ISBIS News — Newsletter of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics

www.isbis.org An Association of the International Statistical Institute

President’s Column ISBIS-News Volume 6 – Issue 2, 2013 Dear ISBIS Colleagues: This will be my last column and a new team will be taking over the leadership of our society after the World Statistics Congress in Hong Kong. For those of you who will be at the WSC, make sure to attend our open meeting. The time will be announced

in the program schedule. Editor: N. Balakrishna Cochin University of Sci- ence and Technology, As you know, George Box and Genichi Taguchi passed away Cochin, Kerala, India over the past year or so. This newsletter includes articles E-mail: on Box by Bovas Abraham (former student) and on Taguchi [email protected] by Madhav Phadke (close friend). I had the good fortune to get to know both of them, and the rest of this column are Contributing Editors: some personal reminiscences. Paulo Canas Fabrizio Ruggeri Genichi started his (famous) 1980 tour of the US with a long visit to Bell Labs. That’s when I met him; it was about a year after I had graduated and joined the Labs. Genichi ISBIS Journal: was working with my colleagues in a sister department, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and explaining to them the ideas behind the so-called Taguchi Industry (ASMBI) methods, and helping them to run experiments to convince At Taguchis’ home, June 1986 www3.interscience.wile them of the benefits. There were some people on the pe- y.com/cgi-bin/ riphery like me. We’d go to his talks and leave the presentation shaking our heads – either because we jhome/66002616 couldn’t understand him or because we thought there was nothing new – that he was reinventing the wheels in DOE. But the experiments they ran showed impressive results, and some people quickly be- Editor-in-Chief came converts – both at Bell Labs and at Ford, Xerox, and other places he visited during the tour. It was Fabrizio Ruggeri also the period when the quality movement was taking hold in North America, and it was fashionable to fall in love with anything Japanese. Of course, there were also quite a few skeptics. So Bell Labs organized a series of conferences (called the Mohonk Conferences) to discuss Taguchi’s ideas and figure out the Editors Nalini Ravishankar novelties. The first one had some heavyweights — Box, Cox, Stu Hunter, and Tukey among them plus Emmanuel Yashchin Taguchi — and there was very lively discussion. [My contribution was to be a van driver and take the participants to Mohonk in upstate NY!] I had already started reading about S-N ratios, accumulation analysis, etc. and started working on them after the first Mohonk conference. That was my entry into indus- ISBIS Executive trial statistics. The Mohonk conference eventually became the ASA’s Quality and Productivity Research

Vijay Nair Conference, and it is now being held annually and with a much broader scope. Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi S. Ejaz Ahmed I first met George in 1986 during a two-week David Banks Paulo Canas trip to Japan. [A lot of people were visiting Werner G. Mueller Japan at the time, and if you haven’t made a trip of your own, you had no credibility in the

ISBIS Council quality field!] We were part of a joint Bell Labs and University of Wisconsin team that visited Riaan De Jongh a number of companies in Japan to under- Roger Hoerl Wai-KeungLi stand their quality practices. The visits to the M. Pilar Muñoz companies were actually arranged by Genichi P. G. Sankharan Taguchi, so we had unusually open access to Martina Vandebroek RománViveros-Aguilera management. It was an eye-opening trip for Sergio Yáñez me: visiting factories, talking to design and process engineers, and seeing top-notch quali-

Webmaster ty practices in action. Genichi accompanied us on most of the daily visits even though it was June 1986: Front row (L-R): Raghu Kacker, Box, Shawn Mankad a long trip. Nair; middle row: Anne Shoemaker, Jeff Wu; last

row; Taguchi, Madhav Phadke

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President’s Column (contd. from Page 1)

On the social side, we had the opportunity to have dinner at the Taguchis. His wife is a famous Japanese chef, and we got to taste her incredible cooking. I hadn’t seen or interacted much with Genichi in recent years. I remember him as a kind person, self-taught, original, and full of ideas. He has had a huge impact on the field of quality engineering and played a big role in promoting DOE in manufacturing industries.

