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Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability
President's ReportFirst, I would like to warmly thank Jean Jacod for being President of the Bernoulli Society (BS) during the last two years and the Executive Committee and Council members whose terms have ended. Part of my work as BS President-Elect was to promote a diagnosis process with the contribution of points of view and comments kindly provided by several members. Many strengths of the Society have been confirmed and we have also learned various problems that BS has had for several years; some of them are similar to those currently faced by other knowledge and professional societies, but some are BS weaknesses in particular. Part of this diagnosis includes what has already been pointed out by Arnoldo Frigessi in his Word from the Outgoing Scientific Secretary (Bernoulli News, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2008). The forthcoming year’s agenda for the new BS Executive Committee and Council must be defined by the challenges and opportunities already detected. In addition to these, BS members are welcome and encouraged to make suggestions. The activities and initiatives should continue contributing towards the objectives of the Bernoulli Society, which are the advancement of the sciences of probability (including stochastic processes) and mathematical statistics and of their applications to all those aspects of human endeavor which are directed towards the increase of natural knowledge and the welfare of mankind. In particular, as a Section of the ISI family, a natural question is the role that BS should continue playing within ISI and the expectations ISI and other ISI Sections currently have from BS, and vice versa. This requires continually seeking creative ways of collaboration, for which the new ISI Strategic Plan and the changes ISI has recently experienced provide a timely framework – a challenge itself for BS. It is also a very fortunate opportunity that two former BS Presidents are currently playing key roles in the ISI; Jef Teugels as President and Louis Chen as one of the Vice-Presidents. The ISI World Statistics Congresses (formerly ISI Sessions) have always been an opportunity for part of the BS membership to make connections and professional friends in a worldwide and broader community of statisticians. For the 57th ISI Session (Durban, South Africa, 16-22 August 2009), BS organized 13 Invited Paper Meetings in several topics of mathematical statistics and probability and of their applications. This included a wonderful and celebrated ISI-BS Tribute Session to David G. Kendall. Some recent BS activities and news are reported below, in what is the first ISI Newsletter contribution by Nakahiro Yoshida, new Scientific Secretary of BS. We invite members of ISI and other ISI Sections to visit the BS web pages and to also read Bernoulli News to find out more about detailed reports on other meetings organized or sponsored by the Bernoulli Society as well as our publications, history, membership benefits, forthcoming meetings and recent initiatives. Finally, I am looking forward to engage with Officers of the ISI and other ISI Sections regarding the future of the role of BS within ISI, as well as to consider reviewing and developing joint activities. The year 2013 marks the 300th Anniversary of the publication of the Ars Conjectandi of Jacob Bernoulli. This is a wonderful and strategic opportunity to promote joint initiatives not only within ISI, but also with other societies. This celebration should include activities and introduce initiatives of common interest and go beyond what current professional and scientific societies have achieved. After all, we share – from different but complementary and needed points of view and purposes – a general interest which is the advancement of Statistics. Víctor Pérez-Abreu The new Executive Committee:
Chairs of currently active committees: Regional Committee Chairs: Editors: Web Editor: The 57th Session of the ISI, 16-22 August 2009, Durban, South Africa Bernoulli Society organized 13 invited paper meetings in several topics of mathematical statistics, probability and of their applications. One of these meetings was an ISI-BS Tribute Session to David G. Kendall. In this commemoration, David Kendall was remembered as being heavily involved in the formation of the Bernoulli Society and for contacting in 1974 a member of the Bernoulli family to request to allow the Society the use of elements of the Bernoulli family´s coat of arms. It also included talks on the perspective of David Kendall pioneering works on stochastic geometry and its applications, and the statistical theory of shape. Recent and forthcoming events organized or sponsored by BS 8th World Congress of the Bernoulli
Society 33rd Conference on Stochastic Processes
and their Applications (SPA) 34th Conference on Stochastic Processes
and their Applications (SPA) 58th ISI World Statistics Congress XI CLAPEM - Latin American Congress in Probability
and Mathematical Statistics 27th European Meeting of Statisticians
(EMS) 28th European Meeting
of Statisticians (EMS) 16th European Young Statisticians
Meeting (EYSM) Official publications of the Society: Bernoulli Journal. From December 2009 on, Richard A. Davis will be the new Editor instead of Holger Rootzén. All registered Bernoulli Society members have free access to online versions of Bernoulli and a reduced rate for print copies. Stochastic Processes and their Applications (SPA, an Elsevier Journal). The editorial board is appointed by BS. Maria Eulalia Vares was the Editor until March 2009 and Thomas Mikosch since then. Members have free access to online versions (back to 1973) and a reduced rate for print copies. Bernoulli News. The Editors for 2007-2009 have been Eric Cator and Erik van Zwet, and the Editors for 2009-2011 are Vicky Fasen and Robert Stelzer. The Society also co-publishes, on equal footing,
with the IMS, the following electronic journals that have with open access: In addition, BS will collaborate on the Encyclopedia of Probability and Statistics, which will be published by Springer Verlag under the scientific supervision of a number of scientific societies, including ISI itself. The activities in the domain of publications are taken care of by the BS Publications Committee, which appoints the main Editor(s) of each journal, jointly with the IMS for the joint publications. The 28th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS 2010) The European Meetings of Statisticians have already
been established among the major international meetings covering a broad area of
disciplines, such as mathematical statistics, biostatistics, computational
statistics, financial statistics, probability and applied probability. The
Meetings are held under the auspices of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical
Statistics and Probability, the IMS and ISI. M.V. Koutras International Association for Official Statistics
A new Executive Committee was elected at the ISI Session in Durban in August:
IAOS Future Challenges and Possible Responses: Building the Global Network of Friends of Official Statistics Globalisation with the increasing demand for independent, high quality and relevant statistics on the one hand, as well as the reduction of the resources for official statistics on the other hand, present new challenges for the future development of the IAOS. The IAOS may need to reconsider its original objectives and current tasks, in order to work in the new contexts. In responding to the new challenges, the need for an adjusted communication strategy seems to be one of the priorities. Networking and cooperation are at the core of the IAOS mission, while the use of interactive ICT tools offers new modes of co-operation and knowledge transfer. A second important activity lies in strengthening its role as a promoter and supporter of the independence, integrity and accountability of official statistics. There are also several governance issues like leadership of NSIs, co-operation within the ISI and with the other Sections as well as the organisation of IAOS’s own work, as there is room for improvement there as well. As the work of the members is performed entirely on a voluntary basis, the help of the ISI Permanent Office is both very welcome and indispensable. All these activities will hopefully lead to attracting new members in the work of the IAOS (and the ISI) and to successful fulfilment of its mission in a new context. Irena Križman IAOS/Scorus Conference on Official statistics and the environment IAOS and National Statistics Institute (INE) of
Chile are pleased to invite you to the IAOS/Scorus Conference on Official
statistics and the environment: Approaches, issues, challenges and linkages 20
to 22 October 2010, Santiago, Chile The host of the Conference will be INE Chile. The work will be organised in 2 Plenary Sessions, 3 Panel Discussions and 5 Parallel Sessions – invited and contributed papers. The majority of chairs and organisers for the invited paper sessions are already confirmed. The Chair of the Conference Programme Committee is Peter Harper, Australian Bureau of Statistics. At the end of June, the Conference web page was
launched in the English and Spanish languages. The Promotional leaflet for the Conference was also prepared. The promotion of the Conference with leaflets, posters, promotional film and presentation of IAOS 2010 Conference received a good response at the 57th Session of ISI in Durban, South Africa. At the meeting of the IAOS 2010 Conference Programme Committee, the deadlines for the abstract and final paper submission were decided. The call for papers will be launched by the end of September, the abstract closing date is 15 November 2009 and paper submission deadline is 31 March 2010. Contact e-mail addresses: Statistical Journal of the International Association for Official Statistics Call For Papers for two Special Issues1. Reshaping Health Statistics Submitted papers should be in the usual format and
style of SJIAOS papers; follow the Instructions to authors on the inside back
cover of paper versions of SJIAOS, or scroll down to Submission of Manuscripts
