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Published by the New Zealand Statistical Association (Inc.), P.O. Box 1731, Wellington, New Zealand. The views expressed by contributors to thisNewsletter should not be attributed to the New Zealand Statistical Association.

ISSN 0112-2649

The New Zealand Statistical Associationwww.stat.auckland.ac.nz/nzsa

Newsletter April 2002Number 55

Editor’s last standAlas, it’s time for me to handthe mantle of Newslettereditorship over to some otherlucky NZSA member.

I’m moving on to theposition of ApplicationsEditor of the Oz and NewZealand Journal ofStatistics. Funny thing,unlike when I agreed to beNewsletter Editor, I was

completely sober this time. The Editorial Board hasalready been re-jigged and I’m very pleased to saythat it now includes Jennifer Brown (Canterbury),James Curran (Waikato), John Eccleston(Queensland), Robert Gentleman (Harvard School ofPublic Health), Geof Givens (Colorado State), GaryGrunwald (Colorado), Stephen Haslett (Massey),Harold Henderson (AgResearch), Brian McArdle(Auckland), Bryan Manly (Western EcoSystemsTechnology), John Reynolds (Agriculture Victoria),and Siu-Ming Tam (Australian Bureau of Statistics).

Putting a newsletter together isn’t that bad a job,the very first time excepted because of the variousPageMaker tricks that need to be learned. I can throwa newsletter together in a day now. [Apologies, I took2 months to add the conference report - Harold.]

The hard part is keeping the contributions flowingin, and that’s where the Editor has to rely on members.I’d like to thank all the members who madecontributions to Newsletter over the last three years,and I hope that they will be as obliging for the newEditor. I’m delighted to announce it’s Roger Littlejohnfrom AgResearch Invermay. Roger did a superb jobas webmaster for the conference and we can all lookforward to the next issue with great interest.

Don’t forget that the Newsletter is a service formembers. In the internet age it remains an importantway for NZ statisticians to keep in touch, and a placefor announcements that are important, but not of anurgent nature. And, it goes well with a cup of coffee!

Russell Millar

New Zealand StatisticalAssociation 2002 Conference,AGM and Data Mining Workshop10 and 11 June 2002University of Waikato

Monday 10 June 200210am-5pm NZSA one-day conference5-6pm NZSA AGM6.30pm Dinner at The Station at the University

Judi McWhirter chairs the local organising group,James Curran is programme chair and Karen Devoyis dealing with registrations and enquiries. Contributedpapers on the Data Mining theme and other statisticaltopics are welcome. Abstract submission by May 27is at http://www.stats.waikato.ac.nz/

Tuesday 11 June 2002The 2002 Waikato Centre for Applied Statistics(WCAS) workshop will be presented on Data Miningby Geoff Holmes and team from the MachineLearning Group in the University of WaikatoComputer Science Department. The programme from10am-5pm on Tuesday 11 June will include

• Basics of Data Mining• Advanced Data Mining• Tutorial in the Weka computer lab.

Information on the 1999 book by Ian Witten and EibeFrank, in this group, on Data Mining is at http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/book.html

RegistrationRegistration is $85 per day or $150 for both days andthe student rate is $45 per day. Registration is at http://www.stats.waikato.ac.nz/

Australian Statistical Congress7-12 July 2002, CanberraThe Australian Statistical Congress is 7-12 July inCanberra. See http://www.statsoc.org.au/asc16.html

NZSA encourages members to participate in theASC, which is held in even years. (So NZSA hasonly a one-day conference with its AGM this year.)

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Australasian Biometrics & NZSAJoint Conference 2001

The conference was at the Parkroyal Hotel,Christchurch, December 10-13, 2001. More than 200attended and 116 papers were presented.

We are grateful to the sponsors: SAS,AGMARDT, Ceanet, Hoare Research Software,Statistica, Blackwell Publishers, Hearne ScientificSoftware, and SPSS NZ.

Details of the programme are athttp://nzsa.rsnz.govt.nz/Conference/home.htm

Biostatistics WorkshopA two-day Biostatistics Workshop: Missing Valueswas presented by Mike Kenward, Andrea Rotnitzkyand Chris Wild. Two presentations from the workshopwere invited conference papers: Mike Kenward onStochastic imputation methods for modellingincomplete longitudinal data and Andrea Rotnitzkyon Models for conducting sensitivity analysis oflongitudinal data with monotone missing patterns.The Health Research Council of New Zealand wasa sponsor of the workshop.

Participants in the Biostatistics Workshop

Jonathan Godfrey, Natalie Thorne and Jean Yang receiving theircash awards from Ray Hoare

Hoare Research Software StudentprizesJonathan Godfrey won the student prize ($400) andNatalie Thorne and Jean Yang each received $300.We thank Ray Hoare for his continued sponsorship.

Other invited sessions included Terry Speed onMultiple testing in large-scale gene expressionexperiments; Peter Clarke on Mixed models andexperimental design for variety trials; Tony Pettitton Statistical modelling for complex binary datain biometrics; Bryan Manly on Simultaneousestimation of population size and habitat selectionusing line transect sampling; Malcolm Faddy onDiscrete data modelling and analysis and RichardGordon and Chase O’Brien on Changing informationneeds in environmental and biological statistics.