George Box was a legendary figure who also had a larger-than-life personality. Many of us grew up reading his work – marveling at the depth, breadth, and beauty of his papers and books. Very few statisticians will match the lasting impact of his contributions and the huge footprint he left in so many different areas. For me, though, the best part of George was his humor and quick wit. On a conference trip in 1991, a number of us travelled together in Israel and Egypt for about two weeks. [Coincidentally, the trip to Israel was to participate in the first ever conference organized by ISBIS — more accurately, by the ISI Committee on Industrial Statistics, the precursor to ISBIS.] When we were about to leave Tel Aviv to fly to Cairo, we were told to be at the airport four hours before our flight. So we arrived at 5 am; the lines were already long, they were at a standstill, and everyone was beginning to get impatient and edgy. George looks around at the lines and quips: “This is the first time I’ve actually seen a stationary process.” The statisticians among us burst out laughing — much of the Box-Jenkins book on Time Series is based on stationary processes, and the guru just confessed that he hadn’t really seen a stationary process. Finally, the lines start moving, and we reach the front and security. When they ask George what he was doing in Israel, he says he was in Tel Aviv to give a presentation. Immediately, they ask him to take out his transparencies (yes, this was 1991) and go over his talk. If you are old enough, you will recall that George would have small piec- es of cut-out transparencies that he would move around on the projector in real time to give a ‘dynamic’ presentation. It was hilari- ous as he started doing that in front of the airport security. They gave up after about a couple of minutes. There is another “best part” to George that I shouldn’t forget — Claire Box, his wife and one of the most wonderful persons you’ll ever meet. A few of us got to see her again at George’s memorial service in Madison this May. It was a great occasion to recall memories of George Box.

As I finish up this final column, I want to thank a few people who have worked hard for ISBIS over the last two years: current members of the Executive Committee and Council, our newsletter editor Bala, and our webmaster Shawn. I also want to express my ap- preciation to past Presidents — Bovas Abraham, Nick Fisher, and Yves Grize for everything they’ve done. Finally, I wish the incoming team, under the leadership of Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi, all the best in their endeavors over the next two years. (Information on ISBIS officers for 2013-15 is given below.)

It has been a pleasure …………………………………………….. Vijay ______

ISBIS Officers for 2013-15 Executive Committee: President: Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (Italy/France) - [email protected] President-elect: David Banks (USA) - [email protected] VP Scientific Program: Nalini Ravishanker (USA) - [email protected] VP Membership & Outreach: Martina Vandebroek (Belgium)- [email protected] VP Communications: David M. Steinberg (Israel) - [email protected] VP y-BIS: Eric Laber (USA) - [email protected]

New Council Members (2013-17): Oliver Chinganya (Tunisia) - [email protected] Luis A. Escobar (USA/Colombia) - [email protected] Irena Ograjenšek (Slovenia) - [email protected] Galit Shmueli (India/USA) - [email protected] Current Council Members (continuing for 2013-15): Roger Hoerl (USA) - [email protected] Wai Keung Li (Hong Kong) - [email protected] Pilar Muñoz (Spain) - [email protected] Roman Viveros-Aguilera (Canada) - [email protected]

2 Newsletter of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics George Edward Pelham (G.E.P.) Box — 1919-2013

“George”, or “Pel” for those very close to him, passed away on Thursday, March 28, 2013 at home at the age of 93. He was one of the greatest statistical minds of our generation. He shared his wisdom with everyone. He will be missed by many.

George was born in Gravesend, Kent, England in 1919. His upbringing in a modest environment did not prevent his genius from emerging at an early age. In addition to academics, he was interested in writing poems, participating in plays, and inventing devices for entertainment. After completing school at 16, he started as an assistant to a chemist who managed a sewage treatment plant and wrote his first paper at the age of 19 about the activated sludge process for producing a clean effluent, beginning of a profound scientific life. His plans for further studies were interrupted by World War II and he joined the Army. While in the Army he was sent to the Experimental Station at Porton Down in the south of England to study the potential impact of poison gases. There he was running experiments as well as writing skits and putting on shows with his friends. George soon realized that statistical knowledge is required to get relia- ble results from experiments and so he taught himself Statistics. In his memoirs called, An Accidental Statistician: The Life and Memories of G.E.P. Box, published recently by Wiley, he wrote “One day in the Lab, I was having a particular statistical problem, and a senior medical scientist there suggested I write to R.A. Fisher about it. I thought that Fisher would be much too busy to talk to me but he replied…. the first real statistician I ever met was R.A. Fisher. He invited me, an unknown and ignorant army staff sergeant, to his house and with great patience and kindness spent the whole day with me…. After this I had no doubt that I wanted to be a statistician”. A legendary career was born.