on the home page of SJIAOS, or go to: Papers will be refereed. Do not submit papers that have previously been published or accepted for publication in refereed publications. Papers as submitted should be no longer than about 30 pages, using double spacing and including tables and figures. The closing time for submission is 31 March 2010. Submit papers to Dr. Jane F. Gentleman, National Center for Health Statistics, 3311 Toledo Road, Hyattsville, Maryland 20782-2003, United States. E-mail: JGentleman@cdc.gov. Telephone: +1-301-458-4233. 2. Statistical Ethics and
Official Statistics Individual papers may take many forms. These
include: Again, prospective authors are not limited to the
topics or approaches identified as long as the proposed paper is directly
relevant to the theme of this special issue of SJIAOS. Thus, papers of a purely
methodological character or those primarily presenting a specific data analysis
or dealing primarily with other important issues in official statistics would
not be suitable for submission. Priority will be given to papers less than 25
pages in length (double spaced in 12 point type). Detailed instructions for
manuscript preparation can be found at
http://www.iospress.nl/html/18747655_ita.html. Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statisticswww.scorusnet.com
The presentations were compared and contrasted by the discussant Uwe Neumann (Germany). IPM21: “Improving comparability of urban and regional data: Standards, harmonization, and sharing metadata resources” was organized by Wendy Thomas and contained three papers discussing structural metadata standards (Bryan Fitzpatrick, UK), geographic comparability (Wendy Thomas, USA), and topical comparability and harmonization of topical elements (Matthew Sobek, USA). The two sessions were attended by 35-45 delegates. Statements and questions from the audience reinforced the growing importance of analyzing and comparing data for regions within countries, in particular metropolitan areas and surrounding regions. It was noted that it is important to understand the effects of metropolitan areas as social and economic engines for development as well as the effect of interaction within surrounding urban and rural areas. Also noted were the issues common to supra-national, national, regional and municipal governments including: coordination and cooperation between levels, access to microdata for sub-national areas, comparability of sub-national area definitions, and the availability of very small area data to support interpolation of consistent geographic areas for comparison within and between countries. SCORUS Business Meeting Upcoming Conferences: World Urban Forum will take place on UN Habitat Day, 5 October 2010. IAOS/SCORUS Conference on official statistics and the environment: approaches issues, challenges and linkages will be held in Chile, 20-22 October 2010. SCORUS will be involved in developing approximately three sessions. Asian Regional
Conferences ISI World Statistics Congress in Dublin, Ireland, 2011 – SCORUS is proposing two sessions and working to actively support and contribute to IAOS related sessions. Following the ISI World Statistics Congress, SCORUS will be holding a Satellite Meeting in Galway, Ireland. SCORUS 27th
Conference on Regional and Urban Statistics and Research Registration: Scientific Programme: Sub-themes and their coordinators:
If you want to present a paper, please submit an abstract not exceeding 300 words to the relevant coordinator, or to the Chair of the Programme Committee by e-mail at: petrakuncova@czso.cz Submission deadline: 15 May 2010 Social
Programme:
SCORUS – The International Network for regional and urban
statistics International Association for Statistical Computing
IASC Activities Report 2007-2009 During last two years, the Association has been active and productive. IASC members, under the IASC auspices, have organized many scientific events and have been extremely active in many other fields, especially as concerns publications. Mission Statement and Objectives It is the mission of the IASC to embed traditional statistical methodology, modern computer technology, and the knowledge of domain experts in order to convert data into information and knowledge. The Association pursues its objectives with special attention to developing countries. It promotes collaborative efforts within international, national, regional and other organizations and institutions having similar aims; it fosters evaluations of statistical computing techniques and programs and facilitates the exchange of computer programmes and the organisation of meetings, particularly in conjunction with World Statistics Congresses of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). The objectives of the Association are to foster
world-wide interest in effective statistical computing and to exchange technical
knowledge through international contacts and meetings between statisticians,
computing professionals, organizations, institutions, governments and the
general public. The IASC puts emphasis especially on computational statistics, statistical software, exploratory data analysis, data mining, pattern recognition, statistical databases and related fields, e.g.: Computational Finance, Statistical Computing and e-commerce, Statistical Computing and Customer Relation Management, Computer Intensive Methods in Statistical Methods, Statistical Computing for Census and Official Statistics, Statistical Methods for Large Data, Statistical Graphs and Data Visualization, Distributed Statistical Computing, GIS Applications, Multivariate Statistical Modelling and Data Analysis, Statistical Quality Control and Process Control, Environmental Statistics, Demographic and Health Science. Established during the 41st Session of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) in 1977, the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) motivates and supports research in a broad spectrum of areas of computational statistics. The IASC forms a Section of the ISI. The IASC provides international contacts among
statisticians, computing professionals, organizations, institutions,
governments, and the general public world-wide. Currently two regional sections are established: the European Regional Section (ERS) and the Asian Regional Section. The IASC seeks to extend its regional presence in all other parts of the world. Close contacts exist to the Interface Foundation of North America where the IASC is regularly sponsoring a session at the yearly INTERFACE meeting. IASC particularly works on its outreach to the Middle Eastern and South American Regional Sections The European and Asian Regional Sections organize a variety of scientific conferences, e.g., IASC World Conferences, biennial COMPSTAT meeting, summer schools, workshops, and provide communication and knowledge exchange in their regions. Past, forthcoming and future meetings and conferences • 56th ISI Session, Lisboa 2007 • IASC’07 Conference, Aveiro (PT) • COMPSTAT’08 Symposium, Porto (PT) • 4th IASC World Conference and 6th ARS
IASC Conference, Yokohama (JAP) • 4th International Workshop on Mining
Complex Data MCD 2008, 15th December 2008, Pisa (Italy) • ISBIS Regional Meeting, Cagliari (Italy), 30th
May-3rd June 2009 • 57th ISI Session, Durban 2009 • PLS’09 – 6th International Conference
on Partial Least Squares and Related Methods • 10th Summer School of ERS IASC • 58th ISI World Statistics Congress, Dublin 2011 • 5th IASC World Conference • IASC’s official journal is Computational
Statistics and Data Analysis (CSDA) published by Elsevier. The impact factor of
CSDA has fatherly improved during the last years, being 1,029 in 2007 and 1,126
in 2008. In the year 2008, CSDA received around 1,000 submissions, the
acceptation rate being around 0.25. Membership situation Note of thanks - Homage During the Conference of Japanese Statisticians held in September 2009, Professor Choichiro Asano (Japan) received a plaque of honour from IASC for his contribution to the computational statistics and foundation of the ARS IASC. Jaromir Antoch, IASC President
2007-2009 According to the IASC Statutes, Yutaka Tanaka has chaired the Nominations Committee for the IASC elections. One half of the total members of the Council have been renewed. We remind everyone that there are twelve Council members and they stay in office for four years. IASC members have also elected their President-Elect, the Scientific Secretary, two Vice-Presidents and the Treasurer. Yutaka Tanaka informs the Council that ballot sheets were sent back to the ISI Office and the votes were counted by Gerrit Stemerdink and Liliana Pinkasovych of the ISI Office. The voting sheets will be stored at the Permanent Office in The Hague and can be consulted at any time. At some point, they will be transferred to the ISI archive and will be stored there for an indefinite time. The IASC Council for the period 2009-2011 is
constituted as follows: Vice-Presidents: Scientific Secretary: Treasurer: Council Members 2007-2011: Council Members 2009-2013: Report of ARS Special Session in 2009 Meeting of Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations
ARS Special Session was successfully held at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan on 8th September 2009. The theme of the session was "Modern Statistical Methods and Computing". There were four speakers and four discussants, and about 40 participants from 4 countries. At the end of this session, a homage ceremony was held for Professor Chooichiro Asano (the second person from the left in the above picture) to acknowledge his great contributions to Computational Statistics, in particular, in the Asian region. Professor Asano was the founder of the Asian Reginal Section. Moon Yul Huh IASC-ERS Summer SchoolThe IASC-ERS Summer School on “Computational Aspects in Environmental
Statistics” was held during 7-11 September 2009 at hotel Panorama in the famous
Bulgarian resort of Pamporovo in the Rhodopes Mountain, Bulgaria. (The venue of
the Summer School had to be moved from Gorni Voden Monastery "St. Kirik and
Yulita", district of Plovdiv, due to circumstances caused by the economic
crisis.) Neyko Nekov
The participants of the IASC-ERS Summer School. Compstat 2010, Paris
The COMPSTAT 2010 Symposium will take place in Paris, 22-27 August, on the
premises of Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), located in the
heart of Paris.
