issn 0112-2649 the new zealand statistical association ... · nzsa2008 conference - hamilton...
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Published by the New Zealand Statistical Association (Inc.), P.O. Box 1731, Wellington, New Zealand. The views expressed by contributors to thisNewsletter should not be attributed to the New Zealand Statistical Association.
ISSN 0112-2649
The New Zealand Statistical Associationnzsa.rsnz.org
Newsletter September 2008Number 68
NZSA2008 Conference -Hamilton
Official ReportThis conference was held at the University ofWaikato on the 1st and 2nd of September 2008 andwas hosted by the Statistics Department. There werealmost 100 participants, who were joined on the secondday by 30 secondary school teachers from theWaikato, Bay of Plenty and Auckland regions. Withcontributions from more than 50 participants we wereable to run 3 parallel sessions. The AGM was held atthe end of the first day and was followed by a youngstatisticians’ event, just before the conference dinner.At this event, Kathy Ruggiero shared some of herexperiences getting established and this was followedby a lively discussion.
We had two keynotespeakers. On the first day,Charmaine Dean (Simon FraserUniversity, Canada - picturedright) gave a talk entitled “Spatialand Mixture Models for theAnalysis of Recurrent Events”.As part of the StatisticsEducation theme, on the secondday the keynote address was given by Sharleen Forbes(Statistics New Zealand and the School ofGovernment, Victoria University). Her talk wasentitled “Trying to surf the education wave with officialstatistics”.
We also invited speakers in Probability andStochastic Processes. These were Estate Khmaladze(Victoria University of Wellington), Jeff Hunter(Massey University), Peter Smith (University of
Canterbury) and Mark Holmes (University ofAuckland). On the second day, the invited speakerswere M. Beatrix Jones (Massey University), KatyaRuggiero (University of Auckland), Ken Dodds(AgResearch) and Sharon Browning (University ofAuckland) in Statistical Genetics, while David Scott(University of Auckland), Yong Wang (University ofAuckland) and Paul Murrell (University of Auckland)were invited speakers in Statistical Computing.Unfortunately, due to a mix-up with travel plans, Estatewas not able to join us and we were grateful to RogerLittlejohn who gave a talk in his place.
As part of the Statistical Education theme, therewere contributed talks from John Harraway(University of Otago), Maxine Pfannkuch (Universityof Auckland), Ian Westbrooke (Department ofConservation) and Rolf Turner (STARPath) and inthe afternoon, there workshops for the teachers, ablyrun by Mike Camden (Statistics New Zealand), Maxineand Pip Arnold (Team Solutions, University ofAuckland). This day was well received by the teachers.
Statistical Education workshop presenters Maxine Pfannkuch,Ian Westbrooke, Pip Arnold and Mike Camden holding bookvouchers from Pearson Education
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We had eight student presentations, (7 talks and 1poster). Ray Hoare (Hoare Research Software)provided the $1000 prize money for the best studentpresentations. There were three awards made andthese were won by Stephen Taylor, Gang (John) Xieand Kevin Chang (pictured below). The prizes wereawarded by Ray at the conference dinner, where heannounced that this will be the last year he will offerprize money. We thank Ray again for the contributionshe has made to the annual conferences over the years,see http://nzsa.rsnz.org/HRS_student_prizes.shtml
Stephen Taylor, Kevin Chang, Ray Hoare, and Gang (John)Xie. Stephen Taylor and Gang (John) Xie were joint winners($350 each) of the best oral presentation and Kevin Changwas awarded $300 for his poster presentation
We also thank the following organisations, whoprovided sponsorship: The Royal Society of NewZealand hosts the NZSA website where theconference page was located; Statistics New Zealandsponsored an event for young statisticians and alsoprovided paper and pens for delegates; BennettsCampus Bookshop gave conference discounts andbook vouchers; Pearson Education New Zealand alsogave book vouchers; and SAS provided conferencebags, drink bottles and pens for the delegates and alsobooks for presentation to the invited speakers. Thanksalso, to the University of Waikato and AgResearchfor giving staff time to help with the organisation.
Participants at the keynote presentation by Sharleen Forbes
There are many people who contributed in someway to making this conference the success it was.Roger Littlejohn and other members of the NZSAExecutive Committee and also members of theDepartment of Statistics at the University of Waikatoprovided valuable input at various stages of the
planning process. I particularly thank James Curranwho was responsible for abstract submission andorganising the programme, and Mashewaran Rohanand Maxine Pfannkuch for their work in organisingthe programme for the Education Session. RogerLittlejohn also did an excellent job with the websiteand Harold Henderson and Catherine Cameronmanaged the registrations.
Judi McWhirterConvenor - Local Organising Committee
A Student's Perspective As a student at the conference, I received a warmwelcome and felt involved from beginning to end.Charmaine Dean took time during her opening talk tocover topics that she felt might not be familiar to allpost-grads. The student talks were highlighted in theprogram, well attended, and very generous prizes wereawarded. The final statistical computing session onTuesday afternoon discussed practical ways ofsharing ideas and computer code (a topic of interestto many post-grads).
Of note for me, was the talk that Mike Dohertygave titled ‘Variance for Petition Estimators’, a.k.a.“why the smacking ban petition failed the first time.”Even though the topic is well outside my area of study,it was a well-presented, captivating problem that Mikewas clearly interested in.
The highlight of the conference for me wasmeeting and comparing notes with the other youngstatisticians at the pre-dinner event. Though, at 36, Igot a ribbing about calling myself 'young'! Maybe thename should be changed to new statisticians? Orjunior statisticians? It was a pleasure to hear KathyRuggiero talk about her experiences. She was kindenough to let us quiz her about how to find help andsupport whilst we are learning the ropes. Charmainealso joined in and lent a Canadian perspective to thediscussion.
I look forward to returning next year and woulddefinitely encourage students who did not attend thisyear's event to give it a go.
Miriam Hodge
Ray Hoare with some student presenters : (L-R) Gang (John)Xie, Marie Fitch, Ray Hoare, Stephen Taylor, Miriam Hodge andMaheswaran Rohan
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Conference BriefSee Gordon Smyth’s Australasian conference list
http://www.statsci.org/conf/index.html
Third IAPR International Conference onPattern Recognition in Bioinformatics (PRIB2008)
Melbourne
15-17 October 2008
Web: http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/about/news/conferences/prib08/
New Zealand Mathematics and StatisticsPostgraduate Conference
Whitianga
18-21 November 2008
Email: http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/Events/2008/nzmasp08/
Workshop: Experimental Design
University of Melbourne
1 Dec 2008
Web: http:// www.dpi.vic.gov.au/genstat2008/
Australasian GenStat Conference, 2008:Biometrics in Primary Industries and theEnvironment
Marysville, Victoria
2-5 December 2008
Web: http:// www.dpi.vic.gov.au/genstat2008/
Half-Day Workshop for Women Researchers InThe Mathematical Sciences in New Zealand
Christchurch
Sunday 7 December 2008
Email: [email protected]
MISG2009 The Mathematics and Statistics inIndustry Study Group
Wollongong
27-31 January 2009
Web: http://www.uow.edu.au/informatics/maths/research/misg/index.html
One Day Meetingof
Palmy-STATISTICIANSPresented by
Institute of Fundamental SciencesMassey University, Palmerston North
Venue: Bernard Chambers A - Fernwood RoomDate: 24 October 2008 (Friday)Time: 9 am - 5 pmKeynote speaker: Prof Jeff Hunter
Lunch and Refreshments will be provided on the day.
The purpose of this forum is to bring statisticians in andaround Massey University together for a day at ourInstitute for the presentation of their current research workand group discussion on issues relevant to applications.
Coordinators:Ganes ([email protected])Alasdair ([email protected])
Short Courses in StatisticalGenetics
A subset of the Summer Institute in StatisticalGenetics will be offered at the University of Auckland,New Zealand during 9-16 December 2008.Six modules will be available:
Population Genetic Data AnalysisQuantitative GeneticsQTL MappingAssociation MappingDNA EvidenceComputing for Statistical Genetics.
Details are available athttp://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/sisg2008/or contact Bruce Weir ([email protected]) orSharon Browning ([email protected]).
Introductory Statistics Coursesin Auckland
Dave Saville, a consulting agricultural researchbiometrician, will be running courses at the Universityof Auckland at Tamaki in Oct/Nov (these are a repeatof those run at Lincoln in July/August):(A) Basic statistics/analysis of variance,
Tues-Thurs, October 21-23
(B) Simple regression and analysis of covariance,Tues-Wed, November 11-12.
Both are introductory/refresher courses which start“from scratch”. The courses are especially designedfor people involved in experimental or other appliedresearch work. For more information email Dave [email protected] (he'll get back to you within24-48 hours - or phone him at 64-3-325 9365).