After the war, George finished a Ph. D in Mathematical Statistics from University College, University of London, and then worked at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) for several years, designing experiments and industrial processes. His pioneering paper with K.B. Wilson in 1951 was truly inspirational, dawn of a new era in process optimization. In 1953, at the invitation of the Institute of Statistics, Raleigh, North Carolina (NC), he spent some time at NC State University, but went back to continue his work at ICI. In 1956 he left ICI to join Princeton University to direct the Statistical Techniques Research Group. During his first visit to NC State and subsequently at Princeton he met some of the pre-eminent statisticians of the day. George came to Madison in 1959, established the University of Wisconsin's Department of Statistics in 1960 and retired as an emeritus professor in1992. He had contin- ued his research and writing until his passing. His outstanding contributions to the discipline of Statistics include multiple books, papers and statistical tools that are widely known and cited in such diverse areas of practice and research such as response sur- face methodology, evolutionary operation, experimental design, Box-Cox transformations, time series analysis, Bayesian analysis, robust methods, and quality improvement. Many innovative ideas were introduced and words such as “robustness” were brought in to the statistical vocabulary. However, perhaps his greatest contribution to the discipline has been his philosophical perspective of Statistics as an integral component of scientific inquiry---the tangible essence of an iterative learning process. To George Box, statistical tools and methods provide the logic and the language of the modern scientific method. He once commented "The quality movement can be seen as the analysis, institutionalization and democratization of Scientific Method, a tool for efficiently gen- erating new knowledge." He has greatly influenced consecutive generations of researchers and practitioners, not only in hisown field of Statistics but also in Engineering, industry and other application areas. One former associate commented “among the gi- ants in the development, dissemination, and application of original statistical thinking George Box clearly belongs in the top eche- lon” and his close friend and former student, Stuart “Stu” Hunter, noted “it is not possible to briefly describe the statistical contributions of George Box. They are, like views of the Grand Canyon, simply too numerous and impressive”.

Together with Stuart Hunter and Cuthbert Daniel, George helped found Technometrics, the premier journal in industrial statistics, in 1959. George co-founded the University of Wisconsin (UW) Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement with the late Wil- liam "Bill" Hunter in 1985. He had also worked with officials from the City of Madison and its police department to improve cer- tain processes. George received many honors, including being elected Vilas Research Professor of Statistics at the UW Madison in 1980, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1985.

George mentored generations of students who have extended his message and influence to far corners of the world. One former graduate student noted “as a former graduate student of George’s ... association with this remarkable man has been a genuinely life-altering experience…”. He loved his students and was proud of their contributions. Many of his students remember George for

(contd. on next page)

3 Newsletter of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics his long-running “Monday Night Beer and Statistics sessions”, held initially in his basement and open to all campus researchers and students. It usually started with somebody talking about a problem or a data set. He encouraged students to participate, and provided suggestions as well as beer and chips; many students learned more from these sessions than from any classroom. As we remember him, we remember not only his brilliance, but also his wit, skits, and storytelling. He used to dress up at depart- mental parties, participate in skits, and make up humorous songs about Statistics, Bayesians etc: "There is no theorem like Bayes' theorem, Like no theorem we know...." From his memoirs “I believed that if you can write a first class skit, you can write a first class thesis. Originality and skit are very close”. Many remember George’s famous statement “all models are wrong, but some are useful”.

As we remember him, we remember his passion for the practice of Statistics, his humour, his writings, his words and his wisdom.

Thank you George, Thank you my friend.

Bovas Abraham Former student Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of waterloo, Canada

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The y-BIS column

The ISI World Statistics Congress is approaching, and with it the end of my second term as VP for y-BIS. These four years have been as challenging and hard-working as enjoyable and exciting.

There are many people to thank for the current success of y-BIS and too many to list. But in particular I would like to thank Nick Fisher for his initiative and unconditional support, Yves Grize, Vijay Nair and Vincenzo Vinzi for their support as President and/or President-Elect of ISBIS, Clau- dio Conversano, Rafal Kulik and Eric Laber, who served on the y-BIS Committee, all other members of the y-BIS Committee, and everyone who contributed to the development of y-BIS. A big thank you to all of them!

