Newsletter Number 69 March 2009
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ISSN 0112-2649 The New Zealand Statistical Association nzsa.rsnz.org Newsletter Number 69 March 2009 NZSA 2009 Conference The ANZJS session will include a contribution from Victoria University of Wellington the new Managing Editor of the journal, Prof Steve Haslett (Massey University). Following the recent September 1- 3 tradition, which was started when the NZSA Conference was last in Wellington in 2004, we will You are warmly invited to attend the 60th Annual again be having a Statistical Education Session. This Conference of the New Zealand Statistical is being organised by Mike Camden (NZSA Education Association, to be hosted by the School of Committee, and Statistics New Zealand, Wellington, Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research at [email protected]). Victoria University of Wellington, Wednesday 2 - Thursday 3 September 2009. The conference is Travel Grant and Student Prizes immediately preceded by a one-day workshop on The NZSA has some funds available to support Semiparametric Regression (more details below), to students at New Zealand Universities traveling to the be given on Tuesday 1 September by Prof Matt Wand conference. There will be financial awards for the (University of Wollongong). best student presentations. Themes Abstract Submission Papers are invited from any area of probability and Abstracts will be able to be submitted online shortly, statistics: please submit an abstract now! Student in plain text format via the conference website: http:/ presentations are especially welcome. /msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/NZSA2009. There will be a few plenary sessions, including one by Matt Wand on “Semiparametric Regression Registration and Variational Approximations” and one as an See the conference website for more details. An early information session on future developments for the bird registration discount will be available and student Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics registrations will receive a 50% discount. Members (ANZJS). of the NZSA and SSAI will also receive a discount. Among other topics, the implications of the Joint Venture publication model (between NZSA and SSAI) will be discussed in the latter session, which will be Conference Dinner chaired by Ian Westbrooke (NZSA Publications Group This will be on the evening of Wednesday 2 September member, and DOC, Christchurch, at The Skyline restaurant (1 Upland Road, Kelburn), [email protected]). close to the conference venue and with great views over Wellington’s city lights and the harbour. Published by the New Zealand Statistical Association (Inc.), P.O. Box 1731, Wellington, New Zealand. The views expressed by contributors to this Newsletter should not be attributed to the New Zealand Statistical Association. 1 Accommodation and Travel SCHEDULE Delegates are asked to make their own arrangements. An extensive list of suitable accommodation providers The short-course is divided into six sessions. The and travel/tourism information is provided on the average session length is about 45 minutes. conference website. Session 1: Spline smoothing and generalised additive models Other Details Further (updated) details, including key dates (such Session 2: Linear mixed model approach as early bird registration deadlines, abstract submission deadlines, etc), online registration procedures, the full Session 3: Bayesian hierarchical model approach programme (including the time of the New Zealand Statistical Association AGM), will all be available Session 4: Additive mixed models shortly via the conference website: msor.victoria.ac.nz/ Events/NZSA2009. Please bookmark that page. Session 5: Bivariate smoothing Announcements will be emailed to NZSA members, and to the anzstat and allstat mailing lists, Session 6: Non-standard semiparametric regression once a final version of the website is in place. Following are some further details about the one- Matt Wand is a Research Professor in Statistics at day pre-conference workshop on Tuesday 1 the University of Wollongong, Australia. September. The workshop is separate from the NZSA 2009 Conference, and either event will be able to be booked alone, via the conference website. Of course, we encourage people to come along to both! WORKSHOP SEMIPARAMETRIC REGRESSION A short-course by Professor Matt Wand (University of Wollongong, Australia) Tuesday 1 September 2009 Victoria University of Wellington SHORT-COURSE OVERVIEW He has held faculty appointments at Harvard University, Rice University, Texas A&M University Semiparametric regression is concerned with the and University of New South Wales. flexible incorporation of nonlinear functional Professor Wand is an elected Fellow of the relationships in regression analyses. Assuming only a Australian Academy of Science, American Statistical basic familiarity with ordinary regression, this short- Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics course explains the techniques and benefits of and was awarded the P.A.P. Moran Medal for statistical semiparametric regression in a concise and modular research. He has served