New Zealand Statistical Association Newsletter 58
March 2003
NZSA 2003 report
Young Statisticians report
NZAMT Conference report
HRS Finance Seminar details
Australasian Region IBS 2003 details
International Biometrics Conference details
Estimating Animal Abundance details
New Zealand Statistical
Association 2003 Conference
Massey University, Palmerston North, 2-4 July 2003
‘Abandoning Independence’
This year’s conference at Massey was a great success, with high energy inputs from the invited speakers, a rich variety of contributed talks, and a conference dinner that featured a typically Kiwi awards ceremony. If you missed it, there are in fact many reasons to celebrate the contributions of these leaders of our statistical community, and they are covered in the awards page.
Invited speakers Joe Gani, Bruce Weir, Nick Longford and Kerrie Mengersen (left to right), with gifts presented by Steve Haslett in the closing session of the NZSA 2003 Conference
Our thanks to the invited speakers, Nick Longford, Peter O’Hanlon (pictured above with Siva Ganesh) Bruce Weir (see http://ifs.massey.ac.nz/mathnews/NZMS87/news87a.shtml#centrefold), Kerrie Mengersen and Joe Gani (below, with Alasdair Noble’s children at the top of the Pahiatua Track the day after the conference, experiencing a touch of the NZ winter).
All credit to the organizing committees led by Mark Bebbington, Duncan Hedderley and Alasdair Noble, supported by Christine Allport and Wendy Browne, for their sterling work. As Duncan summed up, "Wow! Nothing went wrong. And there was even decent vegetarian food. Wow!"
Wendy Browne and Christine Allport enjoy the conference dinner and bouquets of flowers in thanks for their contribution towards organizing the conference.
A group of young statisticians (pictured below) shared a meal at a local restaurant on the first night of the conference. David Baird, Tim Ball, Siva Ganesh, and Anne Lawrence also gave them some advice on the rigours of working life. Topics ranged from contrary students to the harsh reality that most agricultural experiments revolve around animal droppings (at least in David’s experience - but thankfully the speeches did not take place during the meal). Ganesh revealed the perks that we all suspected university lecturers had, but hadn’t dared ask about (golf on Fridays, etc., etc...). Tim convinced us that consultants actually do work for a living. Anne took a risk and asked people to think of one of their high school teachers, and then to put up their hands if it was their English teacher, their Geography teacher, and so on. An overwhelming majority had thought of their Maths teacher - so there you go!
Maaike Bendall
The Hoare Research Software prizes totalling $1000 for the best presentations by students were awarded by Ray Hoare at the conference dinner. First prize went to Carole Wright for her talk entitled "Quick Generation of Row-Column Designs", second to Katarina Domijan for "Semi-mechanistic modelling in Nonlinear Regression: a case study", and third to Alasdair Noble for "Small Area Estimation: A GLM Approach".
Ray Hoare (right) presents the HRS student prizes to (left to right) Alasdair Noble, Carole Wright and Katarina Domijan.
Over 400 teachers registered for the NZ Association of Mathematics Teachers Conference that was held during the first week of the July school holidays in Hamilton. "Mooloo Mathematics and Magic" was the theme for a very successful gathering of mathematics teachers.
Harold Henderson was honoured as the Bevan Werry memorial speaker. He presented an exciting range of data manipulations to entertain, inform and generally encourage teachers to develop their knowledge of statistics. The NZSA sponsored Prof Jeff Witmer from the Department of Mathematics, Oberlin College, Ohio, and were able to promote the Statistics Association with his introduction.
Details of speakers and events involved are available from http://www.nzamt8.ac.nz, a site set up for people to access relevant material and presentations this year.
Gwenda Hill
Hoare Research Software, in collaboration with The MathWorks, would like to invite members of the New Zealand Statistics Association to attend our Finance Seminars in Auckland and Wellington on the 15th and 16th of September, 2003, respectively.
The seminars are called "Financial Modelling and Application Development" and will demonstrate how tools from The MathWorks can help you develop financial models faster. If you are interested in how to develop sophisticated financial applications for trading, risk management, economics or financial modelling in other areas, attend one of our seminars.