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Newsletter on Web
An online version of this newsletter is available athttp://nzsa.rsnz.org/Newsletter68/index.htm
It will be regularly updated with information andyour letters.
Email: [email protected]
Submissions to the NewsletterThe Newsletter welcomes any submissions ofinterest to members of the NZSA. News aboutNew Zealand statisticians, statistical meetings,statistical organisations, statistics in education, orstatistical curiosities are suitable for inclusion.Letters that raise issues of importance to statisticsin New Zealand are also welcomed. Photographsof recent gatherings and new appointees are ofparticular interest. Electronic submissions arepreferred.
Next deadline 22 February, 2009
Advertising In the NewsletterThe Newsletter accepts advertising of interest tostatisticians in New Zealand. Advertising is placedsubject to space considerations. Personaladvertising by NZSA members will be publishedfree. Other advertising is $250 per page, $140 perhalf page, and $75 per quarter page. Other sizescan be quoted on request. All advertising requestsshould be directed to the editor.
EditorGeoff JonesIIS&T, Massey UniversityPrivate Bag 11122, Palmerston North, N ZPhone: +64-6-350-5799; Fax: +64-6-350-2261Email: [email protected]
EditorialMost readers will beaware of how hard ourcomputers try to help usin our everyday tasks.The products of onesoftware company inparticular (but whichshall remain nameless)are indefatigable in theirefforts to improve onour every move, in theirinsistence that theyknow what we aretrying to do far better than we do ourselves.Sometimes I feel as if I spend half my working lifetrying to counter these efforts. By way of illustration,I present here the results of a brief survey of namesfrom past submissions to the newsletter, as they wouldappear if my computer’s suggestions had beenfollowed. See how many you recognize:
Maxine PrankishRachel FestersJohn FarawayBrian CurdleElse SidelinesBeatnik JonesMarco ResaleSeesaw ChickCarl CarrotsSiva GarnishShirley PledgesDuncan ElderlySteak ChekhovianDavid HatredRichard SeducibleJohn DailyRoger KissingMilk BlackRaises CanadianFrances ArsenicGeorge SoberArid VerballyPeter AllspiceJudi ChirperTacos Solaris
How fortunate the individual whose name is sobizarre that the spell-checker just shrugs its shouldersand pronounces “No suggestions”!
This is my last Newsletter - Esther Meenken istaking over next year. Thanks to all the contributorsover the past two years, and to Harold and Roger fortheir invaluable help.
Gruff Bones
Vacancy - Scion (NZ ForestResearch Institute)
An exciting opportunity has arisen, in our ForestBiosecurity and Protection team, for an enthusiasticScientist, with biometrics, statistical design ormathematical modelling expertise The scientific focuswill be on modelling the spatial and temporal dynamicsof newly introduced or established forest pest species(insects, pathogens, weeds), and quantifying theireffects on hosts. Important contributions will also bemade to our research on modelling fire behaviour andin the general forestry area.
For further information see:
http://scionresearch.recruitmarshal.com/jobcentre/applycod.asp?job=765
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Join the NZSAA membership application / change of
address form is available athttp://nzsa.rsnz.org/form.php
NZSA Membership ratesGiven rates apply from April 2008 - March 2009 andare in NZ$.
NZ OverseasOrdinary 80 85Student & Retired 40 45Electronic only journal -5 -5SSAI Member 45 50
(journal funded from SSAI membership)
New membersA warm welcome to 11 new members of the NZSAwho have joined since April 2008, taking our currentmembership to 394.
Regular members: Dongwen Luo (rejoined), PaulCowie, William Grant, Nuovella Williams, VictoriaJohnston, Sawsan Al-Shamaa, Stella Sim, Jose Garcia,Lee Kupferman.
Student members: Kevin Chang, Kyoko Fukuda.
President’s Column
As my term as NZSAPresident has now cometo an end, it’s a goodopportunity to think backover the events of the lasttwo years, a time whichhas had many highlightsfor me.
There have been threeconferences over thistime, which have been agreat pleasure to attend as
they have expressed the robust energy in theAssociation. They have had contextual worries,particularly with the ASC/NZSA 2006 finances whichwere something of a marathon to finalise, but verysatisfying to know that we got them right in the end(even if that’s what we thought the organisers werepaid to do). Special thanks to Harold Henderson forthis.
The journal has received a lot of attention overthese two years, revising the contract with Blackwell,planning the non-editorial management structure, andfacing changes in publisher, editor and the wider worldof print. We have become significantly closer to theSSAI, and now we are planning a Joint Venturetogether. I'm pleased with the level of contributionthat NZSA has been able to make to this ongoingprocess.
I’m also pleased that we’ve been able to revisethe constitution in a way that brings it up to date withour current practice without too much controversy.We now also have a policy document giving guidelinesfor Exec procedure, and a corresponding documentfor conference organising committees. I suspect theywill get the amount of attention that that sort ofdocument usually gets, but it’s a relief to know thatthese issues can slip off the radar for a few years.
My thanks to Exec members. I apologise for thetimes that meetings have gone over the hour whenthere has been a lot of business to conduct. I’massured that now we will be kept strictly to time.
Roger Littlejohn
Back Copies of NZ StatisticianA CD archive of "The New Zealand Statistician"is available from the NZSA. For details see http://nzsa.rsnz.org/archive_NZS.shtml.
Copies of this CD are available for
Current members $5Past members $25Non members and libraries $55
To order a copy email Harold Henderson([email protected]).
ANZJS - Book Review Editor
The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statisticsneeds a new Book Review Editor. Responsibilitieswill include maintaining contact with publishers,finding suitable reviewers, monitoring reviews, andensuring a steady stream of high quality book reviewsfor each issue of ANZJS. If interested, please contactProf Kerrie Mengersen, [email protected] is no fixed closing date. The vacancy will remainopen until filled by a suitable candidate.
Incoming and former Presidents - how many can you name?
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AwardsCampbell Award and LifeMembership of NZSA - SharleenForbes
At the Annual GeneralMeeting of the NZSAConference in Hamilton inSeptember, SharleenForbes was given lifemembership to theAssociation. Later thatevening, Sharleen waspresented the NZSACampbell Award inrecognition to hercontribution to statistics.
The mother of four adult children, Sharleen hasworked at Statistics New Zealand since 1994; firstas Manager Public Policy then as Chief Analyst,General Manager Strategic and Financial Services,General Manager Statistical & MethodologicalServices, and currently as General Manager StatisticalEducation & Research in conjunction with an AdjunctProfessorship in Official Statistics at the School ofGovernment, Victoria University, Wellington. In thepast she has worked as both a secondary schoolmathematics teacher and university lecturer inmathematics and statistics. She has a long-standinginterest in mathematics education, in the measurementof gender and ethnic differences in mathematics inparticular, and in the application of simple techniquesto explain longitudinal data.
For a number of years Sharleen convened a smallcollective of women (EIME – Equity in MathematicsEducation) that carried out several research projectsand published reports such as ‘‘Mathematics for All’(Forbes, Blithe, Clark & Robinson 1990) and “TheTesting of Girls in Mathematics” (Blithe, Clark, Forbes& Forbes 1994). She has been a long-standing memberof the International Association of Women inMathematics Education (IOWME), and an activecommittee member of the New Zealand StatisticalAssociation. She was elected as President of thisAssociation from 1997-1999, and in 2001 was electedas the first New Zealand female member of theInternational Statistics Institute (ISI).
In August 2000 she graduated with a PhD (done,in the main, extramurally from Curtin University ofTechnology in Perth) on the topic of “MeasuringStudents’ Education Outcomes: Sex and EthnicDifferences in Mathematics”. This led to her being
Campbell Estate FundThe NZSA was the recipient of a very generousdonation ($48,000) from Professor Campbell’s estate.
There is roughly $1500 funding available each yearfor special projects that are in the realm of ProfessorCampbell’s interests. Refer to http://nzsa.rsnz.org/funding.shtml for more details.
Applications are received twice a year (April/October) and are invited for funding for projects in2008/09. There is no formal application process butplease supply details of your project, the full projectbudget, the amount you are requesting, a shortstatement about why your project is within ProfessorCampbell’s interests, and your full contact details.
Please send your applications to the Secretary,Richard Penny ([email protected]), NZSA, POBox 1731, Wellington.
For more details contact Roger Littlejohn([email protected]) or HaroldHenderson ([email protected]).
Roger Littlejohn
asked to co-share a plenary session with Prof GilaHanna of Canada at the Mathematics Education intothe 21st Century Conference in Jordan in November2000, and to be the Bevan Werry Memorial Speakerat the New Zealand Mathematics AssociationConference in 2001.