as an associate editor for the fashion. Spline functions, linear mixed models and Journal of the American Statistical Association, Bayesian hierarchical models are shown to play an Biometrika and Statistica Sinica. important role in semiparametric regression. There John Haywood will be a strong emphasis on implementation in R and [email protected] BUGS. The short-course is based on the book ‘Semiparametric Regression’ by D. Ruppert, M.P. Wand and R.J. Carroll (Cambridge University Press, NZSA 2009 Conference 2003). Victoria University of Wellington September 1- 3 msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/NZSA2009 2 President’s Column Editorial This is my first column It seems like it has been an for the NZSA newsletter eventful six months in the and like all good talks I statistics world, but perhaps will start off by saying it this is because of all the is a pleasure to be here. information that comes my Being a member of the way as the new editor for the NZSA is a pleasure - it is NZSA newsletter – a very supportive, information that I would welcoming group of normally flick over when I professionals. The receive the final version of existence of the NZSA is the newsletter. This year the task of collecting and very beneficial to statistics in NZ. Beyond the compiling articles and contributions summarising immediate statistics profession there is benefit to the recent events in the statistics community has become wider community. Our revised constitution includes mine. I must admit I had been feeling quite daunted mention of wider community benefit and there are at the prospect, but I have not found the task too many tangible examples. onerous! Here is the final version for your perusal. The most obvious example is the involvement of There have been some sad and tragic events which the NZSA in the development of teaching mathematics have received notice in this edition of the NZSA and statistics at schools. The education subcommittee newsletter. Pages 4, 5 and 6 contain tributes to several do an excellent job with a group of dedicated members prominent and influential statisticians who have passed driving this. Thank you for your work. away in recent months. A number of individual Another example of the positive benefits from the contributions also contain mention of the Victorian NZSA is the development of linkages between NZ fires in February, particularly in reference to the town universities in statistics teaching and learning. of Marysville where several New Zealand and While at times we are encouraged to directly Australian GenStat users attended a conference in compete with each other for a finite number of December 2008. students, the statistics community and NZSA work But, it is not all bad news. The Pickering Medal together in a more collaborative way. Again, thank and RSNZ Fellowships have been awarded to various you. members of New Zealand’s statistics community. This column has a definite education flavour. This There are weddings, team meetings, courses and trips reflects my personal vision for this year to be focused overseas to find out about in later pages. We have on education. I saw the level of interest in, and new correspondents from AgResearch and the commitment to, education at the NZSA 2008 University of Canterbury, and Neil Binnie from AUT conference with the large audience at the education has entered the lists (entirely voluntarily I might add!). sessions. Student numbers are up at universities in Jennifer Brown has contributed her first column as 2009, there are changes to syllabus at schools, and President of the NZSA, and has indicated a strong there are many opportunities with developments in focus on education for 2009, which is reflected in this E-learning. Newsletter. Focusing on education this year seems sensible to Esther Meenken me. Jennifer Brown Join the NZSA A membership application / change of New members address form is available at http://nzsa.rsnz.org/form.php A warm welcome to new members of the NZSA who have joined since September 2008, taking our current NZSA Membership rates membership to 391. Regular members: Mark Holmes, Christopher April 2009 - March 2010 in NZ$ Fonnesbeck, Chikako van Koten, Murray Black, NZ Overseas Wendy Dobson, Min Liao, Lingyun Zhang, Paul Ordinary 80 85 Cowpertwait, Christian Vernon Mogol, Maoxin Luo. Student & Retired 40 45 Student members: Peter Green, Stephen Taylor, Electronic-only access to the journal reduces Gloria Teng, Cherif Aidara, Elena Tang, Rachel membership by $5. The first year of membership is Holland, Xiang Weng. free for senior students at NZ universities or graduates of NZ universities studying overseas, and not in full- time employment. 3 Professor Worsley’s approach to these questions Tributes was a unique mix of probability theory, statistics and geometry. In his work on the maxima of smooth Keith Worsley (1951-2009) random fields, he uncovered elegant connections between smooth random fields and classical integral geometry. In addition to his work on random fields, Professor Worsley has made important contributions to a number of other areas of statistics, including multiple testing and change point problems.