of the Bernoulli Society.

Apart from his vital role in the above history, David will be often remembered for two other initiatives. In 1974, Kendall contacted Peter Ferdinand Bernoulli-Stiffler, a chemist living in Basel, Switzerland, with the request to the Bernoulli family to allow the society the use of elements of the Bernoulli family's coat of arms. This is the reason for the argent and vert colors on all of the Bernoulli stationery. Also, Peter Bernoulli offered a book to Kendall with the history and genealogy of the Bernoulli family. At the end of his/her presidency, the outgoing president signs the book and passes it on to the incoming president at the ISI-session. As David candidly remarked, there was an ample supply of blank sheets in the book, proving in a nutshell his wish for a bright and long future for a society that was very dear to his heart.

A number of decisions were taken during a fruitful joint meeting of the Executive Committee and of the Council, which was held in Aachen (Germany) in March. One is a tentative collaboration with national mathematical or statistical societies. The objective is to enhance our visibility and attractiveness, at a time when actual membership to a scientific society is no longer perceived as important as it used to be. To begin with, only attempts toward a limited number of countries will be made, but if this succeeds, we might enlarge considerably the scope of these collaborations in the near future. The second and I think most important point is the decision to support a project called “Distance Mentoring in Statistics” put forward by Arnoldo Frigessi, and whose aim is a web-based tutoring programme for Ph.D. students in developing countries. This project is not yet completely finalized, especially as to the concrete form it might take, but the main idea is that Ph.D. students in statistics would, if wanted, have a tutor (a senior statistician or probabilist) in a developed country. This tutor will not do supervision in the traditional sense, but will help the student in finding and accessing relevant scientific material and software, in suggesting journals for publication and conferences or workshop to attend, and in giving information for CVs and the job market. This list is by no means exhaustive. If this project works out, as I strongly hope it will, then we shall need the collaboration of a number of senior people: there is, of course, no need to be a Bernoulli Society member to become a tutor, but we hope that many of our members will volunteer for this. Contact Arnoldo Frigessi (frigessi@medisin.uio.no) if you wish to support the start phase of the project.

Another point is our relations with the IMS. I had several exchanges with Jianqing Fan, its present president, and furthermore, its Present-Elect. Nanny Wermuth has been invited to participate in a part of our meeting in Aachen, something that will probably be reciprocated in the future. These cross participations are, in my opinion, a concrete expression of the desire of both societies to tighten their relations and enhance their collaboration (which already is quite intense) in sponsoring the organization of meetings and publications. By no means, and this is clear in all the discussions we had so far with officials of the IMS, does this imply any sort of institutional link and a fortiori of tentative merge. It is quite clear that both societies are retaining their own characteristics and aims. It does imply, however, more collaboration for the benefit of the entire community of statisticians and probabilists.

As you all know, our next (and big) Society event will be the World Congress in Probability and Statistics, in Singapore, July 14-19 (don’t forget to register!): The programme is very exciting, and I hope that I will see many of you on this occasion.

Marta Sanz-Solé is chair of CCSP, also in charge of the liaison with IMS special lectures committee. She can be reached at marta.sanz@ub.edu.

The Bernoulli Society endorses Statistics Surveys, which is a new electronic journal. Statistics Surveys publishes survey articles in theoretical, computational, and applied statistics. The style of articles may range from reviews of recent research to graduate textbook exposition. Articles may be broad or narrow in scope. The journal may be reached at http://www.i-journals.org/ss/index.php.

In 2007, Bernoulli was able to cut its library price by 40% to help libraries reduce their costs. To continue to make this possible, it is important that universities that use Bernoulli do indeed have a library subscription. You can help! Bernoulli is the only major journal, which publishes papers from all areas of stochastics and it is the main forum for papers, which straddle the boundaries between the different specialties of our science. Bernoulli is the official journal of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability. It publishes original and significant research contributions, review papers, and papers on the history of statistics and probability.
Bernoulli is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of 25%. Access to Bernoulli is indispensable for departments, which have a serious interest in stochastics. All members of the Bernoulli Society receive the journal.
You can help in at least three ways: Make sure that your library subscribes to Bernoulli, submit your best papers to Bernoulli, and serve as Bernoulli referee and editor!
Bernoulli provides an important and unique service – support it!

In September 2008, EURANDOM will have existed for 10 years; the first postdocs and Ph.D. students arrived in September and October of 1998. EURANDOM is an international Research Institute in the areas of probability, statistics, and stochastic operations research, located on the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) campus. The scientific staff of EURANDOM consists of about 25 postdocs from Europe and abroad, guided by senior scientists, mainly coming from Dutch universities, including TU/e. The research is fundamental as well as application oriented. Some of the application areas are: physics, biology, image analysis, and communication and risk management. Many postdocs find tenured positions after their period of research at EURANDOM at Dutch or international universities and/or at research positions in industry, including banks. EURANDOM is known for its workshops and visitor programs: around 10 workshops per year, with around 400 participants and around 40 visitors a year visit the institute during periods of a few days up to several months. The 10^th anniversary will be celebrated with a conference on August 27 and 28, 2008. During this conference the founders of EURANDOM, former postdocs, and keynote speakers from science and industry shall reflect on 10 years of EURANDOM and will look forward to new developments. More information will be given later on www.eurandom.tue.nl. For the moment, we would like to suggest making a reservation in your agenda for these dates.

The XIIth Brazilian School of Probability will be held at Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil, August 3-9, 2008.
There will be minicourses by Professors A. Dembo, A. Montanari, E. Scoppola, and A. Gaudilliere. A list of plenary speakers can be found on www.mat.ufmg.br/ebp12

This conference will be held from July 14-19, 2008, at the National University of Singapore. See:
http://www.ims.nus.edu.sg/Programs/wc2008/index.htm
This quadrennial joint meeting is a major worldwide event featuring the latest scientific developments in the fields of probability and statistics and their applications. The programme will cover a wide range of topics and will include invited lectures by the following leading specialists:
• Martin Barlow, University of British Columbia (Medallion Lecture)
• Richard Durrett, Cornell University (Wald Lectures)
• Jianqing Fan, Princeton University (Laplace Lecture)
• Alice Guionnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (Lévy Lecture)
• Mark Low, University of Pennsylvania (Medallion Lecture)
• Zhi-Ming Ma, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beijing (Medallion Lecture)
• Peter McCullagh, University of Chicago (Neyman Lecture)
• Douglas Nychka, US National Center for Atmospheric Research (Public Lecture)
• Oded Schramm, Microsoft Research (BS-IMS Special Lecture)
• David Spiegelhalter, University of Cambridge and MRC Biostatistics Unit (Bernoulli Lecture)
• Alain-Sol Sznitman, ETH Zurich (Kolmogorov Lecture)
• Elizabeth Thompson, University of Washington (Turkey Lecture)
• Wendelin Werner, Université Paris-Sud (BS-IMS Special Lecture)

There will be 33 invited paper sessions highlighting topics of current research interest as well as many contributed talks and posters.
The venue for the meeting is the National University of Singapore. Singapore is a vibrant, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan city-state that expresses the essence of today’s New Asia. It offers many attractions both cultural and touristic, such as the Esplanade and the Singapore Night Safari.