The conference concluded with a special invitedsession on statistical genetics: Bruce Weir on Multi-allelic measures of inbreeding; Greg Gibson onMixed model analysis of contributions totranscriptional variance; Sharon Browning onProbabilities for genetic data from pedigrees;Zhao-Bang Zeng on QTL mapping and geneticarchitecture of quantitative traits. This doubled asthe opening of the Southern Summer Institute ofStatistical Genetics (SSISG).

Southern Summer Institute in StatisticalGeneticsThe institute continued at the University of Canterbury,December 13-18. It consisted of four three-dayworkshops: Genomic Science and Bioinformatics(Gibson and Muse), Population Genetic Data Analysis(Weir, Nielsen and Browning), Quantitative TraitLocus Mapping (Zeng, Doerge and Dodds) andForensic Statistics (Weir, Basten and Curran). Therewere 97 participants in the Institute, mostly from NewZealand and 25 from Australia. We are grateful forgenerous sponsorship from AGMARDT and SAS.

Nine of the SSISG team: (Front L to R) Chris Basten, Bruce Weir,Sharon Browning, Ken Dodds, Zhao-Bang Zeng, (Back) GregGibson, Rebecca Doerge, Spencer Muse and James Curran

Harold Henderson

Bayesian Workshop

A one-day Bayesian Workshop was presented by BillBolstad, James Curran and Martin Upsdell.

Speakers in a bioinformatics session: Terry Speed, Peter Johnston,Nihal De Silva, Ken Dodds, Yvonne Pittelkow, Ben Bolstad, JeanYang and Natalie Thorne. “Inference with Grahams”: GrahamWood, Graham Hepworth, Patrick Graham and Graham McBride

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President’s Report

Many of those whoattended Biometrics/NZSA 2001 inChristchurch fromDecember 10 to 13 wereof the opinion that it wasone of the most enjoyableconferences they hadexperienced for a long time. I thought so too. Therewas an excellent scientific program, meals andfacilities were first class, and the hotel function staffwere very professional. Financially, it was a greatsuccess and the organizers, David Baird, Dave Saville,Roger Littlejohn and Harold Henderson, deserve ourwarmest thanks.

I feel that holding conferences jointly with otherprofessional societies is attractive to potentialattendees, as is having associated workshops. Thisconference was ideal in these respects. I would bevery pleased to hear from members any suggestionof other societies which might welcome a jointconference, and also of possible workshops whichmight be associated with future conferences.

I thank all those who attended the Special GeneralMeeting and offered their opinions and suggestions.It was great to be able to gather the views of memberswithout the pressures of the formal business of theAnnual General Meeting.

This year the NZSA Annual Conference will be inHamilton in early June on the theme of data mining.In 2006 the Annual Conference will be joint with theStatistical Society of Australia, in Auckland.

As always, I welcome your comments. Email meat d.scott@auckland.ac.nz.

David Scott

Request for statistical disasterand success stories

The Statistical Society of Australia Inc (SSAI) ispreparing a nationwide Public Awareness campaign,primarily to support Professional Accreditation, butmore generally, of course, to promote awareness ofthe importance of professionalism in the practice ofStatistics. We shall be targeting groups such asGovernment, employers, contractors of statisticalservices, statisticians, students and prospectivestudents.

In preparing the campaign, we need to accumulatea collection of stories, both of successes due to goodstatistical practice, and of disasters that arose eitherfrom bad practice or from failure to use Statistics.For example, the Challenger disaster provides aclassic example of failure to use statistical methods.

We are appealing to statisticians around the worldto send us such materials. What we require is adescription of (say) at most a page, together withreferences to any publications that provideverification. We would also appreciate directreferences to any books or journal articles addressingsuch matters.

All contributions will be acknowledged and wehope to make the consolidated information generallyavailable.

Please send any responses toSSAI Business OfficeP.O. Box 85AINSLIE ACT 2602AUSTRALIAFax: (61)(2) 6249 8266Email: ssai@ozemail.com.au

Thank you for your assistance.Nicholas FisherPresident, SSAI

I can’t think of any good stories, but I am continuallyamused at the inane attempts by the media to conveyquantitative information. A recent ad on TVadvertizes the high accuracy of a telecommunicationscompany, and in doing so it makes a comparison tomaps by saying that maps are 90% accurate. Whatthe heck does that mean???

Somewhat less obvious, a recent news story saidthat characters in movies are “four times more likely”to smoke than average. How many people thinkprobabilities upon reading that, and how many thinkodds-ratios? (Try it on your 1st year class.) What ifit had been “ten times more likely”?

-Ed

Campbell Award

Murray Jorgensen accepting the NZSA 2001Campbell Award, from David Scott, for service tothe NZSA, particularly editorial service. Murray waseditor of the Newsletter (1993-6), the NZ Statistician(1996-8) and then Applications Editor of the mergedAustralian & NZ Journal of Statistics (1998-2001).

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About 20 contributed workshops dealt withstatistical teaching methods or software.

If anyone suggests that there was an attempt tosubvert this maths conference into a statistics one,we will deny it. In fact, both the organising team andthe participants applied their customary enthusiasmto the statistical aspects of the conference.