Contributed papers as well as posters are welcome
in the following fields: The deadline for submitting a contributed paper or
a poster presentation is 10 January 2010. Best contributed papers will be
published together with invited papers in the proceedings book by Physica
Verlag. The keynote lectures will be given by: Three tutorials will be organized: The programme of the 14 invited sessions is now
available on the website
http://www.compstat2010.fr/ Gilbert Saporta 2010 ARS Interim MeetingARS student session will be held during the Korean Statistical Society (KSS)
meeting next year (2010). The KSS meeting is held twice a year (early June,
outside Seoul and early November, within Seoul vicinity). Moon Yul Huh The Joint Meeting of 7th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing and 2011 Taipei International Statistical SymposiumThe Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, will host The Joint
Meeting of 7th Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the International
Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) and 2011 Taipei International
Statistical Symposium from 16 to 19 December 2011 at Academia Sinica, jointly
organized by the Asian Regional Section of the IASC, the Institute of
Statistical Science, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and
Statistics, Executive Yuan, R.O.C., and the Chinese Statistical Association.
After the main Conference, a satellite workshop on "Statistical Computing in
Quantitative Finance" will be held at the Feng Chia University in Taichung
nearby attractive sightseeing spots such as Sun Moon Lake, Formosan Aboriginal
Culture Village. Conferences endorsed or sponsored by the IASC In the spirit of co-operation with other scientific communities and/or ISI World Statistics Congresses, and aiming at having an even wider horizon of scientific relationships, the IASC Council - according to the IASC statute - may deliberate the sponsorship of conferences that are organized (or co-organized) by distinguished IASC members on topics close to the Computational Statistics. Computational and Financial Econometrics
|
 |
President |
Helen MacGillivray Queensland University of Technology E-mail: h.macgillivray@qut.edu.au |
|
| Section Editors |
Andrej Blejec, National Institute of Biology, Vecna pot 111 POB 141, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Tel: +386 1 423 33 88, Fax: +386 1 2412 980 E-mail: andrej.blejec@nib.si and K. Laurence Weldon, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6 Tel: +1 604 291 3667, Fax: +1 604 291 4368 E-mail: weldon@sfu.ca Website: http://www.stat.sfu.ca/~weldon |
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| Website | http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/ |
Report of Section’s Activities 2007-2009
President: Allan Rossman, USA, 2007-2009
President-Elect: Helen MacGillivray, Australia, 2007-2009 (President 2009-2011)
Past President: Gilberte Schuyten, Belgium, 2007-2009 (President 2005-2007)
Vice-Presidents, 2007-2009:
| Andrej Blejec, Slovenia |
| John Harraway, New Zealand |
| James Nicholson, U.K. |
| Delia North, South Africa |
| Enriqueta Reston, Philippines |
Mission of the Section
IASE seeks to improve statistics education at all levels from elementary (primary) school through to the training of professionals, and to increase the uptake of statistics education world wide. It fosters international cooperation, and stimulates discussion and research. IASE disseminates ideas, strategies, research findings, materials, and information using publications, international conferences, and increasingly its website.
Membership Overview
IASE is formally constituted as the education section of the ISI. It may be joined independently, however, by anyone who wishes to participate in IASE’s activities, wishes to be a part of an international community of statistics educators, wishes to share experiences with and learn from the experiences of other statistics educators around the world, or simply wishes to support those working to achieve IASE’s goals. IASE has approximately 800 members - about 20% of whom belong to ISI and 80% who do not -- representing more than 90 countries. The membership is largely made up of teachers, lecturers and professors of statistics, researchers in the field of statistics education, and applied and government statisticians with an interest in statistics education. Among the most rewarding aspects of IASE membership is participating in an international community of people who believe in the value of statistics education and wish to advance it.
Publications & Website (overview)
The Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ) is
IASE’s peer-reviewed electronic journal, co-published with the ISI. SERJ aims to
advance research-based knowledge that can help to improve the teaching, learning
and understanding of statistics or probability at all educational levels and in
both formal (classroom-based) and informal (out-of-classroom) contexts. Such
research may examine, for example, cognitive, motivational, attitudinal,
curricular, teaching-related, technology-related, organizational, or societal
factors and processes that are related to the development and understanding of
stochastic knowledge. In addition, research may focus on how people use or apply
statistical and probabilistic information and ideas, broadly viewed.
SERJ, which is freely available from the IASE website, publishes two issues per
year. The Co-Editors of SERJ are Tom Short (USA) and Peter Petocz (Australia),
and the Assistant Editor is Beth Chance (USA). Iddo Gal (Israel), the previous
Co-Editor of SERJ, is currently chairing a search committee for a new Co-Editor
whose term will begin in January 2010.
The IASE website (www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/)
contains a wealth of information about IASE in particular and statistics
education more broadly. The publications section of the website includes not
only SERJ but also Proceedings from IASE conferences such as International
Conferences on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS), IASE presentations at ISI Sessions,
and IASE Roundtable Conferences. The publications section also has links to
selected articles on statistics education published in
International Statistical
Review and other journals, and also to IASE components of the ISI Newsletter and
IASE Matters, which is a regular feature in the journal Teaching Statistics.
In addition, the IASE website contains a listing of recent doctoral
dissertations in statistics education, a searchable list of IASE members,
information on past and upcoming IASE conferences, and much more news and
information.
Conferences, Short Courses and Satellite Meetings
In June/July of 2008, IASE held its Roundtable
Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, on the theme of “Statistics Education in School
Mathematics: Challenges for Teachers and Teacher Training.” Carmen Batanero
(Spain) chaired the International Program Committee, and Blanca Ruiz chaired the
Local Organizing Committee. This Conference was a joint venture with ICMI, the
International Commission on Mathematical Instruction. About 80 participants from
25 countries participated in this Conference. It was especially gratifying that
a large number of representatives from developing countries (including Uganda,
Botswana, China, Philippines, Iran, Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica) attended,
with some financial assistance from IASE. It was also encouraging that a large
number of graduate students and recent graduate students participated and had
very fruitful interactions with more experienced colleagues. Work is now
underway on a book, to be published by Springer-Verlag, based on the
presentations and discussions at this Conference.
On 14 and 15 August of this year, IASE held its Satellite Meeting in Durban on
the theme of “Next Steps in Statistics Education”. The Conference included 35
speakers representing 15 countries. Patrick Murphy (Ireland) has chaired the
Program Committee for this Conference, with Delia North (South Africa)
coordinating local arrangements. The previous Satellite Conference, held in
Guimaraes, Portugal, concentrated on the theme of “Assessing Student Learning in
Statistics”. The Program Committee was chaired by Brian Phillips (Australia) and
Beth Chance (USA), while the local arrangements were coordinated by Bruno de
Sousa (Portugal).
IASE also sponsored a session at the 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver
(USA). Organized by Juana Sanchez (USA), this session was titled “The State of
Statistics Education in Schools (K-12) Around the World.”
Plans are well underway for the IASE flagship conference: International
Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-8) will be held on 11-16 July 2010 in
Ljubljana, Slovenia. John Harraway (New Zealand) is chairing the International
Program Committee, and Andrej Blejec (Slovenia) is chairing the Local Organizing
Committee. The Conference theme is “Data and Context in Statistics Education:
Toward an Evidence-Based Society.” Details and updated information can be found
at the ICOTS-8 website:
www.icots8.org.
Cooperation with other ISI Sections or external organisations
The ISI’s International Statistical Literacy Project, under the direction of Juana Sanchez (USA), has been conducting competitions on statistical literacy among school children, sparking interest in statistics in countries around the world. One such competition culminated in Portugal in 2007, and another competition was concluded in Durban. Please see the ISLP’s article in this ISI Newsletter.
Durban Activities
Helen MacGillivray (Australia) organized IASE’s Invited Paper Meetings that were held in Durban. As mentioned above, Patrick Murphy (Ireland) chaired the Program Committee for the Satellite Meeting held prior to the ISI Session. IASE has also helped to organize a Short Course for African teachers of statistics and mathematics at school levels.
Note of thanks
All of the individuals mentioned in the above report have made substantial contributions in the past two years to the mission of the IASE. These contributions, and those by many more than can be mentioned here, are much appreciated.
Allan Rossman
IASE President 2007-2009
New IASE Executive and Council 2009-2011
President:
Helen MacGillivray, Australia, h.macgillivray@qut.edu.au
President-Elect:
John Harraway, New Zealand, jharraway@maths.otago.ac.nz
Past President:
Allan Rossman, USA, arossman@calpoly.edu
Vice-Presidents:
Iddo Gal, Israel,
iddo@research.haifa.ac.il
James
Nicholson, U.K.,
j.r.nicholson@durham.ac.uk
Delia North,
South Africa, northd@ukzn.ac.za
Irena
Ograjensek, Slovenia,
irena.orgajensek@ef.uni-lj.si
Enriqueta
Reston, Philippines, edreston@yahoo.com
IASE thanks the 2009 Nominations Committee for their work.