Forthcoming events under the auspices of the European Regional Committee of the Bernoulli Society

The 27^th European Meeting of Statisticians
Toulouse (France), 20-24 July 2009
The 16^th European Young Statisticians Meeting
Romania, 2009
The 28^th European Meeting of Statisticians
Piraeus (Greece), 17-22 August 2010

33^rd 2009 Berlin, Germany, July 27-31, 2009.
34^th 2010 Osaka, Japan, 6-10 September 2010.
35^th 2011 Oaxaca (Mexico), June 19-25, 2011

Thomas P. Ryan and William H. Woodall, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Maryland, USA, and the Department of Statistics Virginia Tech, USA, suggest these papers as the most cited in statistics:

1. With 25,869 citations (currently cited 1,984 times per year),
Kaplan, E.L. & Meier, P. (1958) Nonparametric estimation from incomplete observations, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 53, pp. 457-481.
2. With 18,193 citations (1,342 per year),
Cox, D.R. (1972) Regression models and life tables, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 34, pp. 187-220
3. With 13,108 citations (256 per year),
Duncan, D.B. (1955) Multiple range and multiple F-tests, Biometrics, 11, pp. 1-42.
4. With 9,504 citations (488 per year),
Marquardt, D.W. (1963) An algorithm for least squares estimation of non-linear parameters, Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2, pp. 431-441.
5. With 8,720 citations (114 per year),
Litchfield, J.T. & Wilcoxon, F.A. (1949) A simplified method of evaluating dose-effect experiments, Journal of Pharmacological and Experimental Therapeutics, 96, pp. 99-113.
6. With 8,151 citations (1,590 per year),
Bland, J.M. & Altman, D.G. (1986) Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two clinical measurements, Lancet, 1 (8476), pp. 307-310.
7. With 6,788 citations (914 per year),
Felsenstein, J. (1985) Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the bootstrap, Evolution, 39, pp. 783-791.
8. With 6,579 citations (126 per year),
Peto, R., Pike, M.C., Armitage, P., Breslow, N.E., Cox, D.R., Howard, S.V., Mantel, N., McPherson, K., Peto, J. & Smith, K.G. (1977) Design and analysis of randomized clinical trials requiring prolonged observation of each patient. Part II. Analysis and examples, British Journal of Cancer, 35, pp. 1-39.
9. With 6,006 citations (422 per year),
Mantel, N. & Haenszel, W. (1959) Statistical aspects of the analysis of data from retrospective studies of disease, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 22, pp. 719-748
10. With 5,260 citations (300 per year),
Mantel, N. (1966) Evaluation of survival data and two new rank order statistics arising in its consideration, Cancer Chemotherapy Reports, 50, pp. 163-170

1. Breslow, N.E. & Clayton, D.G. (1993) Approximate inference in generalized linear mixed models, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 88, pp. 9-25.
2. Tierney, L. (1994) Markov-chains for exploring posterior distributions, Annals of Statistics, 22, pp. 1701-1728.
3. Kass, R.E. & Raftery, A.E. (1995) Bayes Factors, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, pp. 773-795.
4. Donoho, D.L. & Johnstone, I.M. (1994) Ideal spatial adaptation by wavelet shrinkage, Biometrika, 81, pp. 425-455.
5. Smith, A.F.M. & Roberts, G.O. (1993) Bayesian computation via the Gibbs sampler and related Markov-chain Monte-Carlo methods, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 55, pp. 3-23.
6. Green, P.J. (1995) Reversible jump Markov-chain Monte Carlo computation and Bayesian model determination, Biometrika, 82, pp. 711-732.
7. Benjamini, Y. & Hochberg, Y. (1995) Controlling the false discovery rate – a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 57, pp. 289-300.
8. Donoho, D.L., Johnstone, I.M., Kerkyacharian, G. & Picard, D. (1995) Wavelet shrinkage – asymptopia, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 57, pp. 301-337.
9. Donoho, D.L. (1995) De-noising by soft thresholding, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 41, pp. 613-627.
10. Grambsch, P.M. & Therneau, T.M. (1994) Proportional hazards tests and diagnostics based on weighted residuals, Biometrika, 81, pp. 515-526.

International Association for Official Statistics

IAOS Conference on Reshaping Official Statistics. Shanghai, 14 to 16 October 2008

- Soon open for registration

The International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) and the National Bureau of Statistics of China would like to welcome you to the biennial meeting for statisticians from national statistical institutes, international organisations and academies. The theme of the IAOS Conference in Shanghai 2008 is Smart Data, Innovative Uses – Reshaping Official Statistics. An integral part of the Conference is also the 26^th biennial conference of the SCORUS, a standing committee of IAOS on regional and urban statistics.

The conference will soon be open for registration at the conference website: www.iaos2008conf.cn here you can also read more about the conference, accommodation and other practical matters.

The conference covers relevant topics for reshaping official statistics and there will be both plenary and concurrent sessions. More than 100 paper proposals have been received from statisticians from around the world. Areas covered by the conference include:
• Use of administrative data in the statistical system
• Use of administrative data in official statistics
• Challenges of building register based or other administrative based statistics.
• More efficient use of statistical data
• Questionnaire design and testing
• User demands for official statistics
• Electronic reporting
• Process orientated statistical production

For further details regarding the programme, please see the conference website under programme at www.iaos2008conf.cn.

ISI Durban 2009
For those who are interested in taking part in the ISI - in whatever role, the good news is that the ISI 2009 website is now up and running – see http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/index.aspx

Organisers of IAOS sponsored sessions continue to finalise presenters and discussants. In this and future Newsletters, I will describe one of the sessions. This issue's session is the session that Hilkka Vihavainen from Statistics Norway is organising on administrative data.
Hilkka's session titled, Quality Control and Assurance of Administration Data used in Statistical Production, takes a different approach to some of the challenges in using administrative data.
The use of administrative data in statistics production is expanding rapidly. There are several well-known reasons behind the development. However, concerns regarding the quality of administrative data are often expressed. One factor behind these concerns might be that the quality reports of statistics based on use of administrative data are not systematically produced, neither are the quality indicators fully institutionalised. There are no similar standard quality indicators for administrative data as the ones for survey data. Nevertheless, several methods have been developed in order to maintain the quality of statistics high when using data from different administrations.
The session will include three papers:
1. Frameworks of quality assurance of administrative data sources.
Piet J.H. Daas, Statistics Netherlands
2. “How the Quality of Data is assured in the Finnish Population
Register for the Purposes of Statistics” (preliminary title)
Riitta Harala, Statistics Finland
3. “Using Administrative Data to produce Economic Statistics" (preliminary title)
Ron McKenzie, Statistics New Zealand

More on one of the other sessions, as well as overall progress, in the next Newsletter. In the meantime, if you have any other queries about the ISI Durban Session, please contact nancy.mcbeth@stats.govt.nz

The Executive Committee is pleased to announce the appointment of the following Associate Editors for the Statistical Journal of the IAOS (SJIAOS):

Luigi Biggeri
President of ISTAT,
Istituto Nazionale di Statistica
biggeri@istat.it

Derek Bond
Member of Committee of ISI 2011
Senior Lecturer,
School of Business, Retail, and Financial Services
University of Ulster,
d.bond@ulster.ac.uk

Neville Davies
Centre for Statistical Education
Trent University, Nottingham, UK
Neville.davies@ntu.ac.uk

Fride Eeg-Henriksen
Head of Division
Department of Communication
Statistics Norway
Fride.Eeg-Henriksen@ssb.no

Denis Farrell
First Assistant Statistician
Population and Environment Statistics Division
Australian Bureau of Statistics
denis.farrell@abs.gov.au

Jane F. Gentleman, Ph.D.
Director, Division of Health Interview Statistics
National Center for Health Statistics
JGentleman@cdc.gov

Nancy Gordon
Associate Director for Demographic Programmes,
US Bureau of Census
nancy.m.gordon@census.gov

Thomas Mesenbourg
Associate Director for Economic Programs
US Census Bureau
thomas.1@pat.ssb.no

Frank Nolan
Director Census and Social Methodology
Office for National Statistics, UK
Frank.Nolan@ons.gov.uk

William Seltzer
Senior Research Scholar
Department of Sociology and Anthropology (Dealy 407) Fordham University
seltzer@fordham.edu

Lars Thygesen
Head of Statistics
Information Management and Support Division
OECD
lars.thygesen@oecd.org

Romula A. Virola
Secretary General
National Statistical Coordination Board
Ra.virola@nscb.gov.ph

Numbers 3,4 of Volume 24 of the SJIOAS were published on 24 April, and the content of this edition is shown below:

D. Dolenc
Novelties of the 2002 Census in Slovenia: The use of the combined method and outsourcing of census operations 111

P.K. Sharma and J.K.L. Lin
The e-reporting solution of the 2006 Population By-census of Hong Kong, China 121

B. Martín Romero
Estimating the pay distribution in the new earnings survey using missing data methods 147

G. Bazley-Smith and R. Hennegan
Lessons learned from advanced data collection system implementations 157

E. Schulte Nordholt and F. Linder
Record matching for Census purposes in the Netherlands 163

H. Wei
Measuring Australia’s human capital development: The role of post-school education and the impact of population ageing 183

Members are strongly encouraged to submit articles to the SJIAOS. For a complete description of the publication’s editorial aims and scope and to obtain instructions for the submission of manuscripts, go to: http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=18747655.