The IssuesAs usual, school statistical education in NZ faces somepotentially exhilarating challenges, and would benefitfrom the continuing support of NZ statisticians.

a. There is an increasing amount of softwareavailable that aims to bring statistical subjects(like the central limit theorem) to life, and toprovide interactive learning experiences, (e.g. DrDoug Stirling’s CAST). At present this is oftendistinct from software used for data analysis (e.g.Minitab). It is interesting that the former type ismore affordable, available and attractive than thelatter. The participants were clearly very takenby it.

b. “Statistical thinking” fits in very well with the1992 curriculum document. If NZ is to lead inthis direction, then assessment (NCEA Level 1,2 & 3, and Scholarship) needs to be pointed inthe right direction. Teachers will need to besupported with professional development andresources.

c. There’s a resource that we must provide, andthat is a supply of real data-sets, preferably aslocal as possible. In fact the need is forinformation about investigations, along with thedata-sets. It is easy to provide web access tothese, if they can be found; but it is difficult tofind them.

NZAMT 8: Hamilton, 8-11 July 2003This will be hosted by the Waikato and Bay of PlentyMaths Associations.

Old StatisticiansAdapted from the conference’s daily newsletter: “OldStatisticians never die; they just get disaggregated byage and sex”.

Mike Camden

Statistics at the NZ Associationof Maths Teachers’ Conference

The 7th biennial NZAMT took place in Wellington atthe start of July. A record 480 people took part.

The SpeakersFor a second time,NZSA sponsored anoverseas plenaryspeaker: Dr Gail Burrillfrom Washington DC.Gail has been Presidentof the National Councilof Teachers ofMathematics (USA),and has taken aleadership role inStatistics educationthere and elsewhere.In her address “DataDriven Mathematics: Real Data and Statistics”, sheshowed how statistics can be used to support the restof the mathematics curriculum, to the mutual benefitof all parts.

It was obvious that our speaker had done herhomework very carefully, and based her approachon the “Maths in the NZ Curriculum” document. Gailpresented a workshop as well, as did her husbandJack. Thank you both very much; you’ve met ourrequests in a perfectly targeted way.

We (the NZSA Education Committee) werepleased that Dr Maxine Pfannkuch (University ofAuckland) was a plenary speaker. In her address,“Statistical Thinking: What is it and how can wedevelop it”, she showed that developing statisticalthinking in students and statistics users should be thenext step to the evolution of statistical education. Sheconcluded with a statement that NZ is a world leaderin statistics education, and that by developing our ideason statistical thinking, we can keep ourselves there.

As well, we had plenaries from Dr SharleenForbes (“Measuring the equity of Maths educationoutcomes”) and Dr Tom Koerner (“How to hunt asubmarine”). While their subjects were not specificallystatistical, they both modelled statistical thinking intheir analyses.

Prof David Vere-Jones (“Reflections onMathematical Education”) explored some of the socialfactors of the past two centuries that have broughtMaths and Statistics education in NZ to where it istoday.

John Cornish, Deputy Government Statistician,spoke briefly at the closing session, about theimportance of numeracy.

Gail Burrill

George Styan’s 65th birthdayGeorge Styan from McGill University is a frequentvisitor to NZ and is a longtime member of NZSA.The Eleventh International Workshop on Matrices andStatistics, August 29-31, 2002, in Denmark will be acelebration of the 65th birthday.

For details see http://www.imm.dtu.dk/matrix02/

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Biostat Software

NZSA member Paul Johnson (Davis, CA) writes thathe has recently completed a CD of “BiostatisticalSoftware”. The CD costs US$19.95 which includesshipping and handling to anywhere in the world (sobasically at cost). For more detail seehttp://pages.prodigy.net/johnsonp12/biostat.html

NZMRI Summer Workshop inNapier

The Eighth Summer Workshop of the NZMathematics Research Institute was held in Napier,New Zealand from 6-11 January 2002. Following thestandard format for these workshops, there was aseries of morning and evening talks by sixdistinguished invited lecturers, with afternoons left freefor discussion, networking and leisure. This year thefocus was on probability and statistics with talksgrouped under the general heading of “Applicationsof stochastic processes to biology, medicine andstochastic networks”. There were 62 participants (20of these being postgraduate students) from aroundNew Zealand and Australia.

The speakers and their topics were:

Adrian Baddeley, University of Western Australia,on spatial point patterns – data analysis andmodelling.

David Brillinger, UC Berkeley, on the use of stochasticdifferential equations to model animal motion

Steve Evans, UC Berkeley, on random matrices

Ian McKeague, Florida State University, onillustrations of MCMC in semiparametricregression, survival analysis and spatial statistics

Ruth Williams, UC San Diego, on performance andcontrol of stochastic networks

Keith Worsley, McGill University, on stochasticgeometry and brain imaging.

Alastair Scott

Crew Changes for NZSA andSSA Publications

Chris Lloyd has taken over fromSimon Sheather as ManagingEditor (and Theory and MethodsEditor) of the Australian andNew Zealand Journal ofStatistics.

Russell Millar has taken overfrom Murray Jorgensen as theApplications Editor of ANZJS.