Message from the Incoming President
The IASE Executive and Council members extend many
thanks to all those in IASE who have supported and contributed to IASE’s work in
the past two years, and we look forward to a productive and fruitful two years
for everyone involved with, and interested in, statistics education across all
of ISI and the whole international statistical community.
Particular thanks go to our Past President and our retiring Vice-Presidents.
However, all will be just as involved in the next two years in their roles on
the Executive or with ICOTS8 or both. Many thanks also to Juana Sanchez who is
retiring as Director of the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP),
for her untiring dedication to this project and to her and her helpers in the
ISIBALO International Statistical Literacy Competition, which achieved its
wonderful culmination during the ISI Session in Durban. The new Director and
executive of ISLP will be announced soon.
Thanks also to Co-Editor of SERJ, Tom Short, who will retire at the end of 2009
when we will welcome Bob del Mas to join Peter Petocz as Co-Editor.
The 57th Session of the ISI and all its associated activities in
Durban was a very full and successful period for IASE and Statistics Education.
The 11 IASE IPMs included 2 joint with IAOS and 2 joint with Local Hosts and
ranged over many interests, with particular attention given to topics of
interest to all ISI members and to Africa, and with a number of these meetings
attracting considerable attention. Our thanks to all those involved in making
the 57th Session of the ISI a truly memorable occasion.
The ISI Sessions, pleasingly to be now called World Statistics Congresses, are a
wonderful opportunity for interaction across the international diversity of
statistical interests. As IASE’s representative on the PCC for the 58th
World Statistics Congress, Patrick Murphy has received many interesting
proposals for IPMs and joint IPMs and will be maintaining IASE’s commitment to
quality, breadth and cooperative planning to achieve statistics education papers
of interest to all IASE and ISI delegates.
IASE’s tradition of a satellite meeting before the ISI Session continued in 2009
with a very successful meeting attended by more than 60 delegates with more than
30 papers, a workshop and a forum. Our thanks to Patrick Murphy for organising
the program, Delia North for organising an excellent venue, Bettie Basson for
the website, and all participants for their enthusiastic presentations and
discussion on Next Steps in Statistics Education.
The UNESCO-funded workshops for African teachers held during ISI were an
outstanding success, with approximately 150 participants each day and waiting
lists for many sessions. As teachers were allowed to nominate their sessions for
attendance, this means that approximately 200 teachers attended during the week.
The all-day Sunday workshop, with more than 160 attendees, participated in
hands-on statistical learning activities with Doreen Connor and helpers in the
morning, and were able to choose in the afternoon between data analysis
activities with Roxy Peck and real probability with Helen MacGillivray. The
daily afternoon sessions and the Saturday session, organised so ably by Delia
North and her helpers, were given by South Africa’s Maths4Stats teachers and
trainers. IASE thanks Denise Lievesley, the ISI and UNESCO for the support for
this important work.
The ISLP activities, competition finals and presentations were a highlight of
ISI 57 and a major achievement for Juana Sanchez and her helpers. The list of
international winners and phase 2 winners of the International Statistical
Literacy Competition may be found on the ISLP website
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/. Presentations were also made to
the winners of the 2009 Best Cooperative Project Award in Statistical Literacy,
Maths4Stats Project (Statistics South Africa) and Early Statistics: Enhancing
the Teaching and Learning of Early Statistical Reasoning in European Schools
(Cyprus).
Many meetings, both formal and informal, were also held during ISI on plans and
ideas. As reported to the ISI General Assembly, the planning for the IASE
flagship conference, the International Conference on Teaching Statistics
(ICOTS-8), which will be held 11-16 July 2010 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is
promising another excellent ICOTS (see
www.icots8.org for details).
Plans for the IASE Satellite to the 58th ISI World Statistics
Congress to be held in Dublin in 2011, as well as for the IASE Roundtable
Conference in 2011, are well underway with announcements coming soon to the IASE
website. Planning for the IASE Roundtable Conference in 2012 and for ICOTS-9 in
2014 has also commenced.
These are both challenging and exciting times for statistics education
worldwide, and the 2009-2011 IASE Executive looks forward to working with all of
IASE, ISI and the international statistics community in furthering statistical
learning.
Helen MacGillivray
IASE President 2009-2011
Educating the public on how to use official statistics
At the recently concluded 57th Session of the International Statistical Institute, held in Durban, South Africa, in August 2009, Invited Paper Meeting 38 ‘Educating the public on how to use official statistics’ attracted a lot of attention. Here Peter Wingfield-Digby (www.pwdigby.co.uk), Organizer and Chair of the meeting, highlights some of the issued raised.
This meeting was sponsored jointly by the
International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) and the local hosts
(Statistics South Africa). It aimed to address the issue of how a statistics
office can best help the public to understand and use its outputs.
Three papers were presented at the meeting. The first, Making statistics
attractive through partnerships with the media, was by Ben Paul Mungyereza,
Director of Statistical Coordination Services at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics
(UBOS - www.ubos.org). He
noted four reasons for the poor reporting of statistics by the media: their
failure to understand statistical concepts; their weakness in interpreting
statistics; the inability of statisticians themselves to communicate statistical
information to the media; and the media’s own aversion to statistics. He urged
the need for better training on both sides, making statistics part of the
training for those required to work in the media, and making media training a
requirement for budding statisticians. He suggested several possible approaches
to improving the situation: employing full-time public relations staff;
preparing special media kits containing simplified statistics; and involving the
media in all stages of statistical activities.
The second paper, Improving use of official statistics - How marketing and IT
help, was presented by Leo Yu, Senior Statistician in the Information Technology
Branch of Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department (www.censtatd.gov.hk).
A statistics office needs to have a framework for optimising the product
development process. He advocated a marketing analysis process: Dividing the
market into various segments, analysing the statistical needs of each segment,
and then devising marketing plans for each one. A statistics office faces
special considerations: the need to encourage statistical applications as widely
as possible; the very diverse needs of a large client base; and the fact that a
statistics office has limited resources and is normally non-profit making. Four
particular user segments were identified (the general public, the media,
students, and the business sector), and the characteristics and statistical
needs of each group were described. A 4P marketing plan was advocated, focusing
on product, placement, pricing and promotion.
The third paper, Making official data relevant to students: Statistics Canada’s
education outreach program, had been prepared by Mary Townsend, Chief of
Education Outreach at Statistics Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca).
She could not attend the ISI Session, but her video presentation was introduced
by Art Ridgeway, Director-General of the System of National Accounts at
Statistics Canada. Mary emphasized that school-aged youth are the nation’s
future data users and survey respondents. If you educate them about how
important official data is in forming the policies and programmes that impact
their daily lives, they will be more inclined to respond accurately and in a
timely manner to the surveys that collect those data.
Statistics Canada’s Education Outreach Program is structured on two pillars: a
vibrant learning resources website, where students and teachers have direct
access to resources designed specifically to suit their needs; and a network of
regional champions who provide teachers with training, workshops and support.
Canada has the great advantage that every school in the country has
Internet-connected computers. There are four main challenges faced by the
Outreach Program: communicating with teachers; training the teachers;
understanding the Net generation; and developing engaging resources within an
official environment. Mary illustrated some of the statistical products that had
been developed so far by Statistics Canada.
In discussing the papers, Davaasuren Chultemjamts from Mongolia, who is Director
of the United Nations Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific in Tokyo
(SIAP - www.unsiap.or.jp),
stressed three points: the importance of strengthening the communication skills
of statisticians in dealing with non-statisticians; the need to improve the
image of statistics and statisticians, so that people have more trust in
statistics and in the decisions based on them; and the tremendous possibilities
offered by the various media (Internet, television, radio, blogs, newspapers,
etc.).
The second discussant, Hilary Joffe, Senior Associate Editor of Business Day, a
leading newspaper in South Africa (www.bdfm.co.za)
was not able to attend the meeting, but her written comments were presented by
Trevor Oosterwyk, Manager of Communications at Statistics South Africa. She was
impressed by Statistics Canada’s use of web-based technology in its outreach
programmes, but wondered how these types of programmes could be replicated in
other countries, particularly in Africa where statistical literacy and Internet
penetration were generally low. She welcomed the idea of the media as a
‘business’ partner of the official statistics agency, but noted that official
statistical agencies were not always very good at partnering with the media.