Her current personal research outside the workplace involves surveying voluntary organizations thathold meeting, but not membership, registers.
She is a keen tramper and mountain trekker havingclimbed Tapuae O Uenuku (New Zealand), MtKosciuszko (Australia), Mt Kilimanjaro (Africa) andto the base camp of Annapurna (Nepal). She alsoenjoys canoeing, biking, gardening, science fantasyand family time.
Sharleen (centre) after receiving her Awards with Jenny Brown(left) and Roger Littlejohn (right).
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Statistics Education News
International NewsJoint ICMI/IASE Study,Statistics Education in SchoolMathematics: Challenges forTeaching and TeacherEducation. The InternationalCommission on MathematicsInstruction (ICMI) and IASE rana very successful joint studyfocused on statistics educationresearch in June 2008 in Monterrey, Mexico. CarmenBatenero was chair of the International ProgrammeCommittee of the joint study. Pip Arnold, MaxinePfannkuch (The University of Auckland) and TimBurgess (Massey University) from New Zealandpresented papers. Proceedings from this study can bedownloaded from: http://www.ugr.es/~icmi/iase_study/.
ICME (International Congress onMathematical Education). At this conference inMonterrey, Mexico, 6-13 July 2008, there were twotopic studies groups on research and development inthe teaching and learning of statistics and probability.The statistics papers can be downloaded from: http://tsg.icme11.org/tsg/show/15 and the probability papersfrom: http://tsg.icme11.org/tsg/show/14. New Zealandwas well represented in the statistics topic with JohnHarraway (Otago University), Pip Arnold, MaxinePfannkuch, and Gillian Frankcom-Burgess (TheUniversity of Auckland) presenting papers.
OZCOTS 2008 - 6th Australian Conference onTeaching Statistics. This conference was held inMelbourne in July. The focus of the conference wason learning, teaching, and assessing tertiary statistics.There was an international line up of invited speakersincluding Chris Wild (The University of Auckland).Many other New Zealanders contributed to theconference: Murray Black (AUT), Doug Stirling, SivaGanesh (Massey University), Nathaniel Pihama (SNZ)
CensusAtSchool - Second InternationalWorkshop. CensusAtSchool is an internationalattempt to increase statistical literacy of students byproviding exciting activities that are closely aligned toeach country's school curriculum (See: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/islp/census). The groupmet in Los Angeles in July 2008 at the UCLA. ChrisWild and Pip Arnold presented a well-received talkabout “CensusAt School NZ: a Means to Many Ends”and Pip Arnold also ran an innovative workshop onGrowing Scatterplots.
USCOTS 2009 - United States Conference onTeaching Statistics, June 2009, Ohio State University.Similar to the Australian OZCOTS, this conference isfocusing on undergraduate level statistics education,targeting statistics teachers. Chris Wild is a plenaryspeaker.
The Sixth International Forum on StatisticalReasoning, Thinking and Literacy. This Forumwill be held in Brisbane 10-16 July 2009. The topicunder study will be the role of context and evidencein informal inferential reasoning. Initial proposals havealready been sought. For more information see: http://srtl.stat.auckland.ac.nz/srtl6/research_forums.
Sixth IASE Satellite Conference, South Africa,August 2009. This conference will be held beforethe ISI-57 Conference. The theme of the conferenceis Next Steps in Statistics Education, with a focus ontertiary statistics teaching. Deadline for submissionof papers is 30th November 2008. For moreinformation see: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~iase/conferences.php.
The Eighth International Conference onTeaching Statistics will be held in Slovenia, 11-16July 2010. John Harraway (Otago University) is Chairof the International Programme committee. There isa stunning list of plenary speakers for this conference(Hans Rosling, Gerd Gigerenzer, Cliff Konold, JessicaUtts, Anuska Ferligoj) and a plenary panel coordinatedby Chris Wild. If you want to contribute to any of thetopic sessions please indicate your interest now to thetopic convenors (See: http://icots8.org/).
Local NewsNZSA Conference Education Day, WaikatoUniversity. On the 2nd September 2008, 30 teachersfrom Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty attendeda strand of the conference, which focused specificallyon statistics education in secondary schools. Thekeynote address was given by Sharleen Forbes(Statistics New Zealand). Contributed talks in themorning session were given by John Harraway(University of Otago), Maxine Pfannkuch (Universityof Auckland), Ian Westbrooke (Department ofConservation), Rolf Turner (STARPath, Universityof Auckland). In the afternoon session, participantschose from workshops offered by Mike Camden(Statistics New Zealand), Pip Arnold, (Team SolutionsUniversity of Auckland) and Maxine Pfannkuch(University of Auckland).
Maxine Pfannkuch
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NZSA Education Committee
The Education Committee has had a full and activetwenty-second year, including meetings every twomonths. Early in the year, Sharleen Forbes announcedher withdrawal, which comes after 21.5 years ofmembership. We hope that this withdrawal isreversible! We thank Sharleen for her greatcontributions of expertise over those years, and forbeing a large part in founding the Committee. Wealso would like to extend our congratulations toSharleen both on getting the Campbell award, and onbeing given life membership of the Association forher contributions in statistical education and beyond.
A highly successful Education Day was held atthe recent annual conference. Teachers from as faraway as Auckland and Tauranga attended. SharleenForbes gave the plenary session. Four presentationsfollowed, on innovative teaching resources, informalinference, data exploration for the rock wren, andachievement in NCEA. Overall, they gave themessage that statistics is accessible and useful forstudents; and that methods for delivering it are rapidlydeveloping. The afternoon held a series of fourworkshops, with all of these being presented bymembers of the Education Committee.
The Curriculum for the final level at school nowcontains: ‘make inferences from surveys andexperiments … using methods such as resamplingand randomisation to assess the strength of evidence’.These methods arose in several contexts at theEducation Day. Is NZ mad to have these in school,or just way out in front?
The committee has been steadily moving awayfrom being just a Wellington-based group to being farmore nationally representative. The next obviousregion to recruit committee members from isChristchurch, as the teleconference facilities, so kindlymade available by Statistics New Zealand, areavailable there. This would be particularlyadvantageous, with NZAMT 2011 being held inChristchurch. Christchurch is also the current hub ofNZAMT, and this also presents a significantopportunity for closer liaison with them. A wider inputfrom Statistics New Zealand would also enrich thecommittee.
Bridging the gap between teachers andstatisticians is a crucial challenge for the committee.We now have some active classroom teachers onthe committee, but would appreciate more of them tobe involved.
Mike participated in the Western AustraliaMathematics (Teachers’) Association conference inAugust. Teachers there, as here, are increasingly awarethat ‘Chance and Data’ (aka probability and statistics)
is accessible and in fact essential for school students.It seems that students value it, not because theyperceive it as easy, but because they perceive it asrelevant. The next generations of adults there and heremay be much better at using and assessing evidencefor decisions.
Curriculum Project The committee has had amajor ongoing focus on inputting to the new curriculumfor primary and secondary schools. Now that the newcurriculum is in place, the committee has been workingalongside the Ministry of Education to help provideinput into, and review of, supplementary supportmaterials for the curriculum. This will include moredetailed “Tier Two” materials to further develop ideasmore briefly covered in the curriculum, as well as aglossary of mathematical terms. Our curriculum is theenvy of many other countries, and is one we can beproud of.
NCEA and Scholarship We continue makingsubmissions about and reviewing the achievementstandards relating to NCEA. Our request to NZQAand MoE to be involved in the review of thesestandards has been well received. The standards arecurrently being revised, with NZAMT leading therevision. The committee intends to take a very activerole in this. The Ministry is also keen for thecommittee to review and comment on the standardsas they are under production. This is in addition tobeing supportive for the committee’s input into thematerials for the NCEA or scholarship assessments.
The redesign of the NCEA Achievement Standard,and the Unit Standards, in Statistics, is vitallyimportant. The advances that NZ has made with theCurriculum will succeed only if they emerge in thecountry’s assessments.
Upcoming Conferences NZAMT 2009: TheAssociation continues to give support to this biennialconference by providing funds for a plenary speaker.The aim is to give an ongoing presence for statisticsin this forum. At the 2007 conference at St Cuthbert'sCollege, Auckland in late September, our sponsoredplenary speaker was Maxine Pfannkuch. Thecommittee is actively pursuing names for the 2009speaker. We would like to encourage all statisticians,especially those in the central and southern parts ofthe North Island, to consider offering talks orworkshops at the 2009 conference at PalmerstonNorth.
MERGA 2009: Next year ’s MathematicsEducation Research Group of Australasia meets nextJuly in Wellington. Again it would be good to see thestatistics community presenting at this in significantnumbers (hopefully at above the 5% level).
