New Zealand Statistical Association Newsletter 64
September 2006
Reports
ASC/NZSA 2006 - Official (David Scott)
ASC/NZSA 2006 - Student View (Derek Law)Coming Events
NZSA 2007
Palmy-Statisticians
Conference Report: ASC/NZSA 2006
Conference Aims
ASC/NZSA 2006, the joint conference of the Statistical Society of Australia Inc (SSAI) and the New Zealand Statistical Association (NZSA) was held at SKYCITY Convention Centre, Auckland, from July 3 to 6, 2006. The aim of the conference was to bring together statisticians from Australia and New Zealand, offering a rich program of invited and contributed talks, led by top class keynote speakers. The conference was intended to be attractive to young statisticians and students, with special events and heavily reduced student prices. The Organising Committee also promoted the running of workshops around the time of the conference.
2 Attendance
Overall attendance was 290, broken down as:
| Australia | New Zealand | Other | Total | |
| Full | 102 |
99 |
43 |
54 |
| Student | 13 |
26 |
7 |
46 |
| Total | 115 |
125 |
50 |
290 |
These registrations include 19 exhibitors.
Conference Program
William
Dunsmuir and the Program Committee provided a superb array of speakers.
David Donoho (Stanford), Xiao-Li Meng (Harvard) and Peter Hall (ANU) were
the Keynote Speakers, and Ray Chambers (Southampton) gave the Foreman
Lecture (right). There were 48 invited talks, of 45 minutes plus additional
question time, 150 contributed talks allotted 20 minutes and 16 poster
presentations. The invited speakers were of very high quality, including
many from outside Australasia, including Alan Agresti, Steve Buckland,
Christian Robert and Kirk Wolter amongst the better known.
Tuesday, July 4 was designated Official Statistics day and featured the
Foreman Lecture, invited talks of particular interest to official statisticians,
and the Official Statistics Forum with talks by the Australian Statistician,
Dennis Trewin, and the New Zealand Government Statistician, Brian Pink.
Besides official statistics, other special interest groups of the SSAI
were catered for with invited and contributed sessions.
Social Activities
The Welcome Reception was held on Monday evening, sponsored by SAS. After the Welcome Reception, there was an evening for for young statisticians. The Conference Dinner was held on Tuesday at SKYCITY with an attendance of 117. A trio of student musicians from the University of Auckland played classical music to accompany the dinner. The Conference Organisers, Tour Hosts, also offered tours to local attractions such as the Waitakeres and Waiheke Island.
Society Activities
Meetings were held of the SSAI and ASPAI (responsible for publishing the ANZ Journal of Statistics) and the NZSA, and a joint meeting of the SSAI and the NZSA. Jean Thompson was presented with Life Membership for her contribution to the NZSA. John Darroch was presented with the Pitman Medal for 2005 and Daryl Daley the Pitman Medal for 2006 for contributions to SSAI and Australian Statistics. Murray Jorgensen (President of the NZSA) and Kaye Basford (President of the SSAI) gave short presentations as part of the final session of the Conference.
Sponsorship and Display
SAS was the Principal Sponsor for the Conference, and
Roche Pharmaceuticals was a Major Sponsor. Other sponsorship was received
from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand, the
Royal Society of New Zealand, Eli Lilly, the Australian Mathematical Sciences
Institute (AMSI), the New Zealand Institute for Mathematics and its Applications
(NZIMA), and Agmardt. Data Sciences Australia provided funding for early
career statisticians from Australia to attend the conference. A number
of universities provided funding for speakers. The NZSA funded young statisticians
from New Zealand to attend the conference. 
Ray
Hoare from Hoare Research Software provided prizes for the best talks
by New Zealand students, won by Steven Miller of the University of Auckland
(right). Equal second prizes were awarded to Matthew Schofield and Janine
Wright, both from Otago University. SSAI provided funding for the EJ Pitman
Prize for the best talk by a young statistician at the Australian Statistical
Conference, which was won by Jonathan Tuke from the University of Adelaide.
In the area for lunch and morning and afternoon teas there was an exhibition with 13 booths displaying books and software or promoting organisations with an interest in statistics. Exhibitors were: SAS; Blackwell Publishing; Thomson Learning; Palisade; SPSS Australasia Pty Ltd; Hoare Research Software Ltd; Eli Lilly Australia Pty Ltd; Space-Time Research; SolutionMetrics; SSAI and NZSA; Alexander Technology; Statistics New Zealand; and CSIRO. Eli Lilly were undoubtedly the most popular since they were offering free espresso coffee!
Organisation
Tour Hosts Australia were the Conference Organisers, led by Felicity Kent and Alana Sanburg. The Organising Committee comprised David Scott, William Dunsmuir, Neville Bartlett and Harold Henderson. William Dunsmuir was Chair of the Program Committee, with members David Scott, Kerrie Mengersen, Beatrix Jones, Marti Anderson and Chris Carter.
Workshops
Three workshops were held in conjunction with the conference. Steve Buckland presented a workshop on Distance Sampling, organised by Marti Anderson. R-Fest was a series of workshops on S, R and Bioconductor with presenters Bill Venables, Paul Murrell and Robert Gentleman. A stochastic processes workshop was organised by Ilze Ziedins.