Peter Wingfield-Digby
New statistics education journal: Statistique et Enseignement
The Société française de statistique (SFdS) decided
to launch Statistique et Enseignement, a free-access electronic journal
whose first issue (devoted to articles derived from presentations at the Lyon
Meeting in September 2008) will be published some time in 2009. Statistique et
Enseignement plans to publish papers on teaching, extracurricular training, as
well as popular statistical science material. Statistique et Enseignement
is not a resource centre but a peer-reviewed journal welcoming critical thought,
analysis, commented research reviews (goals, experimental conditions, study
findings). While not an online forum, Statistique et Enseignement will
also include debates, opinions, and reading notes.
Journal website:
http://www.statistique-et-enseignement.fr/ojs
Gilberte Schuyten
A Report on the TSG 13 at ICME11 - Monterrey,
Mexico – July 6-13, 2008
The series of the ICME are among the biggest congresses dedicated to mathematics
education. The 11th convention of this kind took place in Monterrey, Mexico.
This short report should only focus attention; the reader might get details on
the topics, which have been dealt with at the link given below. Some of the
contributions have been developed further after the conference and will appear
in October 2009 at IEJME.
Probability and statistics education are relatively new disciplines. Both have
only recently been introduced into the main stream school curricula in many
countries. While the application oriented statistics is undisputed in its
relevance, discussion about probability is more ambivalent. Reduction of
probability to the classical conception, mainly based on combinatorics, or its
tight connection to higher mathematics, is an argument to abandon this part of
the discipline in favour of the statistics part. However, there are some
arguments for a strong role for probability within stochastics curricula. We had
three meetings (“Issues in Probability Teaching and Learning”, “Informal
Conceptions”, and “Conditional probability and Bayes’ theorem”) with lectures
and a panel discussion “Fundamental Ideas in Probability Teaching at School
Level”.
The authors come from Europe, USA, Australia and Latin America, the English, the
Spanish world, and the “rest” are distributed “evenly”.
The hope is that ICME will continue to organize topic study groups on
probability and statistics separately. By this “strategy”, we did in fact split
our potential audience as all the study groups are held at the same time slots.
However, the great interest in our group on probability as well as the number of
persons who attended the parallel statistics group confirm that we can attract
many more people to our topic by two separate groups. The split into the two
groups allowed also for a more convenient focus of the pertinent presentations
and discussions. It showed that – against the international trend towards
statistics and away from probability in all international curricula – there is
still a substantial interest from the side of research in probability issues as
it is highly relevant for any teaching and learning of statistics. This holds
also for the joint study of ICME and IASE, which was held one week prior to the
ICME congress, where a panel discussion about a vital role for probability
within curricula met a strong echo and lead to a lively discussion on the role
of probability within educational research and in curricula.
Longer version of the report:
http://wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at/stochastik.schule/aktuelles.html
Manfred Borovcnik
Ljubljana, Slovenia, 11-16 July 2010
The second circular containing information about registration procedures,
registration fees, accommodation options and tours will be released around the
middle of October. Links will be given to the convention centre and
accommodation facilities as appropriate.
The programme is developing rapidly and those interested should visit the
website http://icots8.org to
access up to date information. Paper titles and abstracts are being placed on
the website each day as they are received.
Contributed papers and posters are now being received and details about
submission procedures and format for both papers and posters can be found in
guideline documents on the website.
Those who are attending the ISBIS Conference in Ljubljana the week before ICOTS8
are advised that a one and a half day special registration will be available for
you to attend ICOTS on these days. This will cover the Sunday evening welcome
ceremony and all day Monday when we have the opening followed by a first plenary
address which will be of interest to those attending ISBIS. At least one of the
parallel sessions later on the Monday morning and afternoon will be related to
education aspects of statistics as far as they overlap with topics in business
and industry.
The ICOTS Organising Committees hope that those attending ISBIS may be
encouraged to join ICOTS for at least the Monday if not the rest of the ICOTS
Conference. Future links with other ISI member bodies are being encouraged and
the IAOS also features in the ICOTS programme.
For news, follow the conference website at
http://icots8.org
John Harraway
57th ISI Session: A Forum for School
Teachers and Students from 16 Countries
ISI 57 was the first ISI biennial Session that shared its venue with school
teachers and students from 16 countries to host the ISIBALO International
Statistical Literacy Competition. 41 finalists of phase 2 of the ISLP
competition participated in this first international statistical literacy
competition to demonstrate their knowledge of Statistics.
The events for students during this week of
learning and sharing, and the first international competition, would not have
happened without the following ingredients: the encouragement of ISI President
Denise Lievesley and Statistician-General of South Africa Pali Lehohla; the full
sponsorship, hosting and caring of the participants in Durban by Statistics
South Africa; the work of Jairo Arrow, Koleka Rangaza, Johnny Masegela, Lawrence
Sithole, the ISIBALO team of Statistics South Africa and Jean Claude Girard; the
generous sharing of time, work and knowledge with students by Dianne Cook,
Maseka Lesaoana, Themba Mohoto, Naomi Robbins and Martha Aliaga.
The competition’s award ceremony was attended by hundreds of students from South
African schools. The winners of the competition received cheques and trophies
from Pali Lehohla. You may see the names of these students as well as their
countries and schools at
www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/home.
Pali Lehohla and ISLP Director Juana Sanchez with the South African winner, Tamaryn Fortuin (in the middle).
Shown in the photo above are Pali Lehohla and ISLP
Director Juana Sanchez with the South African winner, Tamaryn Fortuin (in the
middle).
Students and teachers, and all of us participating in the events of this
memorable week cannot thank enough Statistics South Africa for their
unparalleled commitment to statistical literacy and statistical development.
ISLP Open Meeting at ISI 57 unveils the winners of the Second Best Cooperative
Project Award in Statistical Literacy “EarlyStatistics: Enhancing the Teaching
and Learning of Early Statistical Reasoning in European Schools” (Cyprus) and
“Maths4stats Project of Statistics South Africa” (South Africa) won the Second
Best Cooperative Project Award. The awards were received by Ana Serrado Bayes
(EarlyStatistics) and Mbulaheni Nthangeni and Themba Mohoto (Maths4stats). Seen
in the photo below are Math4stats coordinators, ISLP board members, and winners
(holding the trophies).
The Math4stats coordinators, ISLP board members, and winners (holding the trophies).
ISLP Board member Pedro Campos (Portugal) headed the International Committee for the Awards. Hugo Mael Henandez presented the awards in his place. Other members of the Committee were Iddo Gal (Israel), Paola Guiacche (Italy), Cyril Parirentyawa (Zimbabwe) and Pinto Martins (Portugal) who unfortunately could not attend ISI 57.
Juana Sanchez, Director
International Statistical Literacy Project
 |
President | Susan
Linacre,
President IASS, Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS House, 45
Benjamin Way, Belconnen ACT 2615, Australia. Tel: +61 2 6252 5000 Fax: +61 2 6252 8080 E-mail: susan.linacre@abs.gov.au |
| Section Editor | Leyla
Mohadjer,
Scientific Secretary IASS, Westat 1600 Research Blvd., Rockville, MD 20850 Tel: +1 301 251 4254 E-mail: leylamohadjer@westat.com |
|
| Secretariat | Catherine
Meunier, Executive Director Claude Olivier, Secretary INSEE/CEFIL, 3 rue de la Cité, 33500 Libourne, France Tel: +33 5 5755 5600 (Claude Olivier) Tel: +33 5.57.55.56.06 (Catherine Meunier) Fax: +33 5 5755 5620 E-mail: claude.olivier@insee.fr www.cefil.insee.fr Anna Maria Vespa, Executive Secretary, INSEE, 18, Bd. Adolphe Pinard 75014 Paris, France Tel: +33 1 5368 5571, Fax: +33 1 5368 5501 E-mail: annavespa@yahoo.fr |
|
| Website |
http://isi.cbs.nl/iass
|
The IASS aims to promote the study and practice of sample surveys and censuses, and to increase interest in the issues of survey taking amongst our fellow statisticians, government and the public. The 2009 ISI Session in Durban was a wonderful opportunity to pursue this objective through the general Scientific Programme, the programme of meetings sponsored by IASS and the seven IASS Short Courses conducted before the Session. I thank John Kovar, Leyla Mohadjer and Steve Heeringa for their substantial contributions to this.