Alex Neill, Mike Camden.
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Statistics Strand TeacherEducation Workshop
(Nick Horton,pictured right, fromSmiths College inNorthampton, MAwas on sabbatical atthe University ofAuckland duringsemester one. Hesends this report ona teachers’ meetingin Auckland. Ed.)
The Auckland Mathematics Association had a verysuccessful term two get-together, focused on thestatistics strand, on Saturday, 14 June. Approximately100 teachers gathered for a keynote address by ChrisWild of the University of Auckland as well asworkshops organized by teachers. As an observer inthe midst of a sabbatical semester in Auckland, I wasstruck by the vitality and energy of the presentersand participants (a commendable, common andendearing Kiwi trait).
Chris began the morning with a provocativeaddress about how to introduce informal inferencefor Years 8-13. His talk fleshed out the new curricularframework, which develops statistical thinking aboutdescriptive summaries, sampling variability andinferential statements. Chris used a series of animatedmovies to describe samples from the Census at Schoolsdatabase (http://www.censusatschool.org.nz) toillustrate his points and motivate the audience. A pointerto his handouts as well as the recorded lecture withslides can be found at http://tinyurl.com/6bsk6n.
After a question and answer period, and a calledbusiness meeting for the AMA, there were 3 sets ofparallel workshops (several repeated in multiple timeslots). More information on the workshops andseveral handouts can be found at http://tinyurl.com/aucksecmaths.
Maxine Pfannkuch prototyped a classroom activityfor drawing an inference from an experiment, basedon her work with secondary students. A resamplingmethod (part of the new standards for Year 13) wasused to assess the strength of evidence for making aclaim when comparing two designs for a flying object,and workshop attendees were able to replicate theanalysis process using the student data.
Pip Arnold presented a workshop called SleepingSheep which uses a BBC activity to collect data aboutreaction times. This activity, targeting Year 10-11
students, could be adapted for a variety of ages.Handouts (available at the above URL) on this activityinclude a teaching plan along with relevant worksheetsand a workshop plan for those who might like to use itas a workshop for teachers.
Carolyn Leersnyder described “debatablestatistics” for Year 11 students, by posing the questionthat if tomorrow's weather can't be correctly predicted,how can scientists predict climate in the future? Thisis a great context for teaching aspects of probability,such as long run averages and the difference betweentheoretical and experimental results. Carolyn alsopresented a second workshop on how scientists usetime-series data in their real work. She provided abigger picture for time series, along with severalmeaningful contexts (many locally based) andstimulating examples of what we can teach in thisarea (handout available).
Lindsay Smith discussed a level 2 statistics coursefor students who wish to continue with mathematicsin Year 12 but whose needs suggest a minimal focuson algebra will be appropriate (handout available).
Richard Mackrory, a former chemical engineer,shared thoughts and practical activities for curve fitting,based on his work in industrial research and teachingexperience.
Anne Blundell used a series of poorly writtenarticles in the media to motivate a discussion ofstatistical literacy for all levels. Gal's (2002) worryquestions were used to provide a framework forinterpreting the news around us.
Murray Black introduced a computer basedworkshop using excel to construct and interpretconfidence intervals for proportions. Examplesincluded manufacturing, the food industry and business.
Beatrix Jones and Daniel Walsh discussed astatistical declaration of independence, for situationswhere observations are not independent. An examplebased on modeling multiple paternities (“cuckolding”)in birds was used to motivate the workshop (handoutavailable).
Other talks included a reprisal by Jason Florenceof his successful 2007 AMA Statistics daypresentation on heuristic probability (a glimpse intothe hidden side of probability), while Anna Martindescribed resampling and confidence intervals.
I was impressed that 100 people would volunteertheir time to learn more about what's happening inthis realm. I left the workshop full of ideas and activitiesfor my work in secondary and tertiary statisticaleducation
Nicholas [email protected]
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ANZJS CornerThere are changes afoot forANZJS. Kerrie Mengersen willbe stepping down as ManagingEditor toward the end of 2008,so as well as needing a BookReview Editor there will be anadditional vacancy on theeditorial panel. If you areinterested in either position, please contact Kerrie<[email protected]>. There is also discussionunderway with Wiley/Blackwell about electronictracking of papers submitted to ANZJS in future. Thesystem they recommend is Manuscript Central. Justhow this system would impact on journal operationswill be discussed in more detail at the editors’ meeting,planned for Melbourne at the end of November. Thejoint venture between NZSA and SSAI to run ANZJSis also currently under discussion (through the NZSAand SSAI Executives, since this is not an editorialmatter).
The NZSA Exec agreed that the advantages anddisadvantages of ‘Open Access’ for ANZJS as apublication method should be discussed at a specialsession at the NZSA Conference in Hamilton, but thissession could not be programmed for the conference,and has been held over. Again, this decision is a matterfor the SSAI and NZSA Executives, and for you asmembers of the Association(s), rather than an editorialmatter (except in terms of the operational
consequences).A further issue that needs to be resolved, given
the more limited level of support for the journal nowavailable from employers, is editorial running costs.The previous Managing Editor and Theory andMethods Editor lived in Melbourne, where thepublisher Wiley-Blackwell is also based. The currenteditors (who are from Brisbane, Canberra,Wollongong, Wellington and Palmerston North) haveno budget, although the publishers do pay A$4,000 asa contribution to the Societies' editorial costs ofpublishing the journal. Without this money being madeavailable by the Associations to the editors, face-to-face meetings will continue to be difficult to arrangeand the clerical aspect of journal operations will remainseverely under-resourced. This matter requires earlyresolution.
It is obvious from the Wiley-Blackwell Annual Report (http://www.wiley.com/legacy/annual_reports/ar_2008/) that akey focus of the Editorial team must be the relevance,content and impact of the journal. The editors wouldlike feedback from you about how you would like tosee ANZJS develop. For example, what do you wantto read, and what makes a good applications paper?Let us know. After all, it’s your journal.
Stephen HaslettANZJS Theory and Methods Editor
Simply log on using your member number and provided password for completeaccess to abstracts and full articles from the Journal.
Forgotten your password? Contact Ms. Lei Hattori, Customer Service Officer - Blackwell Publishing at e-mail: [email protected] or on Tel: (03) 8359 1014.
Published on behalf of the Statistical Society of AustraliaInc. and the New Zealand Statistical Association
Managing Editor: Professor Kerrie Mengersen
Print ISSN: 1369-1473Online ISSN: 1467-842XCurrent Volume: 48Frequency: 4 issues per volume
Read the latest in statistics from Australia,New Zealand and the world online today
ApplicationsTheory & MethodsReviewsHistorical and General Interests
SSAI members can access the Journal for FREEthrough Blackwell Synergy atwww.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/anzs
11
Science Fairs
The NZSA, along with Statistics New Zealand, havecontinued to jointly sponsor an award for the bestuse of statistics at each of the 24 regional sciencefairs. In most regions the award is judged by NZSAmembers or members of the statistical community.Along with the prize (or in some cases prizes) forbest use of statistics, we have also been able to offercertificates for excellent use of statistics which hasenabled us to recognise more students.
The 2008 science fairs are being held throughoutAugust and September. This year, Statistics NewZealand have indicated their preference for the award(totalling $120 per fair) to be split at most 2 ways.This has worked well in most regions; however someof the more rural regions have suggested that theywould like to continue their practice of splitting theaward into smaller denominations. All parties agreedto show some flexibility this year. However this is anissue that will need to be worked through early nextyear (see also comments below - Ed.). Another areafor improvement next year will be the wider promotionof the award to schools so that students can plantheir projects to include more statistical components.
I would like to thank all the volunteers who havecontributed their time to judging the statistics awardand finally, if anyone would like to assist with judgingin the future (particularly in the regions away fromthe main centres) please contact the science faircoordinator.
Tim Hawkes
GenStat 2008
The Australasian GenStat Conference, 2008:Biometrics in Primary Industries and theEnvironment is to be held at Marylands CountryHouse, Marysville, Yarra Valley Ranges, Victoria,Australia on 2-5 December 2008.
The early bird registration deadline and date forsubmission of abstracts have been EXTENDED until30 September
There will be a pre-conference workshop inExperimental Design, at the University of Melbourneon 1 Dec 2008. Information on the pre-conferenceworkshop, a template for submission of abstracts, andother practical information are available on the websitewww.dpi.vic.gov.au/genstat2008.
This conference traditionally has a friendlyatmosphere and attracts a mix of consultingbiometricians and people developing methods forapplied statistics, not all of whom are GenStat users.It is a chance to meet the GenStat developers and tohear about new features in the package, but a majorfocus is on biometrical applications and newdevelopments in biometrics.