On the newsletter front,Alison Richardson (U. ofCanberra) has taken over from Bob Forrester(CSIRO) as a co-Editor or the Statistical Society ofAustralia’s newsletter and Roger Littlejohn will bethe new editor of the NZSA Newsletter.

Chris LloydAustralasian Conferences

Gordon Smyth maintains a list athttp://www.statsci.org/conf/index.html

Australasian GenStat ConferenceDecember 2-6, 2002, Abbey Beach Resort,West Australia http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/biometrics/genstat2002/

IBC 2004 and ASC, 11-16 July 2004, Cairns

ISI Conference, April 5-12, 2005, Sydney

Effective Data MiningMassey University AlbanyCampus, Auckland24-26 June 2002

This workshop provides an in-depth introduction toData Mining. You will learn about data miningmethods, tools, techniques, applications, advantages,capabilities, limitations and pitfalls. You will leave witha comprehensive set of notes and valuable references.

You will receive a 1-month trial of SAS/EnterpriseMiner, a leading data mining softwarepackage.

The presenters include Denny Meyer, Siva Ganeshand Tim Ball.

Fees1st-Day only (Executive Overview) - $500 (plus GST)Full 3-Day Workshop - $1200 (plus GST)

Registration and workshop detailshttp://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/dmworkshop/email: s.ganesh@massey.ac.nz

Notices

Denny Meyer Siva Ganesh Tim Ball

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Statistics Education News

The SLTR-2 Forum (Statistical Literacy, Thinking andReasoning) at Armidale in Australia was held inAugust. A group of twenty international statisticseducation researchers discussed and shared theirresearch. The focus was on improving theresearchers’ understanding of how students reasonstatistically. A book entitled “The Challenge ofDeveloping Statistical Literacy, Reasoning andThinking”, edited by Dani Ben-Zvi and Joan Garfield,will be produced from the work presented at the firstand second Forums.

The organisation for ICOTS-6 (InternationalConference on Teaching Statistics) in South Africain July 2002 is well underway with about 300 papersexpected by the final January deadline. Preparationsfor the ISI-54 conference in Berlin in 2003 have startedwith presenters already being sought by sessionorganisers.

The IASE Statistics Education ResearchNewsletter will be transformed into the StatisticsEducation Research Journal (SERJ), an electronicjournal starting in May 2002. This journal will bepublished by the International Association forStatistical Education to:

• encourage research activity in statistics education

• advance knowledge about students’ attitudes,conceptions, and difficulties as regards stochasticknowledge, and

• improve the teaching of statistics at all educationallevels.

At the moment there is a call for the submission ofquality papers, including research reports, theoreticalor methodological analyses, literature surveys,thematic bibliographies, summaries of research papersand dissertations. All the papers will be refereed.Papers may be submitted to the editors: CarmenBatenero, batanero@ugr.es or Flavia Jolliffe,F.R.Jolliffe@gre.ac.uk

A statistics education seminar day was held atThe University of Auckland in September 2001 atwhich 50 statistics educators from Kaitaia toChristchurch attended. The morning session focusedon statistics education research issues with the guestspeakers being Professor Rolf Biehler (KasselUniversity, Germany) and Tim Burgess (MasseyUniversity, Palmerston North). The afternoon sessionfocused on the statistics strand in the New Zealandmathematics school curriculum. Dr Andy Begg gavean overview of statistics education at the internationaland national level. A panel discussion on the schoolstatistics curriculum by Jeanette Saunders (StCuthbert’s College), Matt Regan (The University ofAuckland), and Mike Camden (Massey University

at Wellington) was chaired by Professor Chris Wild(The University of Auckland). For more info seehttp://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/PEOPLE/wild/logos10

The current school mathematics curriculum waswritten ten years ago and consequently discussion isarising within the mathematics education communityabout changes that should be made to the presentcurriculum and what the 2020 curriculum should looklike. Currently a website, http://www.nzamt.org.nz/curriculum2020/home.html, set up by Jim Neyland,Victoria University, is inviting people to contribute theirviews on the school mathematics curriculum. In hissuggested list of critical questions is “Should statisticsbe separated as a separate subject?”

For more information about statistics educationsee these websites:http://www.cbs.nl/isi/iase.htmhttp://www.ugr.es/local/batanero/sergroup.htmhttp://www.swin.edu.au/maths/iase/meetings.html

Maxine Pfannkuchm.pfannkuch@auckland.ac.nz

National Correspondent for IASE

Submissions to the NewsletterThe Newsletter welcomes any submissions ofinterest to members of the New Zealand StatisticalAssociation. News about New Zealandstatisticians, statistical meetings, statisticalorganisations, statistics in education, or statisticalcuriosities are suitable for inclusion. Letters thatraise issues of importance to statistics in NewZealand are also welcomed. Photographs ofrecent gatherings and new appointees are ofparticular interest. Electronic submissions arepreferred.

Advertising In the NewsletterThe Newsletter accepts advertising of interest tostatisticians in New Zealand. Advertising is placedsubject to space considerations. Personaladvertising by NZSA members will be publishedfree. Other advertising is $250 per page, $140 perhalf page, and $75 per quarter page. Other sizescan be quoted on request. All advertising requestsshould be directed to the editor.