After the success of the first meeting of y-BIS, last July in Lisbon, (with more than 130 participants from 22 countries), We are holding y-BIS 2013: Joint Meeting of Young Business and Industrial Statisticians, sponsored by ENBIS and ISBIS. This conference will be held by Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey, from September 19 to 21, 2013. You, your colleagues, and your students are all invited to Istanbul next September. Please spread the word. More information can be found inwww.yBIS13.msgsu.edu.tr .

The y-BIS Committees is eager to receive proposals for local/national activities with interest for young statisticians. Please send your ideas to any member of the y-BIS committee (see http://www.isbis.org/y-bis-committee.html).

To keep y-BIS growing within ISBIS and outside the Society, we need all the possible help you can provide. I urge young scientists to join -y BIS. This is a new group, free for full time students, and very inexpensive for recent gradu- ates. It is a forum where young people can share their knowledge and their contributions. Please spread this information to your young colleagues, students and others who may be interested in our group.

This is my last entry for the y-BIS column but I’m sure Eric Laber, the next VP for y-BIS, will bring you exciting news about y-BIS and about further activities and achievements. I would like to welcome Eric and his team, and wish them and y-BIS all the success.

Paulo Canas Rodrigues ([email protected])

4 Newsletter of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics A Profile of Paulo Canas Rodrigues: VP for y-BIS, 2009-13

[Paulo has provided outstanding service to ISBIS: as a founding member and four-year VP of y-BIS. This article is a personal profile — Editor]

I am currently an Assistant Professor at Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and a Re- searcher at ISLA Campus Lisbon, Laureate International Universities, and Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal. My research interests include, among other things, high-dimensional data modeling, low-rank approximations and weighted low-rank approximations; quantitative genetics; time series analysis and singular spectrum analysis.

I finished my PhD in Statistics at Nova University of Lisbonin 2012. During my PhD, I’ve been a Visiting Fellow at WageningenUniversity and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands; Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poznan, Poland; Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; Cornell University, Itha- ca, NY, USA, and ESALQ, São Paulo University, Piracicaba, Brazil. I have participated in consulting projects and have more than six years of teaching experience. I’m currently Managing Editor of the journal Statistics, Optimization and Information Computing, and Co-Editor of Biometrical Letters.

I first got involved with ISBIS after contacting Nick Fisher, then President of ISBIS, regarding his idea of creating a group of Young Statisticians within ISBIS. We became deeply involved with that project and a few months later we launched y-BIS in May 2009. In August 2009, I became Vice-President for y-BIS. Having been inspired by y-BIS, I co-founded the jSPE, the section of Young Statisticians of the Portuguese Statisti- cal Society, where I have been president since September 2011.

Two of my biggest contributions for y-BIS and ISBIS were to: (i) set-up of the ISBIS Committee with representatives from all over the world; and (ii) propose and or- ganize the first conference of y-BIS—Joint Meeting of y-BIS and jSPE, Lisbon, Por- tugal, 2012—, where I served as Co-Chair of the Local Organizing Committee, and Chair of the International Scientific Program Committee. I have also been Contrib- uting Editor of the ISBIS Newsletter since September 2009.

My view and wish for the future of y-BIS is that its visibility continues to increase so that it becomes a reference for Young Business and Industrial Statisticians. Y-BIS members at ISBIS 2012 in Bangkok This initiative has had a leading role within ISI, and I would like to see y-BIS keeping that position in the future.

I also would like to see (at least) biennial conferences and/or workshops (co-)organized by y-BIS. These will bring together young statisticians and professionals working in academia and industry, and will offer opportunities to meet each other, and to share scientific and professional experiences. I believe these meetings are very useful and should be held in both developed and developing countries. ______

Dear ISBIS members:

Beginning with the 60th ISI World Statistics Congress in Rio 2015, the Associations will have their own President’s Invited Sessions. The ISBIS Council has decided to name our session as the "William S. GOSSET ISBIS Lecture". We will invite a leading researcher or practitioner in BIS to give this lecture. The naming of the lecture will give more prestige to ISBIS and also make it more attractive to invite outstanding lecturers. The 60th ISI World Statistics Congress will be held in Rio de Janeiro, during 27-31 July 2015.

Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi, President-elect

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Genichi Taguchi (January 1, 1924 – June 2, 2012)

Dr. Genichi Taguchi died in Tokyo on June 2, 2012 at the age of 88. He had risen from humble begin- nings to become one of the most influential people in Quality Engineering. He has made pioneering contributions to Japanese and US industry. His Quality Engineering methods consist of both off-line and on-line quality control techniques. In particular, Taguchi's methods for robust parameter design have had a profound impact on the way experimental techniques are used to address the core needs of engineering.

Taguchi has been recognized through numerous awards and honors. He is a three-time winner of the prestigious and highly coveted Deming Prize in Japan for contributions to the field of Quality Engi- neering. He received the Indigo Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan in 1986 for his outstanding contributions to Japanese economics and industry. That year he also received the International Technology Institute's Willard F. Rockwell Medal for combining engineering and statistical methods to achieve rapid improvements in cost and quality by optimizing product design and manufacturing processes. He is an honorary member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has authored or co-authored dozens of books on Design of Experiments, on-line quality control, and Mahalanobis-Taguchi method, and their applications in diverse industries.

Taguchi began his studies in textile engineering at Kiryu Technical College with plans to enter his family Kimono business. Howev- er, he was drafted in 1942 to serve the Navigation Institute of the Imperial Japanese Navy. After World War II, he studied Statis- tics with Matosaburo Masuyama. He visited the Indian Statistical Institute during 1954–55 where he had the opportunity to inter- act with C. R. Rao, Ronald Fisher, and Walter Shewhart. He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Kyushu University in 1962.

Taguchi joined the Electrical Communication Laboratory (ECL) in 1950 where he was responsible for developing methods that could be used for designing and producing high reliability telecommunications products using then-available low quality compo- nents and equipment. This led to his work in Quality Engineering, later known as Robust Design or Taguchi Method. From 1950 to 1962, he worked on the design and manufacture of cross bar telephone switches leading to dramatic increase in ECL switch reliability versus its key competitor, Western Electric. In fact, the reliability of the switches was so superior that Western Electric started buying switches from Japan.

Taguchi's Quality Engineering methods focus on economically reducing product and process performance variation. They improve engineering productivity and deliver products at significantly low cost while providing consistently high performance under diverse operating conditions. Although his ideas have created controversy among some statisticians, there can be nodoubt about the lasting impact of his work and the transformative role he has played in Quality Improvement, especially in the application of Design of Experiments for variation reduction.

Motivated by gratitude for helping Japan after World War II, Taguchi wanted to come to the US and expose the engineering com- munity to his ideas on Quality Engineering. He began this project in 1980 by volunteering his time at Bell Labs, the place where the science of Quality Control was born, because of the tremendous contributions of Bell Labs and the Western Electric Company to Japan. Soon his message spread to other major industries in US and globally. His humble wish was to improve global productivity, leading to prosperity and peace.

He is survived by his wife Kiyoh, daughter Kumiko, son Shin, a daughter-in-law, and three grand-daughters.

Madhav S. Phadke [email protected]

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ASMBI Update

ASMBI and ISBIS have decided to pay tribute to the late George E. P. Box with a special issue. This issue will be edited by two of his former students, Bovas Abraham and David Steinberg, in cooperation with Nalini Ravishanker. Submissions, although by invitation, will be reviewed according to the usual ASMBI standards, and we hope to publish the special issue in January 2014. The fourth 2013 ASMBI issue should include three discussion papers on statistical methods for modeling and forecasting electricity load; we hope that issue will become an important reference in the field. The fifth issue should be a special one on Statistics and Microelectronics. Next year we expect a call for the ISBIS 2014 special issue. Please keep an eye on the announce- ments about the meeting and the deadline for paper submission. As usual, I conclude by inviting you to contribute papers and ideas to ASMBI, YOUR journal and the official journal of ISBIS.

Fabrizio Ruggeri ([email protected]) ASMBI Editor-in-Chief ______

Members News

Bovas Abraham was awarded Honorary Membership in the Statistical Society of Canada in May 2013. The distinction recognizes his exceptional contributions to the development of statistical sciences in Can- ada and internationally.