A key set of activities for Council over the next year will be developing the IASS input to the content and arrangements for the ISI World Statistics Congress (WSC) in Dublin in 2011, and its short course program, as well as preparing proposals for the following WSC in Hong Kong in 2013. Thanks to the work of our Programme Committee and its Chair, Geoff Lee (geoff.lee@abs.gov.au), the programme for Dublin is shaping up well. Arrangements to set up a Programme Committee for Hong Kong are underway, and anyone with suggestions for topics for Hong Kong, should in the first instance send them to me. Input from members on the Short Courses for Dublin should be sent to Leyla Mohadjer (see the message from the Scientific Secretary below).
At the Durban Session, I took over the presidency
of the IASS from Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva, and I thank him for his work
over the last two years. One of the initiatives set up by Pedro was a report,
prepared by Geoff Lee, Sarah Nusser, and Don Royce (convenor): 'Improving IASS
Services to Members'.
This report is available on the website
http://isi.cbs.nl/iass, together
with a summary of the Executive Council discussion of it. An agreed priority is
to develop the functionality and content of the IASS website to support mail out
services to members, easier development of an electronic version of Survey
Statistician, and a moderated 'ask the experts' forum. A review of functionality
and costs for upgrading the website will be undertaken jointly by the new
Executive Director Catherine Meunier, and Webmaster Eric Rancourt.
At its meeting in Durban, the IASS Council agreed a policy on the use of IASS funds to support relevant international workshops, conferences and similar events (see the IASS website). Under this policy, bids for financial support by the IASS for conferences running from July 2010 to June 2011 should be submitted to Peter Lynn (plynn@essex.ac.uk) by 31 March 2010. Proposals can then be evaluated jointly against the agreed set of criteria listed in the policy. The availability of funding for this purpose will be advertised on the IASS website (http://isi.cbs.nl/iass). It was agreed by the IASS Council that the IASS would support the 6th International French Colloquium on Surveys in Tangier (23-25 March 2010).
The Chair of the Jury for the Cochran-Hansen Prize for 2011 is Mike Hidiroglou (hidirog@statcan.ca). This is a prize for the best paper on survey research methods from a young statistician in a developing or transitional country. The paper must be an unpublished original work, though it may include material from the participant’s university thesis. The winner of the Prize will be paid reasonable expenses to attend the WSC Dublin to present his/her paper, as well as receiving books and journal subscriptions to the value of € 500. If you know someone who may be interested in submitting a paper in this competition, please pass this information on to them. Further details are available from Mike Hidiroglou.
The IASS has a network of country representatives. There are some gaps in this network and we will be looking to strengthen relationships with the country representatives over the coming year. Linda Hewitt (linhew@trinidad.net) has agreed to provide a focus for this. If you are an IASS member in a country without a representative and would like to volunteer, or are interested in working with the representative from your country, please contact Linda.
Finally, I would like to encourage anyone wanting to become involved in the activities of the IASS, particularly furthering new directions for the web, for the newsletter or with regard to young statistician membership and activities, to contact me.
Susan Linacre
susan.linacre@abs.gov.au
I am delighted to be given this opportunity to
serve the IASS as the Scientific Secretary for the next two years. My sincere
thanks to my predecessor, Steven Heeringa, for his outstanding efforts in
arranging the seven IASS Short Courses offered before the formal opening of the
ISI Durban Session. I am also very grateful for all his support and expert
advice during the transition period.
The program of the IASS Short Courses that are offered immediately prior to the
biennial meetings of the ISI is the most significant educational activity of the
IASS. We start planning for the WSC Dublin by collecting ideas from IASS members
for new short courses. These are new courses that are thought to be valuable
additions to the pre-conference training program for 2011. If you have a short
course topic that you feel would be a valuable addition to the WSC Dublin
program, please submit your proposal for a new short course to Leyla Mohadjer at
leylamohadjer@westat.com by 1
April 2010. After that date, the IASS Executive will review the historical
offerings and the new proposals and establish a preliminary program of Short
Courses for WSC Dublin 2011. Please include the following information in your
proposal:
• Course title and subject area description.
• Name of text (if applicable), source of other instructional materials.
• Syllabus for a course of approximately two days (12-16 contact hours).
• Target audience for the course, evidence of demand (optional).
• Statement of relevance to the general IASS membership.
• Statement of special relevance to statisticians in developing and transition
countries who are likely to attend the WSC Dublin in 2011.
Regards,
Leyla Mohadjer
leylamohadjer@westat.com
 |
President |
Yves-Laurent Grize, Baloise Insurance Group Aeschengraben 21, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland Tel: +41612857018; Fax: +41612859023 E-mail: yves-laurent.grize@baloise.ch |
|
| Section Editor |
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi, Department of
Information Systems & Decision Sciences, ESSEC Business School Paris Avenue Bernard Hirsch, B.P. 50105 95021 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France Tel: +33-1-3443-3656 - Fax: +33-1-3443-3691 E-mail: vinzi@essec.fr |
||
| Website |
ISBIS website:
www.isbis.org
ISBIS official Journal - Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (ASMBI): http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/66002616 |
| Message from the Incoming ISBIS President |
| Reports from Past Conferences |
| New Officers for ISBIS Executive Committee |
| ASMBI Call for Papers |
| ISBIS Regional Meeting in Venezuela |
Message from the Incoming ISBIS President
It is with a deep sense of honour but also with
great pleasure that I am looking forward to the coming two-year presidency.
ISBIS is a young, dynamic ISI Section as it was created in 2005 with ambitious
aims. The first two presidents, Bovas Abraham (2005-2007) and Nick Fisher
(2007-2009) have successfully moved ISBIS forward at a great speed and they
deserve many thanks for their work. I do hope I will succeed in keeping up the
momentum they managed to give to ISBIS.
The last two years were especially marked by a number of achievements, including
the establishment of:
A new website (www.isbis.org) with up-to-date information on conferences, administrative matters, an online registration and membership renewal facility and, for members only, a direct access to our journal Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (ASMBI);
A mailing facility to send e mails to the entire ISBIS membership;
A regular electronic newsletter ISBIS News available free on the website;
A Young Statisticians' Group, y-BIS, within ISBIS;
A solid program of Regional Meetings and biennial International Symposia.
Furthermore, a complete revision of the ISBIS Statutes was undertaken, in particular, providing for the establishment of Special Interest Groups such as the Young Statisticians' Group.
I am very pleased that we were able to gain two young and dynamic personalities within the new Executive Committee: Professor Yulia Gel, from Waterloo University, as Vice-President for Membership and Paulo Canas Rodrigues, a PhD student at Nova University of Lisbon, as Vice-President for y Bis Members. You will learn more about these two new Executive members further in this ISI Newsletter.
Both the 57th Session of the ISI in Durban (the
first ISI Session ever in sub-Saharan Africa) and the ISBIS Satellite Meeting at
the beautiful Stellenbosch University Campus were very successful meetings. You
can read more on the Stellenbosch Statistical Symposium in the report, included
below, written by Riaan de Jong, our Council member from South Africa.
Among many the things and experiences I brought back with me from these two
meetings, there is one impression that I would like to share with you.
One of the objectives of ISBIS is to encourage links between statisticians in
developing and developed countries: I realized after these two meetings how
important this mission objective is and also how rewarding it can be. The number
of participants from various African countries was really impressive, many of
them young and bright people coming from academia, government agencies or
industry and eager to learn more about our discipline. They were so pleased to
have the opportunity to participate in an international meeting and meet world
expert statisticians. This was especially the case at the ISBIS Satellite
Meeting in Stellenbosch, since the smaller size of the Conference tremendously
facilitated networking opportunities.
To work towards this mission is definitely an
activity that ISI and ISBIS, in particular, will focus on in the future, as it
is not only beneficial for the participants themselves but also stimulating for
our sometimes slightly “old-fashioned” associations, bringing in a refreshing
breeze and intensifying the international character specific to ISI and ISBIS.
With this view in mind, let me encourage you to attend the coming ISBIS Regional
Meeting that will take place in Venezuela, University of Carabobo in Valencia,
from the 25th to the 29th of October 2009. The main theme
will be Industry and Environment. For more information, please visit:
http://www.ing.uc.edu.ve/ebcv2009/indexe.php.