Incoming EditorRoger LittlejohnAgResearch InvermayPrivate Bag 50034MosgielNew ZealandPhone: 03 489 9082Fax: 03 489 3739Email:Roger.Littlejohn@AgResearch.co.nz

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new statistical methodology for evaluating animalpopulation dynamics, which he will present at theconference. (http://www.ukc.ac.uk/ims/statistics/people/B.J.T.Morgan/web.html)

Conference ProceedingsThe proceedings of the conference will appear in aspecial issue of the Australian and New ZealandJournal of Statistics. If you wish to have your talkconsidered for the proceedings, you will need toprovide a manuscript version to organizers at theconference.

Pre-Conference WorkshopHal Caswell and Jean-Dominique Lebreton will runa 2.5-day workshop on matrix population models priorto the conference (4-6 December). The number ofparticipants will be restricted to 20. The workshop isaimed primarily at quantitative ecologists andpopulation biologists, either in fundamental or appliedresearch. The material presented is of interest bothin animal and plant population dynamics, and usefulboth for research and management aspects. At theend of the workshop, participants should be able tobuild and run basic matrix models using availablesoftware, to address questions on population dynamicsusing such models, and to have a clear view of thegeneralizations that are available and relevant to theirresearch.

The workshop content will be a balance betweenmodelling approaches per se and estimationprocedures/models use in practice, and will includethe following topics: Matrix model formulation; Fromlife cycle to matrix; Linear and nonlinear models;Deterministic and stochastic models; Linear models(transient analysis, asymptotic analysis, eigenvalues,eigenvectors); Sensitivity analysis; Matrix models forclassical life tables; Estimation from transitionfrequency data; Stochastic models; Density-dependent models; Estimation from mark-recaptureand other kinds of individual history data.

Registration FeesThe conference registration fee is NZ$500, with astudent fee of NZ$250. The workshop registrationfee is NZ$300 (no student discount). If you wish toregister for both the conference and workshop, thecombined fee is NZ$750 ($NZ500 for students). A20% late conference registration fee will be imposedafter 31st October 2002.

Important DatesEarly Registration: Friday, 31 October 2002Abstracts Deadline: Friday, 31 August 2002

David Fletcher

Fourth Conference On StatisticsIn Ecology And EnvironmentalMonitoring - SEEM4

Population Dynamics:The Interface Between Models and Data

9-13 December 2002 Matrix Population Models Workshop

4-6 December 2002University of Otago, Dunedin

Web page:www.maths.otago.ac.nz/SEEM4Email enquiries: igoodwin@maths.otago.ac.nz

Conference ProgrammeThe purpose of the conference is to bring togetherecologists, statisticians, fisheries scientists andmodellers in order to discuss common issues in themodelling of population dynamics. Our hope is thatecologists and other scientists can benefit from insightthat statisticians can provide on the latest techniquesin parameter estimation, and that statisticians canbetter understand the needs of ecologists by becomingfamiliar with the types of population dynamics modelsthat are currently being used.

Invited SpeakersThree leading researchers in this area will give invitedtalks, and to lead an end-of-conference forum:

Hal Caswell (Senior Scientist, Woods HoleOceanographic Institution, USA)

Jean-Dominique Lebreton (Head of the Departmentof Population Biology, Centre for Functional andEvolutionary Ecology, CNRS, Montpellier,France)

Byron Morgan (Professor of Applied Statistics,University of Kent, UK)

Hal Caswell is well known for his work on populationmatrix models, and a second edition of his landmarkbook, Matrix Population Models: Construction,Analysis, and Interpretation, has recently beenpublished by Sinauer Associates, Massachusetts,USA. (http://science.whoi.edu/labs/mathecology/hcaswell/)

Jean-Dominique Lebreton is famous for his workon both mark-recapture methods and populationdynamics. He brings a breadth of knowledge to theconference that is rare, in that he is an experiencedpractitioner in both biometry and population modelling.(http://www.cefe.cnrs-mop.fr/)

Byron Morgan is an internationally renownedapplied statistician. Recently his interest in statisticalecology has lead him and his co-workers to develop

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University of Canterbury

2001 has been a year of change and no changedepending on how one views this. At the time ofwriting this we are busy with the Biometrics/NZSA2001 conference held at the Parkroyal Hotel andboasting good food and statistics.

Michelle Dalrymple and Rob Weir are givingpresentations at this meet on “Examining therelationship between SIDS and climate using hurdle,ZIP, and finite mixture models” (with Irene Hudson)and “Approximation of posterior means and variancesof posterior discrete distributions characterised asdigitised normal distributions”. Irene Hudson presentswork on “A study of spatio-temporal variation ofEucalyptus nitens fibre morphology - a multivariateclustering and nonlinear time series approach”.

Jennifer Brown was an invited speaker at the ISIconference in Korea in August. Here she is speakingon “How to monitor a population when there are toofew animals to count”.