Bovas is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Wa- terloo. He was born in Kerala, South India, where he attended the University of Kerala. He obtained his M. Sc. from the University of Guelph in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. under the supervision of George Box. He joined the Department of Statistics and Actuar- ial Science at the University of Waterloo in 1977.

Bovas has made many contributions to the statistics profession. He is a former President of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and the founding president of the Business and Industrial Statistics Section of the SSC as well as the founding president of ISBIS. He was the Director of the Institute for Improvement in Quality and Productivity at the University of Waterloo for nearly ten years. He has been involved in graduate training, teaching courses and supervising Masters and Ph. D students since 1977. He has published extensively in time series analysis, quality improvement, and the management and implementation of statistical procedures such as Designed Experiments, SPC and is co-author of the popular books Statistical Methods for Forecasting, and Introduc- tion to Regression Modeling. He has also acted as an educator and consultant in a wide range of statistical applications in industry in Canada, Latin America, India and the United States. Bovas is also a Fellow of the American Society for Quality, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and an Elected Member of the International Statisti- cal Institute. In addition he holds the Service Award from the International Statistical Institute (2007) and the William G.Hunter award from the Statistics Division of the American Society for Quality (2006). ______

Ananda Sen, at the Department of Family Medicine And Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has been selected as a 2013 Fellow of American Statistical Association for his outstanding contributions to the statistics profession. He will be presented with his award on Tuesday, August 6, 2013, in Montréal, Canada during the Joint Statistical Meetings awards ceremony.

Ananda has also been appointed as the Book Reviews Editor of the International Statistical Review.

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Members News (contd.)

Ron Fricker has been promoted to full The Greenfield Industrial Medal is professor in the Operations Research awarded to Ron Kenett for his exten- Department at the Naval Postgraduate sive work in the development and ap- School in Monterey, California. He also plication of statistics in business and just published Introduction to Statistical industry, and in recognition of his sig- Methods for Biosurveillances with Cam- nificant and sustained contributions as bridge University Press. author, teacher and active practitioner. Through his consulting work, he has promoted the use of statistical methods across a wide range of strategic Galit Shmueli has authored a book called business activities, including Six Sigma quality systems, risk "Getting Started with Business Analytics: management and surveys of customers and employees. Insightful Decision-Making" (with David Hardoon) which has been published by CRC Sung Hyun Park, a former vice- Press. She also instructed a 2-day "crash president of ISBIS (2005-2007) became course" on Effective Data Presentation in the President of the Korean Academy Thimphu, Bhutan, March 23-29, 2013 of Science and Technology (KAST) from which was attended by decision makers March 1, 2013. In 2012, he authored a from government, corporate, private and book entitled "Attractions of Statistics", education organizations in the Kingdom published by the Korean Academy of Bhutan. Science and Technology.

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Upcoming Events

ISBIS 2014, Durham, North Carolina, USA — June 9‐11, 2014

The next ISBIS biennial symposium will be held in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The event is being co- sponsored by the American Statistical Association's Section on Statistical Learning and Data Mining, and a theme of the meeting will be modern business analytics. The Conference Chair is David Banks. Additional details will be available on the ISBIS website closer to the date. ______

The 3rd International Symposium on Statistical Process Control (ISSPC) will be held in Greece, from 9th to 11th of July, at the premises of the University of Pirae- us, Greece (http://isspc.unipi.gr). It is organized by the Department of Statistics and Insurance Science. The conference aims (a) to disseminate original and highly -qualitative results and (b) to bring together researchers, who work actively on the field of SPC supporting the exchange of opinions and the formation of new research groups and collaborations. All SPC related topics are of interest. These include new SPC procedures, adaptive control procedures, Bayesian procedures, non -parametric control charts, profile monitoring techniques, design and optimization of control procedures, promising SPC applications, multivariate SPC, capa- bility analysis, etc. Selected papers presented in the 3rd ISSPC, will be published in “Quality Technology & Quantitative Management”, in a special issue of the journal, after a peer review process.

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Upcoming Events (contd.)