All papers are refereed. Submit your papers for review to the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Siu-Ming Tam, at Siu-Ming.Tam@abs.gov.au

A meeting of the IAOS Executive was held in the margins of the UN Statistical Commission in New York in February.
The main business of the meeting was the forthcoming conference in Shanghai, which is reported elsewhere in this Newsletter. The Executive also discussed progress towards the IAOS sessions at the 2009 ISI in Durban. The Executive supported the proposal for a satellite meeting on Progress on measuring democratic governance and human rights – a follow up on the IAOS Montreux Conference.

The Executive also discussed: progress with the IAOS web site; reorganising ISI; revitalising IAOS; an ethics declaration; the Statistical Journal. The executive received a financial report which showed the association to be in a healthy position; it agreed to continue with a further prize for best paper for Young Official Statisticians; and discussed possible venues for the next IAOS (2010) Conference.

Conference on Climate Change and Official Statistics Oslo, Norway 14 to 16 April 2008

Official statistics are under constant development and new areas and challenges need to be considered. One example is climate change and official statistics. This was the subject of a three-day conference in Oslo, arranged by UNSD and Eurostat, co-sponsored by World Bank and hosted by Statistics Norway. More information and papers may be found at the web pages http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/climate_change/default.htm

The conference will be followed by an action plan and it is important that the cooperation between Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and official statistics is improved (additional details regarding this conference can be found here).

If you have not looked at it lately you might want to take a look at the IAOS website (http://isi.cbs.nl/iaos). We are able to post news about IAOS more quickly than through this Newsletter, and you fill find links there through to the Shanghai and Durban conferences. Usage of the website has nearly doubled since it was updated. If you have items of interest for our website or ideas as to how it could be developed please contact the Newsletter editor, who is also web editor.

IAOS Conference Shanghai 14 to 16 October 2008
ISI Durban Session, 16 to 22 August 2009

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

The 26^thbiennial conference of SCORUS is being held jointly as an integral part of the IAOS conference, helping to foster discussion on the vital relationship between official statistics at the national level and role of local level statistical offices (regional, rural, and urban) as both contributors to and users of official statistics. Integrating these two biennial meetings is especially relevant for addressing the topic of reshaping official statistics. SCORUS is pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this discussion.

This conference takes place October 14-16, 2008, in Shanghai China and is hosted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

SCORUS will be providing a session in each of the concurrent session sections and address three of the major tracks of discussion within the conference. The proposed sessions include:

User Demands for Official Statistics

This session discusses different measure of well-being in regions and cities. To understand how people actually experience the quality of their lives, we need better measures of well-being. Objective influential factors on well-being are related to the areas of health, environment, income, nutrition, employment, education, social and democratic participation, physical and financial security. The importance of this subject is reflected in its heavy coverage in the OECD publication "Regions at glance 2007" and the discussion launched in October 2007 at the Regional and Urban Statistics Working Party at Eurostat on finding alternative indicators to “regional GDP per capita”.

Growing demand for regional and urban statistics
Organiser: Langhui Huang
This session will touch on the growing demand for regional and urban statistics as well as the various social and economic factors underlying such development, focusing particularly on the experiences in China. There will be a total of four papers with three from China (including one from the National Statistical Office and two from academics) and one from Europe/America.

Results of recent regional and urban analysis
Organiser: Berthold Feldmann
Presentations will share results of regional and urban analysis recent conducted in various countries/territories.

Methodology and IT

Geographic information system and regional reference system
Organiser: Klaus Trutzel
This session presents the latest developments in geographical information system and regional reference systems in the context of compiling urban and regional statistics.

New approaches to using regional and urban data for policy evaluation
Organiser: Derek Bond
This session focuses on methodologies ranging from those covering advances in times series modelling to those arguing for the use of mixed methods and projective techniques.

Policy and Dissemination

Metropolitan cooperation – challenges and success stories at the local and global level
Organiser: Leila Lankinen
This session will share best practices and useful examples in organising cooperation and evaluation of research results in urban and regional statistics among metropolitan areas.

Application of urban and regional statistics in Asian cities
Organisers: Stephen Lueng and Youjuan Wang
The papers in this session will share experiences in real-life application of urban and regional statistics in Asian cities including Hong Kong and a selection of other cities in China.

With its focus on the collection and use of official data for sub-national geographies, SCORUS is particularly excited to be holding its 26^th biennial conference jointly with IAOS. The members of SCORUS represent local level statisticians who both collect data that feeds into the national level official statistical system (administrative and other) and who make extensive use of official statistics for planning and policy development. The opportunity to discuss aspects of administrative data use, registry based statistics, the use of official statistics, methodological developments and the dissemination and application of data in the collegial atmosphere of a conference is welcome. A clear understanding of the life cycle of official data from conceptualization through collection, organization, analysis, and application from various perspectives is vital to the development and maintenance of a strong official statistical system.

2010 SCORUS Conference in Riga, Latvia
Local Arrangements: Jolanta Supe
Programme Chair: Petra Kuncova

SCORUS – The International Network for regional and urban statistics

For information on joining the SCORUS listserver or providing suggestions to the leadership group please contact SCORUS Secretary, Wendy Thomas at wlt@pop.umn.edu

International Association for Statistical Computing

I. COMPSTAT 2008

The next COMPSTAT Symposium, International Conference on Computational Statistics is quickly approaching: it will take place in August 2008, in Porto, Portugal, locally organized by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto.
COMPSTAT is an initiative of the European Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC).
COMPSTAT’2008 will be its 18^th edition; previous conferences have taken place in Berlin (2002), Prague (2004) and Rome (2006). The Local Organizing Committee is working actively and with much enthusiasm to organize an interesting, exciting and welcoming conference.

The Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) is responsible to the Board of Directors (BoD) of the European Regional Section (ERS) of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) for the scientific content of COMPSTAT'2008 Symposium and, together with the BoD, proposes a list of topics to be used in the Call for Papers and to guide the invitation of session organisers for COMPSTAT'2008.

Scientific Programme Committee COMPSTAT2008:
Ex-officio
• COMPSTAT'2008 organiser and Chairperson of SPC
Maria Paula Brito, University of Porto, Portugal
• Past Compstat organiser
Alfredo Rizzi, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy
• Next Compstat organiser
Gilbert Saporta, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, France
• Incoming IASC-ERS Chairman
Erricos Kontoghiorghes, University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Members:
• Helena Bacelar-Nicolau, University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Gianfranco Galmacci, Universita degli Studi di Perugia, Italy
• Carlo Lauro, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
• Esther Ruiz-Ortega, University Carlos III, Spain
• Michael Schimek, Medical University of Graz, Austria
• Antonia Turkman, University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Joe Whittaker, University of Lancaster, UK
• Djamel A. Zighed, University Lumière Lyon 2, France

Consultative Members:
• Representative of the Asian Regional Section of IASC:
Wing Kam Fung, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
• Representative of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS):
Vincenzo Esposito-Vinzi, ESSEC, France
• Representative of Interface
Edward Wegman, George Mason University, USA

COMPSTAT’2008 Keynote Speakers will be Prof. Peter Hall (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia), Prof. Heikki Mannila (Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, Finland) and Prof. Timo Teräsvirta (School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus, Denmark).
Two tutorials will take pace, namely: “Computational Methods in Finance” by James Gentle (Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, USA), and “Writing R Packages” by Friedrich Leisch (Institut für Statistik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany).