ICOTS8
The next International Conference on TeachingStatistics is being held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 11-16July 2010. The Conference Theme is data andcontext in statistics education: towards anevidence-based society.
The conference website is now open, but is stillunder development: http://icots8.org/
Keynote speakers are:
Anuska Ferligoj, University of Ljubljana
Gerd Gigerenzer, Max Planck Institute for HumanDevelopment
Cliff Konold, University of Massachusetts
Hans Rosling, Karolinska Institutet
Jessica Utts, University of California
There will also be a Plenary Panel and Debatecoordinated by Chris Wild, University of Auckland.
More on Science Fairs ...Alasdair Noble and Geoff Jones are seeking theopinions of NZSA members on a number of issuesrelated to Science Fairs.
Firstly, what do members think about the splittingof prize money into at most two parts? It seemsStatistics New Zealand prefers this, but the NZSAshould have a say as they contribute half the prizemoney. Do we need a policy that overrides thepreferences of the regional organizers and thediscretion of the judges?
Secondly, and particularly for those who havejudged Science Fairs in the past, we would appreciateyour thoughts on what makes for “good statistics” ina science project. What should we be looking for, andwhat should we be giving prizes for? Is there anythingthat really “gets your goat”?
We would appreciate any responses by email [email protected] or [email protected].
Geoff JonesAlasdair Noble
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Local SceneVictoria University
First up from Victoria is some exciting news concerningquite a few new arrivals, plus their mums and dads.That’s new children of existing VUW staff, ratherthan new staff - but maybe that type of successionplanning for staff could be the way to go? Anyway,our School Manager Ginny Whatarau and her husbandRick celebrated the happy arrival of their daughter,Janayah, on 19 March 2008. Ginny was on parentalleave until mid July, but she is now back managing usall again, very efficiently. Ginny says that Janayahlikes to know what's going on, so sometimes shechecks up on her mum two or three times a night.Consequently Ginny is often at work pretty early atthe moment. In Ginny's absence over the last fourmonths, Rowan McCaffery did an excellent job asthe acting School Manager - thanks Rowan!
Other parts of the School obviously decided thatthey needed some new arrivals too, so DuncanMcEwan and his partner Vic happily obliged with thebirth of their son Ben on Wednesday 2 July at about4pm. Duncan’s parental leave has meant the rest ofthe Programmers are keeping busy, while Statisticsand Operations Research (in particular) weredelighted to learn of the arrival of Mark Johnston'snew son Hamish. He was born on Sunday 27 July at5:30pm, weighing in at 4.3kg (that is 9 pounds 8ounces) and 54cm long. He’d kept his mum, Emily,and dad (plus the rest of us!) waiting for about aweek and a half past hisdue date, so the fact he isquite a big boy isn’t toosurprising. Hamish spentthe first 24 hours in ICUhaving a few problemswith his breathing but heis fine now, as are hismum and dad. The photoon the right, taken on hisfirst day, shows Hamishsticking his tongue out(just a little bit).
In other news, about our more academic activities,Richard Arnold was sponsored by the Ministry ofHealth to attend the scientific meeting of Novartisvaccines in Siena, to present on the effectiveness ofthe Meningococcal B vaccination programme in NewZealand. Richard was also on the organising committeeof the International Society for Bayesian AnalysisBiennial World Meeting, which took place in Australiafor the first time this year. The conference, which
Richard attended on Hamilton Island from 21-25 July,was a showcase for both Australian and New Zealandresearch in Bayesian methods and applications, alongwith researchers from all over the world.
Stefanka Chukova participated in two conferencesin Bulgaria in June, both on the Black Sea coast. Thefirst one, on Informing Science (IS) and InformationTechnology Education, was held in Varna; the second,the XIII International Summer Conference onProbability and Statistics, was held in Sozopol. InMarch, Stefanka and her husband David walked fromWaikanae (on the Kapiti coast) to downtownWellington over three consecutive weekends. The totaldistance of their trip accumulated to more than100km! They are planning a walking trip in Nepal atthe end of the year.
Estate Khmaladze hosted Valerian Wrobel, fromEcole Polytechnique, for a three month internship fromMay to July. Valerian was working on “Khmaladzetransformations for linear hypotheses”, and on 30 Julyhe gave us a seminar on that topic before he returnedto France. Estate's two current PhD students, GiorgiKvizhinadze and Haizhen Wu, have had a joint talkaccepted at a forthcoming conference, also in France.The topic of their current research, which is joint withEstate, is “The diversity of opinions in opinion pollsand related topics”. Estate says that, surprisingly, thetopic turns out to be intimately connected with thedifficult theory of large deviations and contiguity ofprobability measures. Estate also mentions that hehas recently discovered a very good Pinot Noir fromTohu Wines, but he wishes it wasn’t quite soexpensive!
Ivy Liu took over from Stefanka Chukova as theProgramme Director for Statistics and OperationsResearch in March 2008. Stefanka had been theProgramme Director since July 2005, so we're allvery grateful to her for directing us so well for nearlythree years! We're also really grateful to Ivy for takingon the job now :-) .
Shirley Pledger spent June on a research visit tothe University of Kent (at Canterbury), England. InJuly, Shirley was an invited speaker at the InternationalStatistical Ecology Conference in St Andrews, Scotlandand then she attended the International BiometricsConference in Dublin, Ireland. Having seen a fair bitof the British Isles, Shirley is now back with us inWellington.
Tony Vignaux is celebrating 40 years at VictoriaUniversity of Wellington. He became FoundationProfessor of Operations Research in January 1968,moving office down one floor in the Rankine Brownbuilding from the DSIR applied mathematics division.Some things have changed over the last 40 years -from the Elliott 503 to the Dell Pentium 4 on his
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University of Auckland
Congratulations are due to several of our PhDstudents. Christian Roever, who completed his PhDwith Renate Meyer last year, won a prestigiousuniversity Best Doctoral Thesis award. Kristy Su hasbeen awarded her PhD, and Steven Miller sailedsmoothly through his oral exam. Jenny Wilcock wonthe first prize in the poster competition at the ASC inMelbourne, and she was in good company: the threeASC prizes all went to New Zealanders.
Patricia Metcalf received the NZ MedicalAssociation's Richard Robinson Award for excellencein medical writing, for her 2006 paper in the NZMedical Journal: “Trends in major cardiovascular riskfactors in Auckland”, coauthored with Robert Scragg,David Schaaf, Lorna Dyall, Peter Black and RodJackson. Fortunately, the excitement of prize-winningdid not emerge as a major cardiovascular risk factor,and the authors have been able to enjoy their successwith the help of a cholesterol-free beverage rich inantioxidants.
George Seber (picturedright) celebrated his 70thbirthday in style in April, witha lunch in Old GovernmentHouse crammed withcolleagues from his longcareer spanning five decadesand two departments at theUniversity of Auckland.George joined the Departmentof Mathematics in 1965, and became the university'sfirst Professor of Statistics in 1972. He founded ourdepartment in 1994, and 14 years later still seems tobe getting younger every year. From this we candeduce that the secret to long life and happiness is towrite an average of 0.26 statistics textbooks a yearfor 38 years.
We are pleased to welcome our new visitorsCharmaine Dean and Thomas Lumley. Charmaine isthe founding Chair of the Statistics Department atSimon Fraser University in Vancouver, and is freshfrom presenting the keynote talk at the NZSAconference in Hamilton this month. Thomas is a well-known member of the R Core Team from theBiostatistics Department, University of Washingtonin Seattle. Both visitors are staying in Auckland tillthe end of the year. We were also fortunate to hostProfessor Helen MacGillivray, from QueenslandUniversity of Technology, in May. Helen gave severalthought-provoking seminars and workshops onuniversity teaching and promoting innovation inpedagogy and content.
The department’s Marsden awardees from 2007
desktop. Some things have not changed - Tony alwayswears a tie when teaching. Highlights of his 40 yearsinclude being awarded a prize as one of Victoria'stop 100 lecturers of all time, serving as president ofthe OR Society (and the NZ Statistical Associationtoo - Tony likes stochastic OR!), and sabbatical visitsto Hawaii, Berkeley, Warwick and Oxford. Tonyobserves that a good trend in OR is the developmentof free and open source software (possibly ashameless plug for his “SimPy” discrete-eventsimulation package in Python, see http://simpy.sourceforge.net/) and a bad trend is that wenow seem to teach OR techniques rather thanmodelling real problems. However, Tony feels thathe enjoys OR a lot more now that he has retired anddoes not have to do any university administration.