The following week Irene and Jennifer will be atthe University of Wollongong at the InternationalConference on Statistics, Combinatorics and RelatedAreas and The Eighth International Conference ofthe Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics. Jenniferwill be giving workshop lectures with Bryan Manlyon Applications of Statistics in the Environmental andEcological Areas. Irene will give a presentationentitled “Natural Habitat or a 7-Fold Pattern ofPhyllotaxis in Eucalyptus Nitens”? She shall alsodevelop work on brain axes of dys-symmetry withEric Beh at that University. Looking forward toWollongong’s sea food!

Marco Reale has been given Erskine study leaveand last I heard he was in the UK drinking beer withProfessor Malcolm Faddy who shall partake of thisbrew with me... after the conference duties on Friday14th December. Malcolm Faddy, Irene Hudson andMichelle Dalrymple are researching on new familiesof distributions which will afford new methods ofanalysis for spatial networks.

Easaw Chacko and Irene are attending theMissing Data workshop at the conference - andenjoying it.

My thanks go to Dave Saville, David Baird, RogerLittlejohn and Harold Henderson, who have all donea grand job with the conference and helped me in myrole as conference secretary.

There have been no babies, some promotions, lotsof work and too little time! We await to hear whetherthe powers on high will allow us another shot for aChair.

Irene Hudson

Statistics New Zealand

There a few NZSA members in SNZ not in theSurvey Methods and Analytical Support divisions(collectively called SMASH - and no, I don’t knowwhat the H stands for) who I have forgotten to reporton in the past, so I’ll start with some of them.

Frank Nolan is completing the job of managingthe 2001 Population Census, a large and long-termtask (the planning for the 2006 Census has startedand we haven’t completed the 2001 Census). MichaelRyan works for Demography, but does somemoonlighting for Department of Conservation.

Now to SMASH.Arrivals: Vicky Barlow, Hilary Ferral, Grace

Chiang, Vera Costa, Sue Brown, Chengui Qiao,Simone Paapu, Andrew Smith and Janet Pearson.Victoria Wilcox has returned. Also, Rachael Vilesand Ben Malthus are working for us over theuniversity summer break.

Departures: Richard Arnold (to VUW), FrancesKrsinich (MSD), Gareth Minshall (Auck), RachelKyle (WiNZ), Kenneth Miller (OE), Jon Briggs (OE),Theva Thevathasan (Oz) and Lisa Jones (OE).

As it is a year since my last report there is rathera lot of movement, but with about 40 staff in SMASH,plus we employ a lot of graduates who are prone towant to travel overseas, it could be expected.

Sharleen Forbes has moved to higher things (anew job and from the 3rd to the 11th floor). HelenStott is taking over Sharleen’s job as Chief Analystwhen Helen’s project of sustainability indicators iscomplete around May. Andrea Piesse is working atWestat in Washington DC for six months, with afurther six months leave afterwards. Mike Camdenfrom Massey has been doing some work for us ondeveloping a framework for training to improve thelevel of statistical thinking in SNZ, as many in SNZhave little knowledge of statistics.

A range of Research Reports are available fromthe SNZ web site (http://www.stats.govt.nz). Also wehave initiated our first FAQ on a statistical subject onthe web site. This is on seasonal adjustment and trends,and as part of the release Richard Penny gave fourseminars for around 65 external clients. PhilippaGraham, as the custodian of the pages, strongly urgesanyone interested in times series to have a look andprovide some feedback.

We hosted the first meeting of Canterburystatisticians. Mansoor Khawaja from Demographygave a talk showing that the aging of the populationis not a new phenomenon, but rather that the babyboom interrupted the long-term aging trend. A pleasanttime was had by all and we will have further ones,once someone can be conned into organising them.

Local Scene

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The recent NZSA conference had a smaller SNZpresence than usual, with only three talks from us (Ithink Richard Arnold’s talk on Bayesian analysis ofstellar spectra can’t be really regarded as an SNZcontribution). Next year’s ASC being in Canberra,where our Australian counterparts at the AustralianBureau of Statistics are headquartered, I wouldexpect a bumper crop next year!

Richard Penny

University of Otago

David Fletcher, Richard Barker, Brian Niven andIrene Goodwin are having fun getting ready forSEEM4, the fourth conference on Statistics in Ecologyand Environmental Monitoring, which will take placein Dunedin at the end of this year (see the page 8announcement in this newsletter).

David Fletcher has decided to leave the delightsof Academe and work full-time for his consultingcompany (Proteus Research and Consulting:www.proteus.co.nz) in 2003, when his partner has full-time work. After 25 years at university he wants todo something different. Proteus is a joint venturewith Darryl McKenzie and specializes in ecologicaland environmental statistics.

Irene Goodwin

Massey, Palmerston North

The Institute of Information Sciences and Technology,of which we are a part, is moving from our currentlocation in the Social Sciences Tower to occupy afloor or two of the AgHort building on the other sideof the campus. The statisticians however are beingleft behind for the time being as there is insufficientspace. Once we lose a few more staff members weshould fit in easily. There has been much discussionof appropriate new names for the building, but arecent suggestion to sell the naming rights has so farnot been taken up. Anyone wishing to make a bidshould contact Corporate Communications.

Alasdair Noble, who has been teaching at Masseyfor five years in various capacities, has been given atwo-year lectureship to replace Ganesalingam, whohas taken up a two-year associate professorship inOman. Alasdair is close tofinishing his PhD, the actualdistance depending on who youtalk to. He presented his workearlier last year at the RSSConference in Glasgow and at theWayne Fuller 70th BirthdayConference at Iowa State.