The following topics have been selected for organized Invited Sessions:
• Advances on Statistical Computing Environments
• Classification and Clustering of Complex Data
• Computation for Graphical Models and Bayes Nets
• Computational Econometrics
• Information Retrieval for Text and Images
• Knowledge Extraction by Models
• Model Selection Algorithms
• Multiple Testing Procedures
• Random Search Algorithms
• Robust Statistics
• Signal Extraction and Filtering
• Computational Statistics and Data Mining Methods for Alcohol Studies (Interface session)
• Finance and Insurance (ARS session)
• Models for Latent Class Detection (IFCS session)

COMPSTAT‘2008 also includes standard Contributed Paper sessions. These may relate to the Invited Paper sessions, but do not need to do so. The authors are entitled to choose between oral and poster presentation. To promote the success of posters, structured dedicated sessions will be organized where authors are expected to present their work shortly.
As has been the case for previous COMPSTAT symposia, a Proceedings Book will be published by Springer, gathering the papers of Keynote speakers and speakers in Invited Sessions; accepted Contributed Papers shall be published in a CD (subject to conference registration). All papers are refereed.
Authors in Contributed Sessions (Oral or Poster) who did not submit a full paper for the Conference CD, may have submitted an Abstract. Accepted Abstracts will be published in the Abstract Book.

The final programme will be announced no later than July 20^th.
Standard registration will be allowed until June 15^th; after this date late registration fees will be implemented.
Participant registration fees include all the conference material and session attendance, coffee-breaks, the ‘ice-breaker’, the conference cocktail and concert. Lunches, the trip and conference dinner are optional, and should be purchased separately.

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

The Joint Meeting of 4^th World Conference of the IASC and 6^th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the IASC on Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (IASC 2008) will be held at Pacifico Yokohama in Japan on 5^th-8^th December 2008.

IASC2008 provides a forum for researchers and practitioners all over the world, including Asian countries, to share their knowledge about theories, methods and the practice of statistical computing and computational statistics, and to discuss current important issues regarding statistical methods and data analysis in various disciplines such as medicine, business, ecology, biology, engineering, where statistical computing is indispensable. IASC2008 is associated with "CSDA: The Computational Statistics & Data Analysis", the official journal of the IASC. The CSDA plans to have a special issue after the conference.

The IASC 2008 International Organizing Committee is composed by:
Junji Nakano - Chairperson of IASC2008, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan; Gilbert Saporta - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, France; Jaromir Antoch - Charles University, Czech Republic; Wing Kam Fung - University of Hong Kong, China; Moon Yul Huh - SungKyunKwan University, Korea; Tohru Uwoi - Bellsystem24 Inc, Japan; Shingo Shirahata - Osaka University, Japan; Genshiro Kitagawa - The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan ; Yoshiyasu Tamura - The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan;
with Advisory Board:
Stanley P. Azen - University of Southern California, USA; Lutz Edler - German Cancer Research Centre, Germany; Jae Chang Lee - Korea University; Yutaka Tanaka - Nanzan University.

The Scientific Programme Committee is as follows:
Masahiro Mizuta - Chair (Hokkaido University, Japan); Yoshimichi Ochi - Vice Chair (Oita University, Japan); Tomas Aluja-Banet (The Technical University of Catalonia, Spain); Paula Brito (University of Porto, Portugal); Chun-houh Chen (Academia Sinica, Taiwan); Robert Gentleman (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA); Tomoyuki Higuchi (The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan); Erricos Kontoghiorghes (University of Cyprus, Cyprus); Jung Jin Lee (Soong Sil University, Korea); Youngjo Lee (Seoul National University, Korea); Paul Murrell (The University of Auckland, New Zealand); David Scott (Rice University, USA); Berwin Turlach (The University of Western Australia, Australia); Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (ESSEC, France); Huiwen Wang (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China); Philip Leung-ho Yu University of Hong Kong, China).

Keynote lectures:
Trevor Hastie (Stanford University, USA)
Ker-Chau Li (Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and UCLA, USA)

Abstract submissions is open
Submission of abstracts deadline: July 14^th, 2008
Notification of paper acceptance: August 11^th, 2008
Full paper submission deadline: September 30^th, 2008

Early registration deadline: August 29^th, 2008
Standard registration deadline: November 21^th, 2008

For more information, please contact
Chairperson of IASC 2008: Junji Nakano
The Institute of Statistical Mathematics
4-6-7 Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku
Tokyo 106-8569, Japan

III. The 2^nd International Workshop on Computational and Financial Econometrics (CFE'08)

Organized in co-operation with the "International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC)", "Society for Computational Economics" and ERCIM Working Group on "Computing & Statistics"
Main sponsor; the Journal of "Computational Statistics & Data Analysis", published by Elsevier. (The Official Journal of the IASC).
Computational and financial econometrics have been of interest to a wide variety of researchers in economics, finance, statistics, mathematics and computing. Financial time series analyses focus on asset valuations over time with emphases on option pricing, volatility measurement, and modelling market microstructure effects. Apart from theoretical developments, financial time series analyses also have a high empirical content. The computational aspects of such analyses are of crucial importance since one typically deals with high-dimensional problems and large numbers of observations. Existing algorithms often do not utilize the best computational techniques for efficiency, stability, or conditioning. Furthermore, environments for conducting econometrics are inherently computer based. Integrated econometrics packages have grown well over the years, but still have much room for development.
The CSDA journal has published several special issues on Computational and Financial Econometrics that have addressed computational and numerical methods used in solving theoretical and practical issues associated with econometric algorithms, the impact of computing on econometrics, specific applications involving computing and econometrics, and data analytic methods in finance. These special issues indicate the importance of computing in econometrics and highlight research opportunities that exist in this discipline.

Keynote Speakers:
Oliver Linton, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Herman Van Dijk, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

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

The workshop will take place jointly with the ERCIM working Group meeting on Computing & Statistics:
http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/ercim08.

Satellite meeting of the 4^th IASC World Conference

The workshop will take place at Kyodai Kaikan (Kyoto University Hall) December 10-11, 2008.

The objective of the workshop is to present new developments in algebraic methods in computational statistics. One of the main topics of the workshop is techniques of algebraic statistics, such as Groebner bases, Markov basis and symbolic computation. Other topics include computational biology, graphical models and singular models. Talks of general interest on new developments in computational statistics are also welcome.

Steering Committee
Akimichi Takemura (chairman) University of Tokyo, Japan
Satoshi Kuriki Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan
Satoshi Aoki Kagoshima University, Japan
Toshio Sakata Kyushu University, Japan

Important Deadlines
July 31, 2008 Submission of abstracts
September 1, 2008 Notification of paper acceptance
October 15, 2008 Submission of finally revised abstracts
November 15, 2008 Deadline for registration

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

The IASC Programme Committee for the ISI Durban collected proposals for the invited paper meetings (IPMs) from the IASC members by the time of ISI Lisboa, and submitted the proposals to the ISI Programme Coordinating Committee (chaired by Mr. John Kovar, Canada) with their rankings and the evaluation that all were of great interest to the ISI as well as IASC members.
After discussions and negotiations with the chair, other Sections and Committees about possible collaborations among Sections, it was decided that the IASC would sponsor/co-sponsor thirteen IPMs. As the result all proposals from IASC were accepted as separate or joint meetings. Taking this opportunity we would like to express our thanks to all the proposers and organizers who have suggested such interesting topics and who are working hard in preparing for their meetings, and also to the members of IASC Programme Committee for their efforts of collecting interesting topics and for their fruitful discussions and kind cooperation. The following is the list of the thirteen IPMs containing the IPM titles, responsible Sections, and names of the organizers. The whole list including these thirteen IPMs will appear on the ISI 2009 official web site in the near future.
(http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/index.aspx)

• Uncertainty in Statistical Matching, IASC/IASS
Mauro Scanu, Italy, ISTAT, scanu@istat.it and
Tomas Aluja-Banet, Spain, tomas.aluja@upc.edu

• Statistics and the Internet for Development in e-Education e-Health and Other Fields with particular reference to Africa, IASC;
Fionn Murtagh, UK, fmurtagh@acm.org

• Statistical Methods for Non Linear Latent Variable Models, IASC
Salvatore Ingrassia, Italy, s.ingrassia@unict.it

• Statistical and Computational Challenges from New Environmental Sensing Systems, IASC
Bronwyn Harch, Australia, bronwyn.harch@csiro.au

• Sensometrics and Chemometrics in Food Industry, IASC
El Mostafa Qannari, France, qannari@enitiaa-nantes.fr

• Statistical Modeling of Multimedia Content, IASC
Adalbert Wilhelm, Germany, a.wilhelm@iu-bremen.de

• Measures of Effectiveness for Distributed Systems, IASC
William F. Szewczyk, USA, wfszewczyk@gmail.com

• Spatial Statistics: Recent Advances in Epidemiological Applications, IASC
Elvan Ceyhan,Turkey, elceyhan@ku.edu.tr

• Capturing Unobserved Heterogeneity in Latent Variable Modeling, ISBIS/IASC
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi, France, vinzi@essec.fr

The IASC President, on behalf of the IASC Council and of himself, has expressed his gratitude to Prof. Yutaka Tanaka and Prof. Stanley Azen, who co-chair the IASC Programme Committee for the ISI Durban, for their excellent work. Thirteen IMP’s (sponsored and/or co-sponsored) represents a good result. The same gratitude has been expressed to the other members for their active participation.

Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, the IASC’s official journal, is one the most widespread statistical journals. Most of the CSDA success is due to the immense energies spent by its founder and editor in chief Dr. Stanley Azen.
Dr. Azen is Professor and Co-Director of the Biostatistics Division in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Medicine.
Stan, as his friends call him, tells the story of the CSDA success in an interview given to Elsevier, the CSDA publisher.
To read the interview, interested readers can access to the URL: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/editorshome.editors/azen.
Dr. Azen was also recently interviewed by the national television station, CBS, for a news broadcast regarding a study that was published on the Trager method for treating chronic headaches and migraines. To see the video, go online to http://cbs2.com/.

International Association for Statistics Education

It is my privilege and pleasure to serve as President of the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE). Over the years I have benefited greatly from my involvement in IASE, primarily through learning of perspectives on teaching statistics from dedicated teachers and education researchers around the world. I urge you to consider joining, or renewing your membership in, IASE not only so you can benefit from the publications and conferences that IASE offers, but also so you can support IASE's many projects to improve statistics education around the world. Please visit the IASE website at: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/ and follow the "members" link for membership information and forms.

The December 2007 issue of the International Statistical Review features several articles on statistics education. Thanks to Chris Wild for the behind-the-scenes work to prepare this special issue. See http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/insr/75/3 for table of contents and article summaries. The issue begins with a themed suite of seven papers designed to have broad appeal to practitioners and technology buffs as well as statistics educators. Its focus is on how to give students experiences much closer to the practice of professional statisticians than has been possible in the past using technology to collapse the time scales needed for instruction via virtual environments. The main areas used as illustrations are the design of experiments and multivariate analysis. Although these are relatively advanced topics, many of the ideas discussed can be applied at any level of statistical education.

To introduce readers to the area, its enormous potential for the advancement of statistics education, and also to promote the other papers in the themed suite, the journal has made available free online:
“Virtual Environments and the Acceleration of Experiential Learning” by Chris Wild
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-5823.2007.00033.x

The issue continues its educational theme with an update of Joan Garfield’s classic 1995 paper “How students learn statistics”, reviewing the subsequent fifteen years of research, and several other articles by leading statistics educators.

IASE/ICMI Roundtable Conference on Statistics Education in School Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education

After almost two years of planning we are now close to the Joint ICMI/IASE Study conference that is to be held at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Monterrey, México, June 30 to July 4, 2008.

A total of 94 papers were received from 24 different countries, including some developing countries and countries where statistics education is still not well developed. About 2/3 of the contributions came from countries with languages different from English.

A refereeing process was organised by the International Programme Committee and supervised by Allan Rossman and Carmen Batanero. Each paper was reviewed by two external referees (double blind) and one member of IPC (in this case the name of authors was given to the referee). A total of 75 external referees helped in this process. Authors were sent copies of the three reports and a letter with the decision. The letter also included a list of changes suggested for accepted papers. Referees were sent a copy of theses letters and reports. The referee process was very constructive; referees provided advice to improve the accepted papers and when needed, support with English language.

A total of 43 papers were accepted and 16 more were conditionally accepted (that is, authors were requested to rewrite and resubmit for a new revision). Consequently the number of papers finally presented in the conference will probably be around 55.

As this is a working conference, the main part of the conference will be structured around six different topics, each organised by two members of the International Programme Committee, as follows:

Topic 1. The current situation of teaching statistics in schools.
Dani Ben-Zvi and Chris Reading
Topic 2. Teachers’ attitudes, knowledge, conceptions and beliefs in relation to statistics education.
Carmen Batanero and Gail Burrill
Topic 3. Analysing current practices in teacher education regarding the teaching of statistics.
Doreen Connor and Lionel Pereira-Mendoza
Topic 4. Empowering teachers to teach statistics: A look into the future.
Joachim Engel and Maxine Pfannkuch
Topic 5. Training teachers in developing countries.
Jun Li and Victor Polaki
Topic 6. Building collaboration between mathematics and statistics educators in teacher education.
Joan Garfield and Maria Gabriella Ottaviani

There will be two types of parallel sessions related to these topics. Each session will have a chair (moderating the discussion) and a recorder (a person taking notes).
1. Paper presentation sessions:
These sessions will be either 90 or 120 minutes in length and will consist of short introductory remarks by the Chair, three /four presentations of papers by their authors (20 minutes for the paper followed by 5 minutes for questions to the author), and general discussion and closing (10-15 minutes).

2. Working Group sessions
The aim of these sessions is to advance the analysis of the questions that were defined for each of the Study Topics in the Discussion Document, reflecting on how the papers presented contribute to the answers for some of these questions and defining what work is still needed (both in future research and for the production of the book). Discussion is arranged around the set of papers presented in the earlier paper presentation sessions. Each paper will be assigned a reactor (and conversely, each author should react to another paper).

Plenary sessions planned for the conference include:
3. Opening address: Joao Pedro da Ponte, Portugal, Preparing teachers to meet the challenges of statistics education

4. Panel 1. Fundamental ideas in statistics and how they affect the training of teachers: Gail Burrill (Chair), USA Martha Aliaga, USA, Rolf Biehler, Germany, Ernesto Sánchez, México

5. Panel 2. The interplay of probability and statistics in teaching and in training the teachers: Gabriella Ottaviani (Chair), Italy, Manfred Borovcnik, Austria, Jean Claude Girard, France, Delia North, South Africa

6. Panel 3. Technology in the teaching of statistics: potentials and challenges in preparing the teachers: Dave Pratt (Chair), U.K., Dani, Ben-Zvi, Israel, Doreen Connor, U.K., Anthony Harradine, Australia

The web page for the Study (http://www.ugr.es/~icmi/iase_study/) is being updated with information for the Study, as soon as it is produced. We are also starting develop a web version of the Proceedings CD.

The Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) under the auspices of the UK Higher Education Maths, Stats and OR Network is funding a new international project. This project, Variety in Statistics Assessment (ViSA), aims to gather accounts of recent successful experiences in assessment of statistical learning at tertiary level from statistics teachers worldwide. The main focus is a virtual international conference, with refereed proceedings to be published as a book in 2009. This links with, but is not directly associated with, the IASE satellite meeting on Assessing Student Learning in Statistics held in Portugal last Summer. The project leaders are Penelope Bidgood, Kingston University, UK, p.bidgood@kingston.ac.uk; Neville Hunt, Coventry University, UK, n.hunt@coventry.ac.uk; and Flavia Jolliffe, University of Kent, UK, F.Jolliffe@kent.ac.uk.

Abstracts were due in March 2008, a working group at the University Mathematics Teaching Conference in Birmingham, UK in December 2007 produced a working paper Promoting Variety in Statistics Assessment, and a related presentation at the MSOR/CETL Conference in Lancaster, UK is planned for September 2008. News and updates can be found on the web page http://www.rsscse.org.uk/activities/visa/

The Sixth International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy

SRTL-6: The Role of Context and Evidence in Informal Inferential Reasoning

The sixth in a series of International Research Forums on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL-6) is to be held in Brisbane, Australia from July 10 to 16, 2009. The School of Education at The University of Queensland, will host the Forum.
The Forum's focus will build on the work presented and discussed at SRTL-5 on informal ideas of statistical inference. Recent research suggests an important role for developing ideas of informal types of statistical inference, even at early educational levels, that encourage students to infer beyond samples of data and use technological tools to support these informal inferences. The findings of these studies reveal that the context of the data and the use of evidence may be important factors to study further. The role of context is of particular interest because in drawing (informal) inferences from data, students must learn to walk a fine line. First, they must maintain a view of data as “numbers with a context” (Moore, 1992), at the same time, they must learn to see the data as separate in many ways from the real-world event they observed (abstraction). The role of evidence is also of particular interest because in learning how to make data-based claims (argumentation), students must consider the evidence used to support the claim, the quality and justification of the evidence, limitations of the evidence and finally, an indication of how convincing the argument is.