John Haywood
University of Otago, Maths andStats
Several of the statisticians in the Department (RichardBarker, Claire Cameron, Peter Dillingham, DavidFletcher and Chris Fonnesbeck) made their way toSt Andrews to attend the International StatisticalEcology Conference in July. Richard Barker took thelong route through the United States and Europe,catching up with former PhD student Matt Schofieldnow on a post-doc at Columbia University NY, andthen through Montpellier where he spent time withJean-Dominique Lebreton. David Fletcher took theoccasion to celebrate his recent wedding with relativesin Switzerland and the UK, before meeting up withChris Fonnesbeck, Peter Dillingham and last year'sWilliam Evans Fellow, Mike Conroy, for a three-daytour of Islay, where seven of the world's best whiskiesare made: they carried out an intensive samplingprogram and came away with some interestingresults...
As well as attending the ISEC conference in StAndrews, Scotland, Claire Cameron (PhD student inStatistics) also gave a talk at the IBC in Dublin. Clairecommented, “It was a great opportunity to meet upwith people that I hadn't caught up with for a longtime and to see a little bit of Scotland and Ireland. Itwas also inspiring to see leaders in the areas I researchin presenting their work. I went to a talk by thefamous (in Statistics) Sir David Cox, where manyphotos were taken and I learned more about WilliamSealy Gosset (aka ‘student’) on the 100th anniversaryof the publication of the first paper on the tdistribution.”
Irene Goodwin
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are progressing apace with their new projects. MartiAnderson gained an $800,000 grant to exploreunderwater ecosystems on the Lord Howe Riseseamount using underwater submersibles. Thesubmersibles go down to a massive 1000m, wherethe ocean is dark, scary, and full of unknowns. Marti’sproject is among the first to use manned (or evenwomanned) submersibles in the southern hemisphere.Marti gained a huge response to her advert for twoPhD students, with a total of 183 applicants fromaround the world. (Name the last statistics PhDadvert to have generated this many applicants!) Thebest two applicants were - naturally - both Kiwis,and the lucky recipients Adam Smith and KirstenRodgers will be starting on the project in November.The first trip into the (very) deep blue yonder willtake place in 2009.
Meanwhile, Yong Wang’s Fast-Start Marsden hasalready delivered a fast start to Steve Taylor, theMasters student working on the project. Steve wonjoint first prize from his first conference presentation,at the NZSA 2008 conference in Hamilton, for hispresentation on a fast algorithm for computingnonparametric survival functions.
Chris Wild has done a round-the-world conferencecrawl over the last 3 months, giving invited talks atthe Western North American Region of the BiometricSociety in California, OZCOTS in Melbourne, theInternational Biometric Conference in Dublin, the 2ndInternational CensusAtSchool Workshop at UCLA,and the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver. He alsovisited Ray Carroll at Texas A&M University. Hehas settled back home to get some work done beforepresenting three more invited talks in Japan inDecember, including IASC 2009.
And finally, Rachel and Regan Cunliffe havecelebrated the arrival of their baby son, Eli DanielDavid. Not leaving anything to chance, Eli guaranteedhis lucky stars by arriving judiciously on 8th August -known in numerological circles as 08/08/08. The timeof arrival? 08:08 am naturally ... well, plus or minustwo standard editorial licenses of 8 minutes each.
Rachel Fewster
Scion (NZ Forest ResearchInstitute)
Rod Ball has arrived back from Finland where heworked with Mikko Sillanpää on gene mappingstatistical methods at the University of Helsinki, andalso learnt a bit of Finnish. While there he gave ashort course on association mapping in the Combi(Computational and Molecular Biology) graduateschool including R (Petri Koistenen) and BUGS (BobO'Hara) workshops. From Helsinki he travelled to
the IUFRO conference in modelling and simulationat Koli National Park (eastern Finland, near Joensuu)where he gave a talk on smoothing spline models,then visited Prof Outi Savolainen at Oulu Universityand gave a talk on case studies in association mappingto the members of the biology and statisticsdepartments. From Oulu it was north to samplecamping and hiking in the midnight sun in Lapland(Urho Kekkonen and Lemmenjoki national parks andInari) before returning to NZ at the end of July viathe ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis)world conference at Hamilton Island, Australia. AtISBA, and also the NZSA conference at Waikato,he presented a poster: “Case studies in associationmapping - frequentist and Bayesian measures ofevidence”, (including Bayesian re-analysis of resultsfrom the Diabetes Genome Initiative of Harvard, MIT,Lund and Novartis; and the Wellcome Trust casecontrol consortium) and had the opportunity to discussanalysis of large scale case-control studies with PeterDonnelly and Damjan Vukcevic from the Wellcometrust (Oxford University), who also had a poster.
During ISBA, news arrived that we have beensuccessful with our proposal for a ‘Virtual Instituteof Statistical Genetics’ (see last issue). The proposalwas top-rated in the LNNR (Leveraging NewZealand's Natural Resources) portfolio. The VISGconsists of statisticians and geneticists from CRIs andUniversities and will develop statistical methods totackle the large amounts of genomic data becomingavailable with current gene technologies relevant togene mapping in New Zealand. This is the first timeFRST has funded a programme dedicated to statisticalmethod development since the early 1990s when theydecided they would not fund statistics and operationalresearch ‘per se’. Funding has been approved for 5years at around 900k per annum, and is going tocontract shortly.
The programme will cover four project areas: largedatasets (e.g. whole genome mapping and prediction),structural genetics (polyploidy and copy numbervariation), population structure, and experimentaldesign. The Virtual Institute will utilise eResearchtechnology (KAREN network and high performancecomputing) for collaboration in multi-organisationalteams. The VISG expects to fund several PhDstudents or PostDocs. Expressions of interest [email protected], or [email protected].
Also on the computing front, we have beenexperimenting with the Condor (grid computing)system with application to computationally intensiveproblems in bioinformatics (Lucy MacDonald) andWood Technology (Jonathan Harrington, BenoitHiroux, Paul Milliken). Condor is a job scheduling
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Massey University, Albany
In late July Beatrix Jones and Howard Edwards bothattended the International Society for BayesianAnalysis conference (ISBA2008) in Hamilton IslandAustralia. Beatrix presented a paper entitled“Bayesian parentage analysis using multipleimputation” and Howard a poster entitled “A surveyof graduate courses in Bayesian statistics”. One ofthe most memorable features of the ISBA conferenceis a closing cabaret, where the words of popular songsare modified to pertain to the subject of the conference.Howard was featured singing and playing keyboardsfor the song ‘Always take your prior with you’ to thetune of Crowded House’s ‘Always take the weatherwith you.’
At the end of July we said farewell to TasosTsoularis, who is moving to a position in the UK aftereight years at Massey.
Dr Chris Volinsky from AT & T Research LabsFlorham Park, New Jersey, is currently visiting theStatistics and Information Technology groups at IIMS.During his period here he will deliver lectures on DataMining, and exploring research interactions with theInstitute’s staff. He has also given a seminar“Recommender systems for fun and profit”.
The group was well represented at the NZSAconference with Jeff Hunter and Beatrix Jones bothgiving invited talks and Marie Fitch and John Xiestudent presentations. Congratulations to John Xie onbeing a joint winner of the student prize.
Marie Fitch
Crop & Food Research
The news of the possible merger of Crop & Foodand Hort Research came as, well, news to the C&Fbiometricians. However, the “I met them at aconference” network went into action, and RuthButler and Nihal DeSilva have been discussing howthe biometrics groups work in the two organisations.Conspiracy theorists will no doubt make somethingof the fact that Ruth had been in discussions withPeter Alspach of Hort Research about hosting aworkshop by Brian Cullis and Ari Verbyla on mixedmodels for genetic improvement (crop and animalbreeding programmes). The workshop will be held atLincoln on 24-27 February 2009. Contact Peter([email protected]) to register aninterest. The exact programme will depend on theinterests of the attendees, and will be opportunitiesfor participants to apply the techniques to their owndata.
Duncan Hedderley
system developed at the University of Wisconsin thattheoretically allows utilisation of 98-99% of CPU timethat is spent idle on most PCs in a company intranet.Large speedups are possible for jobs that can utilisethat level of parallelism (e.g. image processingcalculations), although currently Benoit reports successonly on a single multi-processor server.
Scion is currently advertising for a biometrician:see advertisement on page 4.
On the 25th of September we're hosting ProfessorTony O'Hagan (pictured below), who has been visitingNew Zealand following the ISBA conference.Professor O'Hagan will give a talk on prior elicitation- the process of incorporating experts’ prior knowledgein probability distributions for use in Bayesianstatistics. He is the author of the book: “UncertainJudgements, eliciting experts’ probabilities” (Wiley2006). The talk is scheduled for 10:30am in the Totararoom at Scion, 49 Sala St., Rotorua (all welcome).