To register or to find out more information, go to http://www.hrs.co.nz/finance_seminar. Alternatively, you can register by emailing leon@hrs.co.nz or by calling 0800 477 776.
Please note that seminars are free, but numbers are limited, so register soon to secure a place. Contact me for an information pack if you are unable to attend.
Feel free to pass this notice onto any person that you think would benefit from the finance seminars. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Leon Tepania
Biennial Conference of the International Biometric Society (Australasian Region) 2003
Australian National University, Canberra
December 3-5, 2003
Web: http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/events/IBS03/template.html
Conference Themes and Speakers
- • Air, Earth, Fire, Water
Biometrical perspectives on the landscape
David Lindenmayer, Ross Cunningham (ANU) - • Healthy populations
Genetics, clinical trials, modelling disease spread
Matt Wand (UNSW), Mick Roberts (Massey University, Albany), Annette O'Connor (Canberra) - • Biometrics meets Bioinformatics
Design and Analysis of Gene Expression Microarray Experiments
David Baird, Harold Henderson (AgResearch)
Talks on these themes or any other are invited, with abstract submission and all up-to-date details through the web page.
The conference will be held in conjunction with the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) "Summer Symposium in Bioinformatics" (http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/events/BioInfoSummer/), which will run over 1-5 December. On Friday, 5 December, one strand of the IBS conference and the Symposium will combine for invited and contributed paper sessions on the "Design and Analysis of Gene Expression Microarray Experiments".
XXIInd International Biometric
Conference
in parallel with
Australian Statistical Conference
Cairns Convention Centre,
Queensland, Australia
July 11-16, 2004
It is expected that the joint conference will attract over 700 delegates and include eminent international speakers, leading researchers and participants from both Australia and overseas. Delegates will be able to attend sessions of either conference, ensuring a rich and varied scientific program.
Cairns has been chosen as the venue as it is the central hub of beautiful North Queensland, and an array of social events and tours will be arranged to take advantage of this.
Check http://www.ozaccom.com.au//Cairns2004/program.html for the list of Invited Speakers
NOW OPEN!
Register for the conference or submit an abstract for presentation at
www.ozaccom.com.au/ibc2004
We look forward to seeing you in Cairns in 2004!
IBC & ASC 2004 Congress Secretariat
cairns2004@ozaccom.com.au
Venue: University of Canterbury, Christchurch
19 - 22 July 2004
Presenters:
Dr. David Borchers is head of the Research Unit for Wildlife Population
Assessment. He has 15 years experience in animal abundance estimation, 10 years
experience teaching and is the lead author of the main course text.
Prof. Walter Zucchini
is director of the Institute of Statistics and
Econometrics at the University of Göttingen. He is a co-author or the main
course text and of the associated software library WiSP. He has 30 years of
teaching and consulting experience.
This four-day workshop will introduce participants to the most important methods of estimating animal abundance, including recently-developed methods. We will explain the common key statistical concepts underlying the methods, and build on these to create an understanding of advanced and recently-developed methods. The workshop will combine lectures with hands-on computer sessions aimed to give participants experience in using the methods.
The material is designed primarily for life- and environmental scientists, wildlife managers and conservation workers, but it will also be of interest to applied statisticians working in these fields.
Added in Press:
This course will teach the concepts underlying abundance estimation methods in a rigorous but accessible way. Roughly half the course will involve participants using the methods in computer simulations, to build understanding by experience. We cover all the main methods of estimating closed population abundance as well as more advanced methods that integrate various of these. The way these methods are extended to open populations is covered, but open population methods themselves are covered only in brief outline.
The following publications and software will be provided to participants at no additional cost:
-
Estimating Animal Abundance: Closed Populations , D.L. Borchers, S.T. Buckland and W. Zucchini, Springer Verlag, 2002.
-
Lecture notes containing all of the overheads and slides shown during the workshop.
-
The free statistical software R and the wildlife simulation program used on the course.
Webpage and registration information:
http://www.creem.st-and.ac.uk/conferences.php
Cost: $NZ950 + GST
Contact: Ian Westbrooke - iwestbrooke@doc.govt.nz