Lastly, I would like to remind the ISI membership that they can join ISBIS for
the additional fee of only € 17 (€ 9 for less developed countries, and € 0 for
two years for students). Furthermore, if you belong to those 40% of ISI elected
members who have not yet signed up for a Section, as pointed out by Denise
Lievesley in the previous ISI Newsletter, then ISBIS membership is free!
Remember that the benefits you will enjoy include free online access to our
journal ASMBI!
For more detailed information on membership, please consult our website or
contact Yulia R. Gel, our Vice-President for Membership, at
ygl@math.uwaterloo.ca or myself
directly at
yves-laurent.grize@baloise.ch. I am looking forward to welcoming you to be
part of ISBIS!
Yves-Laurent Grize
The 2009 European Regional Meeting of the International Society for Business and
Industrial Statistics (EURISBIS'09) was held in Cagliari, Italy, from 30th May
to 3rd June 2009. The Scientific Program Committee was chaired by Vincenzo
Esposito Vinzi (ESSEC Business School of Paris and Singapore; ISBIS
Vice-President), Nick Fisher (ValueMetrics; former ISBIS President) and
Francesco Mola (University of Cagliari).
EURISBIS'09 was organized under the scientific support of the International
Association for Statistical Computing (IASC) and the Italian Statistical Society
(SIS – Società Italiana di Statistica), and the organizational support of the
ESSEC Business School of Paris and Singapore. The Local Organizer was the
Department of Economics of the University of Cagliari. Francesco Mola and
Claudio Conversano coordinated the Local Organizing Committee. The venue of the
meeting was the Flamingo Resort, located in Santa Margherita di Pula, about 35
km from Cagliari downtown.
From the scientific point of view, EURISBIS'09 confirmed the increasing interest towards "Statistics in Business and Industry". The scientific program comprised two Keynote Lectures, a Plenary Session, 21 Invited Sessions and 15 Contributed Sessions, in which approximately 110 people from 18 different countries acted as speakers. They included academics from different disciplines and researchers from private sectors. Keynote lectures were given by Prof. William S. Cleveland (Department of Statistics, Purdue University) and Alessandro Fassò (Department of Information Technology and Mathematical Methods, University of Bergamo). Lecture topics were "Building Models for Complex Datasets" and "Air Quality Monitoring and Dynamical Mapping", respectively. The Plenary Session was an ASMBI Discussion Session, organized by Fabrizio Ruggeri (CNR-IMATI, Italy), Editor-in-Chief of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (ASMBI), the official journal of the ISBIS society. Both Invited and Contributed Sessions focused mainly on statistical issues aimed at improving decision-making processes in Banking and Finance, Environment, Quality of Services for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Transport and Tourism.
The meeting was well attended. About 150 people from both academia and industry
took part in the scientific program during the four days. Oral presentations
were characterized by clever applications of advanced statistical methods as
well as of methodological approaches and innovative statistical paradigms aiming
to provide timely and efficient solutions to real and daily problems in business
and industry. Interactions and discussions among speakers, session organizers
and other participants were aimed at increasing the extent to which statistical
thinking is merged with managerial thinking for good decision making under
uncertainty.
Special emphasis was also given to young statisticians. An ISBIS Young
Statisticians group called y-BIS was officially set up under the responsibility
of Paulo Canas and the scientific coordination of Claudio Conversano. It will
promote ISBIS activities among young statisticians, as well as manage the
organization of specialized sessions in upcoming ISBIS meetings in order to
encourage young statisticians to participate.
The social program had a "special afternoon/evening moment" on Monday, 1st
June.
All the participants spent the afternoon visiting the ancient city of Nora, an
archaeological marvel that bears the traces of Carthaginian, Phoenician and
Roman civilizations. Some of the ancient ruins lie under the crystalline
seawater in a quiet and uncontaminated part of the coast, often caressed by a
soft (Mistral) wind. After a visit to the charming village of Pula,
excursionists experienced traditional Sardinian cooking such as "Porceddu"
(roast suckling pig) in a typical Sardinian restaurant. Dinner was enlivened
with the music of a local folk band.
During the closing ceremony on 3rd June, Nick Fisher, Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
and Jaromir Antoch (IASC President), expressed their gratitude to Francesco Mola
and Claudio Conversano for the excellent work done in organizing EURISBIS'09.
The special thanks was also extended to all other members of the Local
Organizing Committee and to the students of the Faculty of Economics who worked
hard during the days of the meeting by taking care of all the details that led
towards the organization of a successful event.
Claudio Conversano
Close to 100 delegates from 16 countries registered for this Conference held
at the Wallenberg Research Centre at the University of Stellenbosch, South
Africa. The Conference followed the ISI Session that was held the week before in
Durban, South Africa. Contrary to expectations, the rain stayed away, making the
stay in Stellenbosch a splendid one for delegates. Stellenbosch is generally
labeled as 'the most beautiful part of South Africa' and the fine weather
enabled all delegates to enjoy the wine lands, mountains and general scenery in
its fullest splendor. The social functions were held at two well-known wine
estates, namely Neethlingshof and Spier. The scenic and beautiful Neethlingshof
and the nomad African Village at the Spier created an unforgettable experience
for delegates that attended these functions. During the African dances, the wife
of a delegate who was from Peru decided to show the African dancers that she
could match them in their moves.
As far as the technical program was concerned, the plenary sessions were filled
by prominent speakers such as David Banks (Duke University, USA), Yves-Laurent
Grize (Baloise Insurance, Switzerland), Nico Laubscher (Consultant, South
Africa) and Jac Laubscher (Group Economist, SANLAM, South Africa). All these
talks challenged the interfaces of statistics with business and industry. In the
process, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the discipline
of statistics and the profession of statistician was discussed and debated. This
led to many interesting discussions throughout the Conference. As always, it is
clear that the science of statistics is alive and well, but that the profession
of the statistician is under some threat.
Many other delegates provided excellent invited technical and practical
presentations.
None more so than Trevor Hastie, Bovas Abraham, Yulia Gel, Dennis Lin, Max
Finkelstein, Niël le Roux, Walter Zucchini and Ross Sparks among others. During
these and other talks, Nozer Singpurwalla delighted the delegates with good
humor and sharp comments.
As far as applications were concerned, the papers focused on two main themes,
namely the areas of finance and risk and the area of experimental design and
process control in manufacturing.
All in all, the Satellite Meeting achieved several objectives of ISBIS, in
particular international collaboration among statisticians and users of
statistics in business and industry was fostered. The meeting also contributed
significantly towards the advancement and exchange of knowledge in business,
financial and industrial statistics. Most of all, relationships between
statisticians from developing and developed countries were formed and
strengthened.
A special word of thanks to the Organizers of this excellent Meeting! This was
echoed by outgoing ISBIS President Nick Fisher as well as incoming ISBIS
President Yves-Laurent Grize. The Local Organizing Committee was Tertius de Wet,
Paul Mostert and Willie Conradie.
Riaan de Jongh
The 6th International Conference on Partial Least Squares and Related Methods (PLS'09) was successfully held on 4th-7th September 2009 in China at the Beihang University, the Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics. Among the over 350 submitted papers, 80 were selected either as contributed papers or as posters. The Proceedings were published by the Electronic Industrial Press of China. Among the selected papers, about half of them were from Chinese authors. The remaining ones came from 20 different countries, including USA, UK, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, Canada, Spain, etc. 110 delegates registered for the Conference.
The PLS methods (Partial Least Squares or Projection to Latent Structures) were
first introduced as PLS Path Modeling in late Sixties by Herman Wold and then as
PLS Regression in 1983 by his son Svante Wold, Harald Martens and their
colleagues. Since then, many developments and several applications have been
proposed, mainly in the field of chemometrics, social sciences, sensory data
analysis, marketing, anthropology, bioinformatics, cosmetics, petrol and
agro-alimentary industry, as well as in industries where production is run
through continuous processes. Nowadays, these methods of statistical data
analysis are widely used, in particular when there are lots of variables, few
statistical units, missing data and eventually a multi-block data structure. The
6th International Conference on Partial Least Squares and Related Methods was an
exceptional Conference, where the most outstanding experts in PLS methods from
all over the world met.