Steve Haslett is currently

visiting the Bureau of Labor Statistics in WashingtonDC. He reports no sightings so far of terrorists oranthrax. He must be operating with a very limiteddefinition of “terrorist”. Meanwhile in the otherWashington, Graham Wood has been visiting ZeldaZabinsky at Washington State.

Doug Stirling has won further funding fromMassey’s Fund for Innovation and Excellence inTeaching to work on the development of a BusinessStatistics version of CAST. A key feature of the newsystem will be to confuse the user with jargon andthen send them a bill for $5000.

Chungui Qiao, who has been visiting us, has nowtaken up an appointment as a Mathematical Statisticianwith Statistics NZ in Wellington.

Mark Bebbington spent the last week ofNovember in Melbourne, working with KostyaBorovkov on conditions for stability of multi-dimensional piecewise deterministic Markovprocesses, (and not watching one day of the Daviscup final). But at least the cricket coverage from Perthwas at a more civilised hour! Mark’s next visit is tothe state of matrimony, which should curb his travellingsomewhat.

Three of our PhD students:Jonathan Godfrey, Dongwen Luoand Ryan Sherrif, presented atthe NZSA conference inChristchurch in December.Jonathan won the prize for beststudent talk with his seminar“Two-stage imputation of missinggenotype-by-environment data”.

Geoff Jones

University of Auckland

We’ve had several very recent arrivals, or should Isay deliveries. Joss Cummings gave birth to Matthewin November. In December Marilyn Gabriel had abouncing baby boy, and this January Paul Murrell hadhis third child, a baby girl. They are all doing well,and Joss’s dog has finally forgiven her and is gettinginto the nurturing spirit.

There was an excellent Auckland turnout at theBiometrics/NZSA conference in Christchurch, andeveryone had a great time and appreciated thepreparation and thoughtfulness that went into theorganization of this very successful conference. TheAuckland turnout even included some ex-UoA folk,including Robert Gentleman and Tanya.

A number of us stayed on in the Mainland for afew days after the conference, doing things like theRouteburn Track, hiking Arthur’s Pass, exploring theWest Coast etc. A great time was had by all, whichAlasdair Noble

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could bode well for a strong Auckland turnout atSEEM4 for more opportunities to explore the Mainland(oh, and to brush up on our ecological stats too).

Back in Auckland, Geoff Pritchard and MartiAnderson were promoted to senior lecturer andPatricia Metcalf was promoted within the SL grade.

We’re currently advertizing a couple oflectureships and hopefully there will be more to reportabout that for the next newsletter.

Summer school is up and running in the city campuswith our 1st and 2nd year applied classes now wellunderway.

At Tamaki there is a hint of anticipation in the air,or maybe it’s just the smell of diesel from excavationmachinery. Construction has begun on re-positioningthe ring road so that a new building can be built nextto ours. Plans are still rather fluid at the moment butit looks like a bit of musical offices will soon be takingplace, with the Comp Sci group at Tamaki movinginto the new building so that Health Sciences folkcan occupy the vacated space. Additionally, a newbuilding for additional Health Sciences staff is plannedfor completion within the next couple of years, andthe Tamaki stats group may end up moving in withthem. Time will tell.

John Huakau effortlessly defended his oral PhDexam in December. John admits that the secret tohis easy success was the scheduling of his exam halfan hour before the Tamaki Christmas barbecue!

On the marine research side of things, the diversamongst us are drooling over the Leigh Marine Lab’srecently launched research vessel, RV Hawere. It’s

a 50 footer with twin engines giving a total of 840 hpand a top speed around 25 kts. It boasts onboardwetlab and computer lab and can support 10 diversfor a week. R.V Hawere first greeted the water on9 Jan. An official launch will be conducted after seatrials.

Russell Millar

University of Waikato

Apologies for the lack of news of the StatisticsDepartment from the last publication. Yourcorrespondent spent some time in 2001 on sick leaveor on reduced duties, following a fall which resultedin broken leg and a badly dislocated ankle.Complications have meant a slow recovery, but thingsseem to be almost back to normal now.

David Whittaker was on study leave for the firsthalf of last year. Whilst on leave he visited Canberrato work with Emlyn Williams at CSIRO. August sawthe launch of a book, Statistical Thinking for Managerswhich is co-authored with Nye John and DavidJohnston of Loughborough. At the beginning of thisyear David was promoted to Associate-Professor.

James Curran travelled to Seattle, USA, inFebruary 2001 for research collaboration with ChrisTriggs. In September last year and again in Januaryof this year, he went to the UK to work with theForensic Science Service. He also presented at theSouthern Institute of Statistical Genetics with BruceWeir. James was recently promoted to SeniorLecturer.