Thanks
I hope I don’t miss out anybody here: it would be easy to do because many people assisted in varying degrees. I truly appreciated the help and cooperation of you all. I am most grateful to the sponsors, the Organising Committee, the Program Committee and workshop organisers. Others who contributed were session organisers, invited speakers and presenters of contributed papers and posters. Statistics New Zealand and the Australian Bureau of Statistics were strong supporters. Both the NZSA and the SSAI backed the holding of a joint conference. My own department, the Statistics Department at the University of Auckland, helped financially and administratively, and gave me strong encouragement. Lastly, thanks to all those who attended.
David Scott
ASC/NZSA 2006: A Student's Perspective
I still hold vivid memories from two months ago, when I shrank
myself into a 12-inch dwarf apologising to our departmental manager for
my 20-daylate request to participate in the NZSA/ASC conference. To this
day, while I still feel apologetic about that incident, the decision was
undoubtedly a good one as the conference actually exceeded my highest
expectations. Since presentations are mostly targeted to more experienced
researchers, it is not uncommon for a first time participant to lose track
of the talks shortly after the background ideas were introduced. As one
of these clueless individuals 5 years ago, I was comforted by my lecturers
that we were in to discover or to remind ourselves how little we know.
During this conference however, be it a matter of luck in choosing the
talks, or be it due to experience, there were a number of talks which
I found accessible and I found myself learning something. I have to say,
this is a great feeling knowing that instead of attending a conference
just to broaden our ignorance, there are actually gold snippets (and delicious
oysters too!) to be picked up on the way.
And while many of the talks I attended were nothing s
hort
of illuminating, the one presentation worth particular mention though
has to be the plenary session by Professor Xiao-Li Meng (right). Ever
since I began my studies in statistics back in 1997, we were almost always
taught about the idea that “sample size - the larger the better”.
The only exception happened a couple of years ago, when I was given a
5-minute session about why meta-analysis is less attractive than one might
think. However, this did not go to the extreme of saying data can be “contaminated”
by some other data. So there I sat in the conference room, trying to follow
Professor Meng’s argument to debunk this well accepted truth. At
the end when he gave the concluding remark - “Large size is good,
but only if you know how to use it”, I was shaking my head in wonder,
with a big smile. . .
It had also been a great pleasure to meet up with old friends, many of
whom I could only see rarely – partly because of the nature of my
research, and partly because most of them had gone into the workforce
or had left New Zealand to pursue further studies. Further, I was introduced
to several researchers from other universities, most notably Professor
Nakano from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo. He and
his team are amongst the very rare individuals who conduct research on
3D statistical visualisations. Being another researcher in this slowly
emerging field myself, I did not place high hopes on meeting anyone who
shared my research interest. So this time being able to meet Professor
Nakano was a very pleasant surprise indeed. We spent an afternoon discussing
our own softwares, and I was delighted to be given some very constructive
advice on how I can further my research.
Finally, having been given the opportunity to write this article, I would
like to express my heart-felt gratitude for all the hard work the organising
committee had put in to make this conference a great success. I am also
very grateful to NZSA and Statistics Department of Auckland University
for generously subsidising our registrations so we poor students could
participate in such a worthwhile event. Last but not least, I need to
thank Sharon for not kicking me out of the office window when I made that
later than last minute request to participate in the conference, as I
would not be here sharing my joy with my fellow statisticians.
Derek Law
NZSA 2007 Conference followed by Conference in Honour of Professor John Deely
The NZSA 2007 Conference will
be hosted by the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The conference
is to be held on Wednesday 4 July in the Mathematics, Statistics and Computer
Science Building. The local organising committee are busy putting together
the details of the conference program. The website for the conference
will be released soon with more information, but any of you eager to find
out more can email us at nzsa2007@gmail.com.
We are also pleased to announce a tandem conference in honour of Professor
John Deely, former Chair of Statistics at Canterbury, to be held on 5-6
July 2007. This promises to be a well-attended and lively event, with
many of John's students, colleagues and friends from around the world
expressing a strong desire to join in honouring a much-loved member of
the international statistical community. The conference organiser Mik
Black can be contacted at mik.black@stonebow.otago.ac.nz.
Carl Scarrott
Statistics Forum - Palmerston North
One Day Meeting
of
Palmy-STATISTICIANS
Presented by
AgResearch Grasslands
Palmerston North
&
Institute of Information Sciences and Technology
Massey University, Palmerston North.
Date: 27 Oct. 2006 (Friday)
Time: 9 am -5 pm.
Lunch and Refreshments will be provided for all the participants on the day.
Our key note speaker this year: Dr David Baird- AgResearch-Lincoln
Dear Colleagues,
Continuing the success of our forum last year, we are organising a similar one as detailed above. Please keep this date free to attend and contribute to this fruitfull exercise. Those who wish to make a presentation, please send your abstract to us at your earliest.
The purpose of this forum would be to bring Statisticians in and around Massey University together for a day at our Institute for the presentation of their current research work and a group discussion on issues relevant to applications.
One of the vital skills in research is the ability to communicate the results to colleagues who may not be specialists in a particular area of research. Therefore, we would also like this forum to give our Majoring and Postgraduate students the opportunity to participate in this friendly environment and learn this vital skill.
* Please feel free to pass this invitation to anyone else in the local area who might be interested.
Ganes & Alasdair (Coordinators)
IIS&T(Statistics)College of Sciences; Massey University
Palmerston North
Email: s.ganesalingam@massey.ac.nz
Email: a.d.noble@massey.ac.nz