Volume 32 Issue 2 IMS Bulletin March/April 2003 If you’re going to San Francisco… JSM2003: August 3–7, 2003, San Francisco e IMS Annual Meeting is part CONTENTS of the JSM (Joint Statistical Meetings), held jointly with the American Statistical 1 JSM2003: Preview Association, the International Biometric 2 Members’ News; Society (ENAR and WNAR), and the Contacting the IMS Statistical Society of Canada. Activities of the JSM include oral presentations, panel 3 IMS Vote Counting Bureau Visitor’s and Picture courtesy Convention of San Francisco sessions, poster presentations, continuing San Francisco’s cable cars are America’s only moving national historic landmarks 5 Wald & Medallion education courses, exhibit hall, placement Lectures: Preview service, committee meetings, social two discussants per session (see Page ). 7 JSM Session Info activities, and networking opportunities. e focus is on spline ANOVA models San Francisco is the host city for and support vector machines. On this 11 IMS Mini-meetings JSM and off ers a wide range of theme, several Invited Paper Sessions on 13 Who’s This? possibilities for sharing time with friends machine learning and related topics are Call for Papers and colleagues. JSM will be held at sponsored or co-sponsored by the IMS. the Hilton San Francisco, the Nikko and An Invited Overview Lecture on support 14 IMS & Other Meetings and Announcements the Renaissance Parc Hotel. Hope to vector machines, directed towards a see you there! general audience, will be given by Nello 18 Employment Important Dates: Cristianini (U of California, Davis). Opportunities • May : Registration materials available on Another highlight of the program this 21 International Calendar JSM web site (see below). year is the Le Cam Lecture. Established of Statistical Events • July : Last day for early bird registration last year, the fi rst Le Cam Lecture will be David Donoho 23 Information for forms to arrive at ASA Offi ce. delivered by (Stanford Advertisers • July –: Advanced Registration U) on “Asymptotic Equivalence of (increased fees apply) Experiments: An Appreciation”, with • July : Hotel reservations deadline. discussant David Pollard (Yale U). • July –August : On-site registration fees. JSM will feature four IMS Local Information: Medallion Lectures, which will be e JSM website (www.amstat.org/ presented by Sara van de Geer* (Leiden meetings/jsm/2003/) provides some U, Netherlands); Arkadi Nemirovski information about San Francisco. To learn (Technion, Israel); James Robins more about the city, its activities, places (Harvard U); and Maria Eulalia Vares* to go and things to do, visit www.bestof (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, sanfrancisco.net/ For nearby areas, visit Brasil) [*see page for a preview of these www.bayarea.citysearch.com/ lectures]. Highlights of the IMS Program at JSM 2003 Information about the IMS Invited is year’s Wald Lecturer will be Grace Paper Sessions and Topic Contributed Wahba (U of Wisconsin-Madison). Sessions can be found on page . e three Wald Lectures will include Jane-Ling Wang, IMS Program Chair IMS 2 . IMS Bulletin Volume 32 . Issue 2 March/April . 2003 IMS Bulletin . 3 Bulletin Volume 32, Issue 2 March/April 2003 News from IMS members ISSN 0146-3942 Bradley Efron, Max H. Stein Professor in the Dept of Statistics at Stanford U is the first recipient of the C. R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize Contact for Outstanding Research in Statistics awarded by the Department Information of Statistics, Penn State University. e prize was established to honor and recognize outstanding and influential innovations in To contact the IMS Bulletin: the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistical research, and pioneering Bulletin Editor Bernard Silverman contributions by a recognized leader in the field of statistics. Assistant Editor Tati Howell Submissions in MS Word or plain William F. Rosenberger and John M. Lachin’s new book “Randomization in Clinical Trials: text, please. eory and Practice” (John Wiley and Sons, ) was named “Outstanding Professional Send by email: [email protected] and Scholarly Title, , Mathematics and Statistics Division” by the Association of or mail: IMS Bulletin American Publishers. PO Box 1986 Bristol IMS Fellow, Professor Kanti Mardia (U of Leeds, UK) is the recipient BS99 1TL of the Guy Medal in Silver for , which is awarded by the Royal UK Statistical Society. e official citation referred to his “many pathbreaking contributions to statistical science, including two fundamental papers To contact the IMS regarding your dues, read to the Society on ‘Statistics of Directional Data’ () and ‘A membership, subscriptions, orders or Penalised Likelihood Approach to Image Warping’ (with C.A. Glasbey, change of address: ), his highly acclaimed monographs and his lasting leadership role in Institute of Mathematical Statistics interdisciplinary research.” Dues and Subscriptions Office 9650 Rockville Pike, Suite L2310 Bethesda, IMS grants ‘divine’ grace…? MD 20814-3998 USA A subscription agency, divine, used