Workshop on “Reliability Theory and Survival Analysis” Department of Statistics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin, India

The Seventh Workshop on “Reliability Theory and Survival Analysis will be held in Cochin, India, during December 30, 2013 – Jan‐ uary 1, 2014. The purpose of the workshop is to provide a forum to researchers working in various subareas of Reliability Theory and Survival Analysis to sit together and discuss past, current and future developments in the area. The workshop also aims to provide a joint platform for the interaction of advanced level Ph.D. students and young researchers with senior established researchers and people working in industries. There will be short courses, invited review-type lectures, presentations by young statisticians, and industry sessions. For information, please contact the convener P. G. Sankaran ([email protected]). ______

Third Symposium on Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk

Actons Hotel, Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, July 8th - 10th, 2013. For details visit https://www.cs.tcd.ie/disciplines/statistics/ statica/statica_web//GDRR13/GDRR13.html. ______

Launching of the International Year of Statistics 2013 in the Philipines

The National Statistics Office (NSO) of the Philippines, the major statistical agency of the government, organized and hosted the Launching Forum for the 2013 International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013) onFebruary 6, 2013 at the Century Park Hotel, Manila. The activity brought together officials and representatives of the different statistical agencies in the Philippine Statistical System which include the National Statisti- cal Coordination Board, NSO, Statistical Research and Training Center, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics, the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics, and the Department of Economic Statistics of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The Launching Forum of Statistics2013 also highlight- ed two of the major nationwide undertaking of the NSO this year – the 2012 Census of Agriculture and Fisheries and the 2012 Census of Philippine Business and Industries. The other statistical agencies presented their respective mandates, the socio- economic indicators generated, and the promotional activities to be undertaken during the worldwide cel- ebration of Statistics2013. Over 90 participants from the different national government agencies, aca- deme, and private sectors attended the event.

Dr. Arsenio Balisacan, the Socio-Economic Planning Secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority, was the keynote speaker during the launching forum. Dr. Balisacan stressed that while each statistical agency responds to many different designated statistical activities and shares a network of collaboration and cooperation, “we are connected bya common professional culture that adheres to the Principles of Official Statistics, and indeed this is one of the notable strengths of our statistical system.”

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NEWS from ENBIS

ENBIS-13 WILL TAKE PLACE IN ANKARA (TURKEY)

All information concerning the 13th Annual Conference of ENBIS is available online at www.enbis.org . There will also be the fol- lowing pre- and post-conference workshops:  Statistical Methods for Product Reliability Improvement (by Nikolaus Haselgruber, CIS).  Introduction to Generalized Linear Mixed Models (by Tim Robinson, University of Wyoming).  Statistical Discovery in Manufacturing (by Volker Kraft, JMP).  Common Mistakes in Six Sigma Projects and How to Avoid Them (by Xavier Tort, UPC Barcelona).

ENBIS HAS LAUNCHED A WEBINAR SERIES: THE NEXT ENBIS WEBINAR IS SCHEDULED FOR JULY 3RD, 2013 We are planning to carry out a series of monthly 45 minute long webinars taking place at 12:45-13:30 Central European Time. The first one took place on May 13th, 2013, on the topic “Clients don’t think like statisticians” presented by Roland Caulcutt and moderated by Antje Christensen. The next one is scheduled for July 3rd and will be dedicated to “Quality Improvement in Pharma” presented by Antje Christen‐ sen and moderated by Shirley Coleman. Book your place by sending an e-mail to [email protected].

 INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ENBIS CHALLENGE BY JMP  INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GREENFIELD CHALLENGE BY WILEY

See www.enbis.org for details on these ENBIS initiatives and how to participate. ______

Nominations for the Election of ISI Officers for 2015-17

The nominating committee for the next ISI election is already set up. See http://www.isi-web.org/for the call for nominations. It is important for us to make an extra effort to nominate ISBIS members who are also ISI members so that ISBIS has a good repre- sentation in the running of the ISI. Please send your suggestions to Bovas Abraham at [email protected]

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Final Words from the Editor

This is my final message as Editor of ISBIS Newsletter. I thank Vijay Nair for giving me an opportunity to serve ISBIS in this capacity. The new Editor has not yet been named. S/he will take over when the newly elected Officers of ISBIS assume office in September 2013.

I’m sure many of you will be attending the WSC at Hong Kong and participating in activities there. Make sure to share your experiences about the WSC with other members who are not able to make it to Hong Kong. Please contribute these and your personal news items for the next Newsletter, which will be published after WSC2013. You may e-mail the news items to me at [email protected], and I will pass them on to the new Editor.

With best regards, Balakrishna.