PLS'09 followed the path started in Jouy-en-Josas (PLS'99, France), then in
Anacapri (PLS'01, Italy), Lisbon (PLS'03, Portugal), Barcelona (PLS'05, Spain)
and Ås (PLS'07, Norway). PLS'09 was organized with the support of the ESSEC
Business School of Paris and the HEC School of Management, with the financial
support from National Natural Science Foundation of China, and with scientific
sponsorship from two Sections of the International Statistical Institute (ISI),
namely the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS)
and the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC), as well as
of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS).
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
New Officers for ISBIS Executive Committee August 2009 - August 2011
As announced in the previous ISI Newsletter, the ISBIS Executive Committee for the period 22nd August 2009 - 26th August 2011 consists of:
|
President: |
Yves-Laurent Grize (Switzerland) |
|
President-Elect: |
Vijay Nair (USA/Malaysia) |
|
Vice-President |
Nick Fisher (Australia) |
|
Vice-President |
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (France/Italy) |
|
Vice-President |
Yulia R. Gel (Russia/Canada) |
|
Vice-President |
Paulo Canas Rodrigues (Portugal) |
Yulia R. Gel, from Waterloo University, and Paulo Canas Rodrigues, a PhD student at Nova University of Lisbon, are the new entries in this Committee. It is our pleasure to let them present their young and dynamic personalities below.
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
Yulia R. Gel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and
Actuarial Science of the University of Waterloo, Canada. She got her PhD degree
in Mathematics from Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia. She held visiting
positions at the University of Washington, George Washington University and
University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her main research interests concern
time series analysis and spatio-temporal modeling, with applications ranging
from weather and climate forecasting to legal statistics. Professor Gel is an
elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and
Vice-President Membership and Outreach of the International Society on Business
and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS).
As a newly incoming VP on Membership and Outreach, I would to like to encourage
all readers of the ISI Newsletter to consider this excellent opportunity
to become a member of ISBIS. Although ISBIS is a relatively new Section within
ISI, established only in 2005, our Society is quickly becoming one of world's
leading professional associations for the advancement of statistical methodology
for business, industrial and financial applications. ISBIS members are a broad
community of statisticians and allied professionals whose technical interests
are rooted in business and industrial statistics and related fields. ISBIS
provides a variety of networking, partnerships, publishing, training and
advertising opportunities and fosters an interest in business and industrial
applications of statistical science by serving student members in colleges and
universities around the world. Become a member of our dynamic Society now!
Yulia R. Gel
Paulo Canas Rodrigues has graduated in Applied Mathematics by Nova University of Lisbon. After finishing his master’s in Statistics, from Instituto Superior Técnico - Technical University of Lisbon, he became a PhD student of Mathematics (specialty of Statistics) at the Nova University of Lisbon under the supervision of Stanislaw Mejza and João Tiago Mexia. The main focus of his PhD Thesis is Applied Statistics in Agronomy, Plant Breeding and Genetics. Besides these studies, he has some extra projects in Time Series and Applications to Business and Industrial Statistics. Currently, he is a Visiting Fellow and Teaching Assistant at Biometrics, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Paulo Canas Rodrigues
ASMBI Call for Papers on: Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk
This is a call for papers meant for the
Special issue of ASMBI (Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry
– the official Journal of ISBIS) on Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk.
The objective of the special issue is to introduce a new theme, the use of game
theory and decision theory in reliability analysis and risk analysis. In so
doing, the special issue aims to bring together novel research from disciplines
that have a lot to contribute to this theme, including economics, engineering,
finance, mathematics, medical sciences, probability, and statistics.
The issue will not only consider papers presented at the 1st
Symposium on Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk which was held at The
George Washington University on 27-28 May 2009, but will also be open to public
for submission of papers relevant to the theme.
The deadline for submission of papers is 31 January 2010. The papers should be
submitted at:
mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asmb
following the ASMBI author submission guidelines given on
www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/asmbi
The Editor of the special issue
is:
Refik Soyer
Department of Decision Sciences
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
Tel: +1-202-994 6445
Fax: +1-202-994 2736
E-mail: soyer@gwu.edu
Fabrizio Ruggeri
ISBIS Regional Meeting in Venezuela 25-29 October 2009
ISBIS is sponsoring the 6th Meeting Colombia Venezuela on Statistics.
This Meeting will take place at the University of Carabobo in Valencia,
Venezuela, 25-29 October 2009. Main theme this year will be Industry and
Environment.
Please visit:
http://www.ing.uc.edu.ve/ebcv2009/indexe.php
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
ISBIS website (www.isbis.org)
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
Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi
ISBIS Membership
ISBIS
membership is open to all individuals and organizations 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 Yves-Laurent Grize (yves-laurent.grize@baloise.ch)
or Yulia R. Gel (ygl@math.uwaterloo.ca).
If you are already a member of the ISI and one or more of its Sections, you can
add ISBIS to your membership for a small fee by sending an e-mail to Mrs.
Margaret de Ruiter-Molloy in the ISI Office (@cbs.nl).
You can now renew your ISBIS membership electronically by using the form on:
http://isi.cbs.nl/intro-payment.htm.
| President |
Daniela Cocchi E-mail: president@environmetrics.org |
||
| Section Editor |
Michael Dowd E-mail: mdowd@mathstat.dal.ca |
||
| Website | www.environmetrics.org |
News from TIES
The 21st Annual Conference of the International Environmetics Society will be held in Margarita Island, Venezuela on 20-25 June 2010. The Theme is "Sustaining our Environment under Changing Conditions: Quantitative Methodological Challenges". Please see the Conference website at www.cesma.usb.ve/ties2010/ for further information.
In other Society news, the President's Invited Lecture at TIES 2010 will be given by Bruno Sanso of the University of California, Santa Cruz. We are also pleased to announce that the TIES representative for ISI's web page committee is Dr. Grace Chiu.
| Chairman |
Mr. Manuel Marfán, Member of the Board,
Central Bank of Chile, Santiago, Chile Tel: +56 2 670 2583, Fax: +56 2 670 2915 E-mail: mmarfan@bcentral.cl |
||
| Section Editors |
Paul Van den Bergh Christian Dembiermont 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: ifc.secretariat@bis.org |
||
| Website | http://www.bis.org/ifc |
The IFC's contribution to the ISI Session in Durban
The IFC sponsored or co-sponsored 7 IPMs and 3 STCPMs for the 57th ISI Session in Durban. The Committee also organised a seminar with the South African Reserve Bank prior to the start of the ISI Session. The topic of the seminar was “Economic and financial convergence en route to regional economic integration: Experience, prospects and statistical issues amidst global financial turmoil”. The seminar was aimed at IFC members and central banks from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Regional workshops on CPI measurement
Two regional central banking groups have expressed an interest in sponsoring a workshop with the IFC in 2009. The South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre (SEACEN) is an institutional member of the IFC. The topic would be on CPI measurement (headline, core, inflation perception, inflation expectations). The workshop with SEACEN will take place on 12-16 October 2009 in the Philippines. The second workshop on the same topic would be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the central banks of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The date for the GCC event still has to be confirmed. Participation for both events will be by invitation only.
Conference on "Methodological issues related to residential property price indices".
The Conference will be organised in cooperation with Eurostat and the IAOS in Basel on 11 and 12 November 2009. The purpose of the Conference is to identify the key issues that need to be addressed from the perspective of both users and compilers of such statistics. Participation will be sought from experts from national statistical institutes, central banks, academia, the private sector and the media. More information can be found on the sponsoring organizations' website.
Training event on National Accounts methodology
The National Bank of Belgium (NBB), one of the founding members of the IFC, will organise a training event for IFC members on National Accounts methodology in May 2010. It will build on its expertise in compiling the national accounts for Belgium, but will also draw on support of other IFC member institutions. Participation will be by invitation only.
IFC publications
The 30th and 31st issues containing the results of the IFC organised workshops on “The use of surveys by central banks” and the IFC Conference “Measuring financial innovation and its impact”, respectively, were published in July 2009.
The IFC also encourages the publication of analytical work on topical statistical issues of interest to the international central banking community, other than what is presented at various IFC meetings. Analysis by experts of the Committee's institutional members as well as by other analysts, including outside the central banking community, can be submitted for publication in the IFC Working Paper series. More information on the criteria and review process is available on the IFC website http://www.bis.org/ifc/publications.htm.
2010 IFC Conference
The fifth IFC Conference on “Initiatives to address data gaps revealed by the financial crisis” will take place in Basel in the week of 23 to 27 August 2010. As at the previous four 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. Participation is open to IFC institutional members, other central banks, as well as members of other ISI Sections and Committees.
IFC Executive
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