Based on SRTL-5, we now characterize Informal Inferential Reasoning (IIR) as the cognitive and socio-cultural activities involved in drawing conclusions with some degree of uncertainty that go beyond the data and having empirical evidence for them. Three principles appear to be essential to informal inference: (1) generalization (including predictions, parameter estimates, and conclusions) that go beyond describing the given data; (2) the use of data as evidence for those generalizations; and (3) conclusions express a degree of certainty, whether or not quantified, accounting for the variability and uncertainty that is unavoidable when generalizing beyond the immediate data to a population or a process.
An interesting range of diverse research presentations and discussions have been planned and we look forward to a stimulating and enriching gathering. These papers will address the role of context and evidence when reasoning about informal inference at all levels of education including the professional development of elementary and secondary teachers.

The structure of the scientific programme will be a mixture of formal and informal sessions, small group and whole group discussions, and the opportunity for extensive analysis of video-taped research data. There will also be a poster session for exhibiting current research of participants on additional topics related to statistics education. The Forum is co-chaired by Dani Ben-Zvi (University of Haifa, Israel) and Joan Garfield (University of Minnesota, USA), locally organized by Katie Makar and Michael Bulmer (The University of Queensland), and planned by a prestigious international advisory committee. Conference attendance is by invitation only. For more information, visit the SRTL website at:
http://srtl.stat.auckland.ac.nz/ or email SRTL2009@gmail.com.

I am pleased to report that the meetings of the ISI-09 PCC went very well, both for IASE and overall. They were informative, constructive and very collegial. The IASE proposals for IPM's (Invited Paper Meetings) were well-received. The total set of proposals from all ISI Sections and Committees had to be greatly reduced, but IASE’s proposed sessions were reduced by only two, with some shared sessions as described below. The outcome for IASE is given here. The full list of IPM’s will appear shorly on the Durban Session website and also appears in this issue of the Newsletter (more). The IPM organisers are currently in the process of confirming their proposed invited speakers; this information will appear in a later Newsletter. Many thanks to IASE members for the ideas and detailed proposals that were of great assistance in preparing the IASE submission.

IASE was asked to join in session IPM15 proposed by IAOS, which I agreed with provided the original title (Capability Issues in Statistical offices - How statistical offices are managing the different capability challenges) was broadened to the title you see below. The IAOS organiser (Nancy McBeth) was very keen on my suggestion and we are working together on this session. It will probably have an IAOS organiser and at least one IASE speaker. In turn I proposed that session IPM37 be shared with IAOS. IAOS are not only happy with this but also happy with the current proposal as it stands. Suggestions from
the local hosts aligned themselves naturally with sessions IPM38 and IPM39, so that I was able to say that IASE could incorporate the local hosts' interests.
I am also working with the Local Programme Committee and the ISI President on a number of educational aspects of ISI-09 that will involve school students. It is planned to hold the final of the First International Statistics Literacy Competition (http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/competition) during ISI-09. During my trip to South Africa as one of the 2007 official visitors to the South African Statistical Conference, one of my duties was to give a 1-day workshop to teachers. There was great enthusiasm throughout, including for the competition which Juana Sanchez described at the end of the day. Our thanks to Juana for her excellent work on this competition and the ISLP this year. The other educational activities for ISI-09 are currently in the planning stages and will be announced later.
Any IASE members who would like to propose and organise a Special Topic Contributed Paper Meeting (STCPM) for ISI-09, are welcome to contact me (h.macgillivray@qut.edu.au) if they would like advice or feedback.

IPM15 The challenge of building a supply of statisticians for the future. To be determined, c/o Nancy McBeth, Nancy.McBeth@stats.govt.nz

IPM36 The roles of statistical agencies in developing statistical literacy
Reija Helenius, Finland, Reija.Helenius@stat.fi

IPM37 Educating the public on how to use official statistics Peter Wingfield-Digby, pwdigby@loxinfo.co.th

IPM38 Challenges faced in Statistics Education in African countries
Delia North, South Africa, northd@ukzn.ac.za

IPM39 Balancing the training of future statisticians for workplace and research
Charles Rohde, USA, crohde@jhsph.edu

IPM40 Exploiting the Progress in Statistical Graphics and Statistical Computing for the benefit of Statistical Literacy
Juana Sanchez, USA, jsanchez@stat.ucla.edu

IPM42 Research on Informal Inferential Reasoning
Katie Makar, Australia, k.makar@uq.edu.au

IPM43 Teaching, Learning and Assessing Statistics Problem Solving in Higher Education
Neville Davies, UK, neville.davies@ntu.ac.uk

IPM44 Technologies for learning and teaching in developing countries
Gabriella Belli, USA, gbelli@vt.edu

IPM45 Virtual Learning Environments for Statistics Education Adriana Backx Noronha Viana, Brazil, backx@usp.br and Pieternel Verhoeven, Netherlands, n.verhoeven@roac.nl

International Statistical Literacy Project

I. Phase ‘1’ of the International Statistical Literacy Competition is in full bloom.

Picture 1.- Teachers in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa, read the training materials while the ISIBALO team of Statistics South Africa supervise and help.

With the encouragement of ISI President Denise Lievesley and the assurance of success given by the ISIBALO group of South Africa, phase 1 of the International Statistical Literacy Competition is in full bloom as you read, with hundreds of students having already completed that phase and waiting for the winner in their classrooms to be announced. Many other hundreds will be doing it during the months of June – November . The countries that have already started at the moment of this writing are: Finland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, South Africa, Nigeria, United States and Canada. If you would like to keep track of how many students and teachers are participating, we are keeping a tally at the following web site: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/resultscomp1 The site is updated periodically, so it may not be completely up to date when you visit it. Try to visit it often for updates. First round winners in each school and names of the schools will not be posted until the competition is over, for obvious reasons. Shown in picture 1 is a group of teachers in South Africa getting informed about the competition during the visit of the ISLP director to that country. Picture 2 shows Portuguese teachers doing the same when Maria Manuel da Silva promoted the competition at Realmat. More than 500 teachers in the world have registered their students . South Africa has registered the largest number of teachers.

As you can imagine, an enterprise of the dimensions of this competition would not be possible without the cooperation and serious work of numerous individuals and institutions around the world, and we can still welcome many more. Some in the ISLP advisory board, and outside it, as well as sponsoring institutions, are involved in the planning, the promotion, or the supervision or all. To name a few: Reija Helenius and Heli Mikkelä with Statistics Finland; Maria Manuel da Silva Nascimento of UTAD, and Pedro Campos with Statistics Portugal. Maria Gabriella Ottaviani, Paola Giache and the Italian Statistical Society; Miranda Mafafo (manager) with ISIBALO team and Math4Stats managers and provincial coordinators, all of Statistics South Africa; . Mary Townsend of Statistics Canada; Lilian Rechioni and Maria Ines Rodriguez, Argentina; Jean Claude Girard and Brigitte Chaput, France; and many others.

Picture 2.- Teachers in Portugal listen to Maria Manuel da Silva Nascimento, ISLP Advisory Board Member, while she talks about the training materials for the competition.

The list is too long to post here. New collaborators are coming in as the registration still continues in South America. ISIBALO manager Dr. Miranda Mafafo of Statistics South Africa is planning a magnificent final competition in Durban, and she and her team manage all the aspects of phase I and II of the competition all over South Africa. Their heavy involvement is a guarantee that the competition will be a success in that country and all over the world.

The competition is done in Spanish, French, Finnish, Italian, Portuguese and English, so the ISLP also hired two translators to help with the communication with the teachers and the translation. They are Elisa Benzoni (for Italian) and Sari Linnainmaa (Finnish). The work of these translators is supervised by someone in that list of collaborators mentioned above, since the ISLP director only masters two languages.