Rod Ball
Tony O’Hagan speaking at the ISBA conference in Hamilton Is.
Wellington Statistics Group
The Wellington Statistics Group (WSG), a local groupof the New Zealand Statistical Association (NZSA),continues to meet regularly. The following are recenttalks given to WSG:
12 Sep 2008, Walter Zucchini, University ofGoettingen. “Hidden Markov models for circular-valued time series.”
9 Sep 2008, Walter Zucchini, University ofGoettingen. “Two applications of statistics in biology.”
3 Sep 2008, Walter Zucchini, University ofGoettingen. Workshop on “Hidden Markov Models”at the Royal Society of NZ, 11 Turnbull St.
3 June 2008, Pra Murthy, University ofQueensland, Australia. “Warranty: An Introduction.”
23 Apr 2008, Nicholas Horton, Smith College,Northampton MA, USA. “What your physician shouldknow about statistics but perhaps doesn't: Theimplications of the increasing sophistication ofstatistical methods in medical research.”
3 Apr 2008, Ray Chambers, University of
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Statistics New Zealand
As is usual for our report we start with the arrivalsand departures from Statistical Methods. Arrivalsinclude Lee-Kurt Kupferman, Olena Rodnyanskiy,Tim Hawkes, Joanne Ang, Hazel Kale and LyndonAng. We also welcomed Robert Poole who is onsecondment from the Australian Bureau of Statistics(ABS). We are currently recruiting and you will findout who were successful in our next report. Wefarewelled a number of people including Nellie Yang,Kee Chang, and Lisa Henley. John Pearson went frombeing in Statistical Methods to a Senior ResearchStatistician in Statistics New Zealand (along withChristine Bycroft and John Bryant) then later leftStatistics New Zealand to be a senior lecturer inbiostatistics at the Christchurch School of Medicineat Otago University. Soon Song has recently beenseconded to MSD for a year.
Many of us have presented papers at variousconferences: Mike Doherty, Walter Davis, FrancesKrsinich, Mike Camden, Tim Hawkes, LeeKupferman, Grace Chiang, Chang Li, Victoria Weiand Olivia Son all presented at the recent NZSAconference. John Créquer and Guan Yu (Fish) Zhengwere part of the strong Statistics New Zealand presenceat the NZ Association of Economists Conference inWellington in July. Paul Cowie, Angela Forbes, BarbaraClendon and Walter Davis went to the AustralianStatistical Conference in Melbourne at the start ofJuly with Barbara also attending OZCOTS as well asvisiting the ABS. Mike Camden went to the UNECE/Eurostat conference on confidentiality and visited theONS, and has also recently returned from WesternAustralia (at their invitation) where he talked aboutstatistics education in New Zealand. By all accountsthe Australians are envious of what's being done inNew Zealand. Vera Costa went to 2008 UNECEConference on editing and imputation in April and
Department of Conservation
Statisticians survived the recent Department ofConservation restructure, keeping numbers at two,Ian Westbrooke and Maheswaran Rohan.Unfortunately, we did lose significant groups ofscientists - all of our small social science group, andhalf our marine scientists, while retaining terrestrialscience almost intact.
It has been conference season - with Rohanattending the ASC in Melbourne, and the associatedR workshop. Ian headed to holiday in Greece andGermany before presenting a poster at theInternational Statistical Ecology conference in StAndrews and attending IBC in Dublin. Rohan helpedto organise the NZSA meeting in Waikato, includingcoordinating the very successful teachers’ day, andIan and Rohan both gave talks. Rohan co-authored aposter in July 2008 at the Marine Science Conference,New Zealand, and is planning to give a talk at thePalmerston North Stats Forum in October.
Wollongong, Australia and NZSA Visiting Lecturer for2008. “Measurement Error in Auxiliary Information.”
18 Mar 2008, Jiancang Zhuang, Institute ofStatistical Mathematics, Tokyo. “Visualizing patternsin earthquake clusters using a point process model.”
4 Mar 2008, Martin Bland, University of York, UK.“Risedronate, the BBC, and me.”
We also have a planned talk coming up in October2008 by Jim Ridgway (University of Durham, UK).
Further details (abstracts, etc) of these and allprevious talks can be found on the NZSA Local Groupsweb page (http://nzsa.rsnz.org/local_groups.shtml).This web page also contains contact details for WSG,names of sponsors, and details of forthcoming talks.In addition, a link can be found there so that peoplecan add or delete their names from the mailing list.
If anybody is visiting Wellington at a time coincidingwith a talk, then you are most welcome to attend. Noregistration is required. We are also keen to receiveoffers of talks from people who have something theywould like to present. Many individuals work inisolation from other statisticians and often have littleopportunity to discuss their work with others. WSGaims to provide a forum for such people too.
We’d very much like to hear from anyone in theWellington region who would be keen (OK, maybejust willing!) to take over the WSG treasurer's jobfrom Alistair Gray, since Alistair has been doing thatsince 2001 and he definitely has earned himself awell-deserved rest.
David Harte
Back at DOC, training is the major theme in thespring, before staff become thoroughly absorbed bythe new field season. Richard Barker came to givean introductory course for DOC scientists on mark/recapture methods in Hamilton at the end of August;Ian and/or Rohan will be teaching internal courseson statistical modelling using R, and a follow-onmodule on longitudinal data using mixed models. Pluswe plan to trial a workshop on graphing in R usingLattice (using Sarkar’s excellent new book) and pilota course on population modelling. Ian will be giving afew lectures at Canterbury University for JenniferBrown, flowing from his new appointment as anadjunct fellow.
Ian Westbrooke
17
May this year where she was on the programmecommittee as well as presenting 3 papers on ourbehalf. While in Europe Vera visited Statistics Sweden,Statistics Finland and the US Census Bureau, finallydropping in on her son at Berkeley before she returned.
In March, Ray Chambers from Australia visitedour offices and gave seminars on “MeasurementError in Auxiliary Information” and “Analysis ofProbability-Linked Data” in Christchurch andAuckland (via video link) and “Robust Prediction ofSmall Areas Means and Distributions” and“Estimation of the Finite Population DistributionFunction” in Wellington. Many took the opportunityto hear him give the NZSA Lectures at their localuniversities. While Ray was here we discussed manyother survey design and estimation problems of mutualinterest. We also had Nick Horton give a seminar“Much ado about nothing: a review of the state of theart of incomplete data” to all three offices via videolink while he was visiting the University of Auckland.
Statistical Methods had their annual ProfessionalDevelopment Off-site (PDO) in March where a rangeof topics were covered, as well as giving the peoplefrom Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch a chanceto attach names to faces during the various socialactivities that are the normal part of PDO.
We also would like to remind people that StatisticsNew Zealand has a series of Official StatisticsSystem (OSS) seminars, mainly in Wellington butthere are some in Auckland as well. For details seeOSS Seminar Series page. The OSResearch projectsfor 2008/09 have been approved and cover a rangeof topics. A call for proposals for 2009/10 will be madein November 2008. For details on the 2008/09 projectsor how to submit for 2009/10 see the OSResearchweb site http://www.statisphere.govt.nz/official-statistics-research/default.htm.
Richard Penny & Olivia Son
University of Waikato
The Department of Statistics at Waikato University isstill currently short staffed. We are seeking to fill twopositions, one at the Professorial level and one atSenior Lecturer/Lecturer level. We had made anappointment at the lecturer level, and the successfulapplicant was due to take up the appointment inAugust 2008. However, in the end, the appointmentwas not taken up and this has left us in a difficultposition in meeting our teaching commitments for therest of the year. As well as this, David Whitakerretired at the end of the first semester. He and his
wife have moved to Naseby, in Central Otago. We dowish him well in his retirement. Another change ofstaff has seen us farewell our departmental secretary,Rhonda Robertson. We welcome her replacement,Tania Robinson.
Despite the staffing problems, some departmentalmembers have managed to attend some overseasevents. Lyn Hunt was an invited participant atHDM2008, (The International Conference onMultivariate Statistical Modelling & High DimensionalData Mining) held in Kayseri, Turkey, 19-23 June2008. She gave a paper entitled “Model SelectionUsing the Multimix Class of Mixture Models”. MurrayJorgensen attended IBC 2008, the XXIVthInternational Biometrics Conference held in Dublin,13 - 18 July. At the conference he gave a paper entitled“Forming Clusters from Census Areas with SimilarTabular Statistics” and also presented a poster entitled“Latent Variable Models for Dilution Series”. BillBolstad attended ISBA 2008, the 9th WorldConference of the International Society for BayesianAnalysis. At this meeting, he presented a posterentitled “Teaching Bayesian Statistics: What worksand what does not”.