by about of the libraries subscribing to IMS t 301.634.7029 f 301.634.7099 journals, has been considering bankruptcy : see the press release dated February on http://www.divine.com/ e [email protected] divine’s website, It has now decided to file a voluntary petition to reorganize under Chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. e press release says “One of divine’s top priorities is ensuring that To contact the IMS regarding any other customers are protected and that they continue to receive products, services and support.” matter, including advertising, copyright e company has been collecting subscription fees and has not then forwarded them to permission, offprint orders, copyright the IMS; this has happened to all publishers and the libraries are aware of it. At this time, transfer, societal matters, meetings, fellows the IMS has agreed to grace our subscribers through divine for the next year, until the issue nominations and content of publications: is resolved. Executive Director, Elyse Gustafson IMS Business Office PO Box 22718 Beachwood, OH 44122 Notes and Corrections: USA Please note that the email address for Steve Lalley, Editor of the Annals of Probability, is t 216.295.2340 actually [email protected] f 216.921.6703 …and the IMS Dues and Subsciptions Office phone and fax numbers are now: e [email protected] tel 301-634-7029, fax 301-634-7099 2 . IMS Bulletin Volume 32 . Issue 2 March/April . 2003 IMS Bulletin . 3 Executive Committee President Raghu Varadhan [email protected] Counting IMS elections: new procedure President-Elect Terry Speed [email protected] Last summer the IMS Council agreed a or www.electoral-reform.org.uk. Our change in the way that elections to Council own software is on the IMS website Past President Iain Johnstone [email protected] will be conducted. In future the elections (www.imstat.org/elections/stv.html) so you will be carried out by preference voting can check what is going on. To be elected Executive Secretary Alicia Carriquiry [email protected] using the Single Transferable Vote system. a candidate must achieve the quota of Why the change? N/(m+), where N is the total number of Treasurer Julia Norton [email protected] Under the previous system, little-known votes cast and m the number of vacancies Program Secretary Susan Murphy candidates, or candidates from under- to be filled. Excess votes over the quota are [email protected] represented groups, had not much appropriately downweighted and allocated chance of being elected. Under STV, the to the next preference of voters. Suppose representation of any group of candidates people vote and there were places IMS Editors Annals of Statistics Jon Wellner is roughly in proportion to the support to be filled. If people vote for Revd [email protected] that group has. is should lead to a more omas Bayes for council, then he will & John Marden diverse Council. Furthermore it will give be elected. If everyone votes for Bayes, [email protected] individually nominated candidates, other then only ¹/₆ of each vote goes to elect Annals of Probability Steven Lalley than those chosen by the nominating Bayes; the remaining ⁵/₆ is distributed to [email protected] committee, a real chance of being elected. second preferences. On the other hand Annals of Applied Probability Do you feel strongly that young candidates, if no candidate reaches the quota, the Robert Adler for instance, should be elected? Only a candidate with the least number of votes [email protected] small proportion of voters need to put is eliminated and their votes transferred to Statistical Science George Casella younger candidates at the top of their list next preferences. So if everyone is feeling [email protected] of preferences, to be sure that at least one frequentist and Bayes only gets a few votes, IMS Lecture Notes - Monograph Series will get in. Also, it doesn’t matter how those votes are not wasted; Bayes is dropped Joel Greenhouse [email protected] many “young” candidates there are; votes out and the votes transferred. for unsuccessful candidates are transferred, Where is STV used? Managing Editor - Statistics Paul Shaman so votes for “hopeless” candidates are not STV is used in elections for the [email protected] wasted. governments of various countries like Managing Editor - Probability How do I vote under STV? Ireland and Australia. It is used by many Michael Phelan Simply number your preferences , , ... non-governmental organisations, like the [email protected] until you have no preference between Royal Statistical Society. It’s particularly Electronic Journal of Probability remaining candidates. Easy, isn’t it? ere is appropriate for situations where it is not Ted Cox no disadvantage to your originally preferred important that a single party or group has [email protected] candidates in expressing a full list of a clear majority, but where the important Electronic Communications in Probability preferences; later preferences are only used aim is a diverse representation of the voters’ Martin Barlow when the fate of candidates given higher views.