II. Are you statistically literate? A game for all because we all use Statistics every day.

If you miss participating in the competition and you would like to immerse yourself in the competition fever, you are invited to participate in the ISLP quizzes “Are you statistically literate”? A question is posed every week, and you may submit your answer by e-mail. To access the quiz question, go to http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/home
Those whose answer is correct will be notified by email. After the notification, winners are eligible to enter a draw to win a free economy flight and 3 days stay in Durban, South Africa, during the 2009 ISI meeting if they send the ISI $3 by the date indicated. The proceeds will go to sponsor the trips of the student finalists of the International Statistical Literacy Competition to the same meeting. The more weeks you play, the higher your chances of winning the trip. But you may play as many times as you wish without ever entering the draw or giving any donation. Ten answers right will give you a small free prize.

International Association of Survey Statisticians

We are pleased to announce that on February 2008 the National Statistics Institute of France (INSEE) has renewed the agreement to provide the IASS with support for its Secretariat in France for three years. This invaluable support from INSEE shall enable the continued smooth functioning of our secretariat, and provides the platform from which several services are offered to our membership. We gratefully acknowledge INSEE’s contribution to furthering the goals of our association.

The IASS Secretariat has recently printed and distributed an updated directory of the IASS membership. If you are a member and have not received one, please get in touch with Claude Olivier (see e-mail address for the Secretariat above or on the IASS website) and update your contact details to enable us to send you a copy and to keep in touch.
Prof. Ray Chambers from Wollongong University has agreed to represent IASS on the restructured ISI Publications Committee, led by Karen Kafadar.

IASS webmaster Eric Rancourt has agreed to represent IASS in the ISI project team charged with redesigning the ISI website.

Cynthia Clark has agreed to chair the IASS nominations committee, which she is now actively forming.

Under the leadership of Don Royce, a committee of council members including Geoff Lee (Australia) and Sarah Nusser (US) has been formed to review the services provided to the membership. If you have any ideas or comments about this topic, please let them know (contact addresses on the IASS website).

IASS is keen to welcome new members, both individual and institutional. The registration form for individual members can be found in our website (http://isi.cbs.nl/iass). For organizations wishing to join, please contact our Executive Director, Michel Peronnet (see address above).

IASS is currently busy preparing the programme of short courses to be offered before and after the ISI session in South Africa, in 2009. In response to a call for proposals published in the January 2008 issue of the Survey Statistician, IASS members have submitted several proposals for new short course offerings. The IASS executive is currently reviewing these new proposals along with the traditional short courses on topics such as sampling, variance estimation, editing and imputation and survey quality that have been presented in association with past biennial meetings of the ISI. Special emphasis is being placed on short courses that IASS members from African countries feel are needed and would most benefit from attending. Please keep an eye to The Survey Statistician and the IASS website, where further details will be posted as the programme evolves. Steve Heeringa, our Scientific Secretary, will be coordinating this activity, in close liaison with the Local Hosts in South Africa.

Preparations also continue for the IPMs organised or co-sponsored by IASS during the 2009 Session in Durban under the leadership of council member Leyla Mohadjer. A current list of topics for IPM sessions is provided in the table printed below. Please note that the process of planning the IPM sessions for 2009 is ongoing and there have been some late updates to the status of the sessions that are not reflected in this table. Current information on the 2009 programme and the IASS organized or co-sponsored sessions is always available from the ISI website at http://isi.cbs.nl/Nlet/NLet073.htm. The organizers’ goal has been to create a good balance in terms of covering various aspects of the main topic in each session. In addition, they have tried to create sessions with speakers and discussants coming from a good geographic spread (including transition and developing countries) and have a good gender and age representation. In many cases sessions that are still open have received proposals for papers and discussants. However, these proposals are not accepted until it is confirmed that a better demographic (and topic) distribution can not be achieved.

The ISI 2009 website is now up and running (http://www.statssa.gov.za/isi2009/Index.aspx) and the instructions, rules and guidelines for invited paper preparation are already available from the website.

We are keen to hear on proposals for other activities that we could sponsor or help organize as satellites to the ISI s\Session in South Africa, as well as any others where you feel the IASS could have a positive involvement.

IASS Related Invited Paper Meetings for the 57^th ISI Session, Durban, South Africa

Session number	Invited Paper Meeting Title	Organizer	Status
Session number	Invited Paper Meeting Title	Name, country, email	Status
IPM16	Comparing Poverty and Prices Across National Boundaries - the ICP Programmed and Poverty PPPs	Mirriam Babita (South Africa)	IASS to contribute one paper to this session
IPM27	Uncertainty in Statistical Matching	Mauro Scanu (Italy), ISTAT, scanu@istat.it Tomas Aluja-Banet (Spain) tomas.aluja@upc.edu	IASS has contributed one paper to this session
IPM47	Designing and Conducting Surveys in Adverse Conditions (tentative title)	Michael Colledge (Australia) Michael.Colledge@gmail.com	Session has two confirmed papers
IPM48	Sampling and Estimation Issues in Health Statistics	Wilton Bussab (Brazil) bussab@fgvsp.br	Session being organized
IPM49	Measuring and Assessing Respondent Load	Richard Penny (New Zealand) rnpenny@stats.govt.nz	Session has two contributed papers
IPM50	New Developments in Monitoring and Controlling Field Data Collection Activities	Dina Neiger (Australia) dina.neiger@abs.gov.au	Session organized
IPM51	Recent Developments in Survey Methodology Research - Design and Estimation	Paul Smith (United Kingdom) paul.smith@ons.gov.uk	Session has two confirmed papers
IPM52	Outliers in Complex Sample Surveys	Julie Gershunskaya (United States) Gershunskaya.Julie@bls.gov Partha Lahiri (United States) plahiri@survey.umd.edu	Session organized
IPM53	Nonresponse Bias in Surveys	Jelke Bethlehem (Netherlands) @cbs.nl	Session has three confirmed papers
IPM54	New Developments in Modeling and Analysis of Survey Data	Jay Breidt (United States) jbreidt@stat.colostate.edu	Session has three confirmed papers
IPM55	New Methodologies in Sampling Rare and Elusive Populations	Sanghamitra Pal (India) mitra_pal@yahoo.com	Session organized
IPM56	Modeling Economic Data to Produce Small Area Estimation	Mike Hidiroglou (Canada) Mike.Hidiroglou@statcan.ca	Session organized
IPM57	Integrated Household Surveys - Design, Implementation, and Estimation	Denise Silva (United Kingdom and Brazil) Denise.Silva@ons.gsi.gov.uk	Session organized
IPM58	Issues In Price Index Methodology and Measurement	Sylvie Gauthier (Canada) Sylvie.Gauthier@statcan.ca	Session organized
IPM59	Dissemination of Survey Results to Public	Tommy Wright (United States) twright@census.gov	Session organized
IPM60	What Role, If Any, Should Weights Play in the Analysis of Survey Data	Phil Kott (United States) phil_kott@nass.usda.gov	Session organized
IPM67	Models of Modern Data and Metadata Systems	Steven Keuning (Germany) steven.keuning@ecb.int	IASS has contributed one paper to this session
IPM97	Estimating Demographic Statistics With Flawed Vital Registration Systems	Carla AbouZahr WHO abouzahrc@who.int	IASS has contributed one paper to this session

Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC)

On 25 August 2008 the Committee will meet to elect new members of the Executive and to review the activities of the Committee. All 64 institutional members are invited to attend the meeting.

The fourth IFC Conference will take place on 26 and 27 August 2008 in Basel. The conference will focus on “Measuring financial innovation and its impact”. As at the previous three IFC conferences, it is expected that more than 100 central bank economists and statisticians from around the world will participate and that a few dozen papers will be presented.
The introductory session of the conference will provide an overview of challenges related to measuring financial innovations. Subsequent sessions will cover the following topics:
• Measuring developments in housing finance
• Keeping track of securitisation
• Challenges in compiling derivative statistics
• Micro and macro measures of financial risks
• Impact of financial innovations on economic and financial statistics

The conference will conclude with a panel discussion on data issues revealed by the recent financial turmoil. The discussion will focus on challenges faced by central banks, individually and collectively, in monitoring market developments against the background of evolving pressures and the need to obtain timely and relevant data to assist in formulating their policy response.
Participation is open to IFC institutional members, other central banks, as well as members of other ISI sections and committees. More information is available on the IFC website.