Early this month, we had the pleasure of hostingthe 59th Annual Conference of the New ZealandStatistical Association. This was a very successful2-day conference, with a keynote address fromProfessor Charmaine Dean from Simon FraserUniversity, Vancouver, Canada on the first day, and aStatistics Education day with the keynote talk fromDr Sharleen Forbes of Statistics NZ and the Schoolof Government at Victoria University on the secondday. This day was also attended by more than 30secondary school teachers from the Waikato, Bay ofPlenty and Auckland regions. A full report of theconference is given on page 1.
Recent Seminars in the Department:
David Scott (University Of Auckland) “TheHyperbolic And Related Distributions” March 3
Ray Chambers - NZSA Visiting Lecturer - (Universityof Wollongong) “Maximum Likelihood underInformative Sampling” April 14
Rosemary Bailey (Queen Mary College, Universityof London) “Experiments in Rectangular Areas:Restricted Randomization of Row-ColumnDesigns” April 21
Nicholas J. Horton (Smiths College and UniversityOf Auckland) “Much Ado About Nothing: AReview of the State of the Art of Incomplete Data”May 5
Judi McWhirter
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University of Canterbury
The statistics group is very pleased to have recentlyhosted Ronald Christensen as an Erskine Fellow for3 months. Ron provided many contributions to ourteaching programme, including teaching our newStage 3 GLM course. Ron also providing a verystimulating reading group on Bayesian non-parametrics, including Polya Trees and DirichletProcesses.
Jennifer Brown, along with PhD students MiriamHodge and Meghan Williams, attended theInternational Statistical Ecology Conference at theUniversity of St Andrews, July 9 - 11, and then theInternational Biometric Conference at UniversityCollege Dublin, July 13 - 18. They presented paperson uncertainty analysis and on spatially balanced gridsampling.
Timothy Robinson, from University of Wyoming,has just left after a 6 month visit. Timothy co-taughtone of our data analysis courses, offered a lot ofexcellent advice to the environmental statisticsgraduate students and worked with Ian Westbrooke(DoC) on analysis of bird trend data. Jennifer will bevisiting Wyoming in 2009 to carry on work withTimothy on analysis of trends with non-normal data.
Marco and Carl attended the Computational andFinancial Econometrics Conference, Switzerland,presenting papers on a test for H-similarity andextreme value mixture models respectively. Theywere also pleased to meet up with a previous honoursstudent Alethea Rea at the conference, who waspresenting their joint work on graphical models ofmultivariate volatility. Alethea is now enjoying workingon her PhD with David Bryant.
Carl and Dominic’s new PhD student AnnaMacDonald, has had an excellent start to her research.Anna has been awarded a prestigious Top AchieverScholarship to examine extreme value modelling withapplication to neonatal physiological measurements,jointly with clinicians Dr Glynn Russell and Dr BrianDarlow. Anna presented her initial research at theAustralian Statistics Conference (ASC2008) and wonthe second poster prize (see photo right). Well doneAnna, and keep it up!
Dominic’s PhD student, Marina Zahari, presentedtheir paper entitled “Quantifying blood oxygen levelsin preterm infants using coefficient of variation” atthe ASC2008.
Carl was pleased to be nominated for UCSALecturer of the Year, voted for (very unscientifically!)by students.
Raaz Sainudiin has been settling down into lifehere at Canterbury. Raaz recently visited colleagues
AgResearch
Our group meeting (including bioinformaticians andmathematicians) was held at Invermay in March, achange from the traditional format at Ruakura. Ourtaste of local culture took us on a visit to the SpeightsBrewery and dinner at the Ale House.
At the end of June Dave Saville resigned fromAgResearch to set up his own consultancy. He wasfarewelled in style and has since been presentingcourses on statistical methods at various venuesaround the country.
Zaneta Park attended the R workshop inMelbourne, and returned full of enthusiasm for itspotential; she also went to the International Meetingof the Microarray and Gene Expression Data Societyat Riva del Garda, Italy, where she presented twoposters.
AgResearch made a substantial contribution to thisyear’s NZSA conference, with Harold Henderson,Catherine Cameron and Roger Littlejohn involved inorganisation and Ken Dodds giving an invited talk inthe Statistical Genetics theme.
In a new initiative this year, AgResearch hashosted two European interns on six month placementsas part of their degrees. Dorothee Ball, a student ofMarkus Neuhauser in Remagen, worked with RogerLittlejohn on “Utilising DNA-based breed compositionestimates to improve accuracy of breeding valueestimates in red deer” and Yann Poulouin workedwith Neil Cox on “Heat stress in cattle”.
Roger Litlejohn
in the Bioinformatics Institute, Auckland to give a talkentitled “Six Resolutions of the n-coalescent” and gavea talk entitled “Kingman's unlabeled n-coalescent” atthe very enjoyable 7th World Congress in Probabilityand Statistics, Singapore, 14-19 July.
Carl Scarrott
Carl and Anna with her Top Achiever Letter, in front of herprize winning ASC poster.
19
Massey University, Turitea
Jonathan Godfrey went to the Australian StatsAssociation Conference ASC2008 in Melbourne andgave two talks: “A Quality Control Analysis for theVolatility of Stock Returns” and “What do we reallyknow about Pearson's correlation coefficient?”
Doug Stirling gave an invited talk at OZCOTS inMelbourne on recent additions to CAST. He iscurrently writing exercises to accompany the CASTmodules. Doug also visited Uganda and Ethiopia totalk to the UN Economic Commission for Africa aboutan Official Statistics e-book in CAST. (Thevaccinations for this trip cost about $500.)
Ganesh attended both OZCOTS and ASC2008,giving talks at both. He also visited Denny Meyer atSwinburne University of Technology. After a fewweeks back in Palmy, Ganesh returned to Australiaas a tourist, cruising the Murray River for a week.
Ganesh (just visible) on a boat on the Murray River
Steve Haslett had two weeks in Cambodia in April,working on a poverty estimation project for the UNWorld Food Programme. He then spent somesabbatical time in Finland, visiting Simo Puntanen atthe University of Tampere, before heading off to theInternational Workshop in Matrices and Statistics inPortugal.
Geoff Jones attended the IBS conference in Dublinin July and the JSM in Chicago in August, spendingthe two intervening weeks working with Wes Johnsonin California. The round trip involved a total of 12flights, every one of which went wrong in one wayor another: delays, cancellation, lost luggage. Thehighlight was an “upgrade” on a Sacramento toDenver flight, from Economy Class to a seat thatdidn’t exist.
Ganesalingam and Alasdair Noble are organizinganother Palmy Stats Day for 24th October - seeadvert on page three.
Four of the Turitea statisticians, Martin Hazelton,Greg Arnold, Ganesalingam and Steve Haslett, madethe trek up to Hamilton for the NZSA conference.
And Finally ...
I was interested to read, in reports of the InternationalSociety for Bayesian Analysis conference in HamiltonIsland, Australia, that a regular feature of the ISBAis a cabaret where the words of popular songs aremodified to incorporate references to Bayesianmethods.
Fancying myself as something of a poet, and havingthis awkward space to fill at the end of the newsletter,I couldn’t resist having a go myself. So I hope you’llall sing along with me now to:
Those Were the Days(with apologies to Mary Hopkin)
Once upon a time I had some dataFrom which I had to calculate the mean;I’d punch some buttons on my calculatorAnd up would come the answer – quick and clean.
But now my friends I’m older and much wiserFor I have my Statistics PhD,So first I must elicitate a priorThen bung the whole thing through MCMC:
Chorus:I’m using Bayes, my friends!Those chains - they never end,They seem to take forever and a day;I’m so superior with my posterior:I’m using Bayes! Oh yes, I’m using Bayes!
Geoff Jones
Congratulations to graduate students Tilman Davisand Brigid Betz-Stablein who have both wonscholarships: Tilman a New Zealand Top AchieversScholarship and Brigid a Massey University DoctoralScholarship. They will be returning later this yearfrom Washington DC, where they have been workingat a biostatistical consulting firm, to begin a PhD (oneeach, we assume) under the supervision of MartinHazelton.
Several of us were involved again this year injudging Science Fairs. Steve Haslett, Alasdair Nobleand graduate students Ting Wang and Maris Isidrotook on the Palmerston North competition, whileGeoff Jones and Raj took on the torrential rain indriving to Masterton for the Wairarapa version.
We have solved the problem of having the StatsOffice closed every afternoon: a new administrativeassistant, Colleen Manson, is now staffing the officein the afternoons. To compensate for this good fortunethe office is now closed in the mornings.
Geoff Jones
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