Several members went off-shore to conferenceslast year. Lyn Hunt traveled to Hamburg, Germanyto attend the Mixtures 2001 Conference in July 2001.Bill Bolstad visited Canada in July 2001 and attendedStatistics 2001 and the Fourth Canadian Conferencein Applied Statistics. Murray Jorgensen attendedApplied Stochastic Models & Data Analysis, inFrance, June 2001 and the 16th InternationalWorkshop on Statistical Modelling - New trends instatistical modeling, in Denmark, in July. Nye Johnattended the GenStat Conference in Australia andwas an invited speaker at the ASERC Workshop onInnovations in Teaching Statistics in Newcastle,Australia, in June 2001.

Bill Bolstad and James Curran together withMartin Upsdell from AgResearch, Ruakura presenteda special one day workshop for AgResearchStatisticians in April 2001 at the University of Waikato.The programme was based on an introduction tosampling based Bayesian methods including MarkovChain Monte Carlo using BUGS. A similar workshopwas held in conjunction with the AustralasianBiometrics/NZSA joint Conference in Christchurchin December 2001. All members of the department,together with our two PhD students and two of ourMasters students were in Christchurch for theconference. Murray and Lyn both attended theMissing-Value Workshop held prior to the conference,although Murray left before the conference properbegan. Before he left, Murray was presented withthe 2001 Campbell Award of the NZSA for Editorial

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Services to the New Zealand Statistical Association.He is currently in Canada on leave, and after hereturns in July, Nye John will be on study leave.

Carole Wright returned from Australia last year,to join the Department as a PhD student workingwith Nye John and David Whitaker on trying to obtaina class of row-column designs with the flexibility andadvantages of alpha-designs, and finding tighter upperbounds on the average efficiency factor for latinized,spatial and row-column designs. After completing herMasters at Waikato in 1995 Carole was a biometricianwith Agriculture Victoria, before going on in 1998 tojoin the Northern Territory Department of PrimaryIndustry and Fisheries.Recent seminars

DAVID WHITAKER “Integer programming:Constraint formulation with binary variables”

ANTHONY LEHMANN (Swiss Centre forFaunal Cartography) “GRASP: GeneralizedRegression Analysis and spatial Prediction in Ecology”

ALASTAIR SCOTT (University of Auckland)“Estimating Interviewer and Observer Effects forBinary Responses”

LES FOULDS (Department of ManagementSystems, University of Waikato) “Bookmobile Routingand Scheduling in Buskerud County, Norway”

ANDY PHILPOTT (University of Auckland)“Optimisation in electricity pool markets”

CHRIS TRIGGS (University of Auckland) “Thestrength of evidence found by searching a database”

NEVILLE DAVIES (Royal Statistical SocietyCentre for Statistical Education Nottingham TrentUniversity) “The work of The Royal Statistical SocietyCentre for Statistical Education”

HAROLD HENDERSON (AgResearch,Ruakura) “Visualising data”

JAMES CURRAN “Interpretation of DNAevidence”

EIBE FRANK (Department of ComputerScience, University of Waikato) “Determiningprogression in glaucoma using visual fields”

ILZE ZIEDINS (University of Auckland) “Longrange dependence in networks - Does a finite bufferwith long range dependent input always have longrange dependent output?”

GRAHAM MCBRIDE (NIWA, Hamilton)“Coping with the “swinging evidential burden” inenvironmental science and management”

PIERRE LEGENDRE (University of Montreal)“Modelling spatial influences at all spatial scales”

GAD NATHAN (Hebrew University) “Imputationfor wave nonresponse - a time series approach”

JOHN NEUHAUS ( University of California, SanFrancisco) “The analysis of case-control family data”

Judi McWhirter

AgResearch

The Statistics Group of AgResearch were heavilyinvolved in organising the Biometrics/NZSA 2001Conference held at the Parkroyal Hotel inChristchurch last December. Peter Johnstone, asregional President of the IBS, gave the openingaddress. David Baird was chairman of the localorganizing committee, Dave Saville the Treasurer,Harold Henderson chaired the programme committeeand negotiated substantial corporate sponsorship, andRoger Littlejohn was the Webmaster of http://nzsa.rsnz.govt.nz/Conference/home.htm

Attendance was a record 220-odd, including a fewnot odd! The venue was a great success, with hotelstaff feeding us extremely well and the Christmasholly and other decorations lending to the festive air.The sun shone on the social events, and added to thesuccess of the conference trips. Harold H and DaveS even found time to give papers, entitled respectively“Visualising data” and “Teaching the gospel ofstatistics.” Peter Johnstone and Ken Dodds alsopresented papers, entitled respectively “Theapplication of mixed models to microarrayexperiments” and “Using a backcross to single animalfor a QTL confirmation experiment.” Martin Upsdellpresented in the Bayesian Workshop.

AgResearch statisticians at the conference dinner (front , L to R),Peter Johnstone, Lilian Morrison, Zaneta Park-Ng, RogerLittlejohn; (back ) Neil Cox, Dave Saville, David Baird, HaroldHenderson

The Southern Summer Institute of StatisticalGenetics which followed the conference picked upthemes of genomics and bioinformatics, and wasattended by a 100 people including a strong contingentof 20 AgResearch staff.

On another angle, Dave Saville and Graham Wood(Massey) are awaiting the publication of a paper onthe geometry of the p-value, entitled “A new angleon the t-test,” to appear in April in issue #1 for 2002of “The Statistician” (JRSS-D) - watch that space!

Dave Saville