The IFC will sponsor or co-sponsor 7 IPMs for the 57^th ISI 2009 Session in Durban, namely:

• IPM 102: The implementation of, and the training on, the new SNA and BOP (jointly with IAOS)
• IPM 104: Quantification of qualitative data from surveys
• IPM 105: The size and impact of statistical revisions
• IPM 106: Statistics of institutional investors
• IPM 107: Models of modern data and metadata systems
• IPM 111: Measuring access to monetary and financial services
• IPM 150: Risks in Finance – the state of the art in statistical methods (jointly with ISBIS)

Furthermore, the IFC has identified topics for possible CPMs, some of which might be of particular relevance for the African region. The Committee will also organise a seminar for with central banks from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) prior to the start of the ISI session. The topic of the seminar is “Economic and financial convergence en route to economic integration: experience, prospects and statistical issues”.

International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

The International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics was formed with the aim of facilitating the advancement and exchange of knowledge in business, financial and industrial statistics. ISBIS does this by promoting research and applications, and best practice; by enabling technology transfer; and by fostering communication amongst its members. ISBIS seeks to promote the value of statistics to business and industry and to support enabling activities, particularly in lesser developed countries. The objectives of the ISBIS are:
• to promote the advancement and exchange of knowledge in business, financial and industrial statistics;
• to build international collaboration among statisticians and users of statistics working in business, finance and industry;
• to exchange ideas and information at an international level through conferences, workshops and publications;
• to encourage links between statisticians for developing and developed countries;
• to develop and promote relationships among national and regional professional societies or groups involved in activities related to business, financial and industrial statistics.

As announced in the previous ISI Newsletter in January, ISBIS has developed a Four-year Plan of activities for the period 2007–2011. These activities refer to the following areas: Membership, Meetings and Activities, Publications, Website, Links to other Societies, Governance. The complete plan of goals and activities can be found on the ISBIS web site, www.isbis.org.
The priorities for the remaining part of the first year of the Plan mainly focus on: attracting new members via meetings, activities and direct recruitment; establishing a group for Young Statisticians (y-BIS); running international conferences and regional meetings (see details below on ISBIS-2008 and CAPS-2008); organizing invited paper sessions for the ISI session in Durban; developing principles and guidelines for continuing education; contributing to the further development of the Wiley Journal “Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry”, the official ISBIS journal, by preparing special issues with outstanding peer reviewed papers from the ISBIS conferences and by promoting the Journal among the ISBIS community so as to encourage the submission of papers on the themes of interest to ISBIS; revising and updating the ISBIS website; involving prospective partner organizations in ISBIS conferences and activities; developing appropriate processes for electing Honorary Life Members.
Please contact the ISBIS editorial address or Nicholas Fisher, the ISBIS President, if you wish to join ISBIS and actively contribute to any of the above mentioned activities.

ISBIS-2008 is an international symposium focusing on quantitative aspects of Banking, Insurance and Finance, and important statistical issues relating to productivity improvement and decision-making at all levels of business and industry. Many world leading quantitative financial analysts and industrial statisticians will be participating.

The symposium will be held in the beautiful medieval city of Prague (Czech Republic) during 1 - 4 July, 2008.

ISBIS-2008 will cover, among others, the following major themes in the area of, respectively, Quantitative Analytics for Banking, Finance and Insurance and Business and Industrial Statistics:
Modelling and Managing Portfolio Credit Risk, Structured Credit Products and Securitisation, Regulatory Issues in Banking, such as Basel II, internal rating systems, model validation, Integrating Market and Credit Risk Term, Structure Models Pricing and Hedging of Derivatives, Alternative Investments, Asset-liability modelling, Portfolio Management and Dynamic Portfolio Optimisation, Life Insurance, Pensions and Retirement Securities, Mortality Models and Securities, Regulatory Issues in Insurance, such as Solvency II, Solvency Tests, Energy and Power: Derivatives and Risk Management, Design of Experiments, Process Control, Reliability, Six Sigma and Other Quality Management Paradigms, Case Studies and Novel Statistical Applications, Information Technology and Network Modelling, Software Engineering, Chemometrics, Pharmaceutical Statistics, Large Data Sets in Business and Industry, New Developments and Applications in Data Mining and Machine Learning, Risk Analysis and Management, Market Research, Panel Discussions on current research and future needs/challenges.

Chair of International Scientific Programme
George Michailidis, University of Michigan, USA
gmichail@umich.edu

Chair of Quantitative Analytics Programme
Rüdiger Kiesel, University of Ulm, Germany
ruediger.kiesel@uni-ulm.de

ISBIS sponsors the 2008 International Conference on Applied Probability and Statistics (with emphasis in Business and Industrial Statistics). CAPS-2008 will be held at the Press Club in Hanoi, Vietnam on December 1-3, 2008.
The first International Conference on Probability and Statistics and their Applications was held in Hanoi in 1999. Similar to that conference, CAPS 2008 aims to promote practical applications of probability and statistics, particularly in business and industry, and to strengthen international relations among researchers in these areas. Contributed papers to the Conference can be on Applied Probability or any area of Statistics. The Conference is of interest both to researchers and to practitioners from business and industry.

CAPS 2008's confirmed keynote and invited speakers include Nick Fisher (ISBIS President), Vijay Nair (University of Michigan, USA), D.K.J. Lin (Penn State University, USA), and Pham Gia Thu (University of Moncton, Canada).

There will be an ISBIS Workshop on Statistics for Business and Industry on 30 November 2008.
CAPS 2008 venue is one of the first-class conference facilities in the heart of Hanoi and within walking distance from the magnificent Opera House, Hoan Kiem Lake, Ngoc Son Temple, St. Joseph Cathedral, Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, Hoa Lo Prison ("The Hanoi Hilton") and shopping outlets.

One of the objectives of ISBIS is to develop and promote relationships among national and regional organizations involved in activities similar to those of ISBIS.

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

The address of the official ISBIS website is www.isbis.org. This is the place to look for up-to-date information on the activities of ISBIS including a member-only zone with electronic access to the ASMBI-Journal, list of members, papers from past conferences and much more.

For further information on the website, or suggestions for its content, please contact Yves Grize (ISBIS President Elect) at: yves-laurent.grize@baloise.ch

ISBIS membership is open to all individuals and organisations with a professional interest in any aspect of business, financial and industrial statistics. There are individual, institutional, and student memberships. Details and application forms can be obtained from the ISBIS website (www.isbis.org) or contact Nicholas Fisher (nif@valuemetrics.com.au).

If you are already a member of the ISI and one of its sections, you can add ISBIS to your membership for a small fee by sending a mail to Margaret de Ruiter-Molloy in the ISI office (@cbs.nl).

ISI - INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE

Newsletter Volume 32, Number 2 (95) 2008 -ISI Sections

Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability

International Association for Official Statistics

- Soon open for registration

Contents

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

Submitted by Wendy Thomas

User Demands for Official Statistics

Methodology and IT

Policy and Dissemination

SCORUS – The International Network for regional and urban statistics

International Association for Statistical Computing

I. COMPSTAT 2008

Satellite meeting of the 4^th IASC World Conference

International Association for Statistics Education

SRTL-6: The Role of Context and Evidence in Informal Inferential Reasoning

International Statistical Literacy Project

International Association of Survey Statisticians

Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC)

International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

ISI - INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE

Newsletter Volume 32, Number 2 (95) 2008 -ISI Sections

Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability

International Association for Official Statistics

- Soon open for registration

Contents

Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

Submitted by Wendy Thomas

User Demands for Official Statistics

Methodology and IT

Policy and Dissemination

SCORUS – The International Network for regional and urban statistics

International Association for Statistical Computing

I. COMPSTAT 2008

Satellite meeting of the 4th IASC World Conference

International Association for Statistics Education

SRTL-6: The Role of Context and Evidence in Informal Inferential Reasoning

International Statistical Literacy Project

International Association of Survey Statisticians

Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics (IFC)

International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

Satellite meeting of the 4^th IASC World Conference