Royal Statistical Society Annual Conference

Close of Conference

2010-09-17T17:06:00.002+01:00

On the last day of RSS 2010, it is gratifying to reflect that the prior hard work of RSS Staff and the Programme Committee has borne fruit in all that has happened this week. However, perhaps more gratifying has been the many ways in which the conference attendees have contributed to the successes of the conference. Presentations that have been appreciated by many, perceptive questions, and willingness to lend a hand in chairing sessions have all been a feature of our time in Brighton. Additionally, the social events provided a great opportunity for all to simply spend informal and very enjoyable time together.

Therefore, thanks to all for being here!

Vern Farewell
Chair, Programme Committee, RSS 2010

Significance session

2010-09-17T11:38:00.001+01:00

Friday, morning: the Significance session - the last session of the last day of the conference – is about to start. I hope lots of people have decided to delay getting on their trains back home for an early weekend, so that they can stay and hear it. Lots of things have been happening to Significance this year, from the ASA linkup to an all-singing, all-dancing website that is about to start, and I want to tell delegates about our plans for World Domination – fledgling so far, but even Rupert Murdoch’s media empire had to start somewhere. But my bit is only the intro. We try to make the Significance session the entertainments high-spot of the conference; and this year, with Danny Dorling and Yan Wong as guest speakers, we should achieve that fairly effortlessly.

They have both turned into media stars at communicating science and stats; and they have both done good stuff for Significance. Yan’s pleasantly surreal piece was on cows pointing north. Danny’s several pieces included one on his mad, wrong-shaped maps of the world, which looked rather fantastic on the page and made that piece one of the best-looking that we have ever run. Yan doesn’t only have a Ph.D in genetic self-destruct mechanisms in plants; he hasn’t only helped Richard Dawkins write his best-selling ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’; his big-time fame comes from presenting BBC’s flagship popular science programme ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ – which by excellent timing has just started its third series. It’s had magnetic cows, cyclists powering a house, and spawned a facebook ‘We Love Yan’ page. Episode 2 of Bang Goes the Theory is on tonight, at 7.30. Catch it!

But first catch him, and Danny, at the Significance plenary session. 12.15. Be there!

Julian Champkin,

Editor, Significance.

Conference Dinner

2010-09-17T11:24:00.004+01:00

Last night the annual conference dinner was held at the Holiday Inn on the Brighton seafront.

The poster winners were presented by the President with Christopher Nam picking up his first place certificate for his poster on Exact distributions and sequential Monte Carlo for change points.

The attendees were treated to an after dinner speaker by Andrew Dilnot, who is chair of the Statistics User Forum and Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford. He kicked off with a couple of questions for the audience, seeing what they knew about who pays how much tax in the UK and what proportion of single mothers are in their teens. He explained that this was something he did with many audiences asking them basic statistical questions about society. Invariably audiences had very little awareness of the true figures. He linked the importance of having a good awareness to the aims of the getstats campaign.

The event was a great opportunity for delegates to relax together and reflect on the conference.

the fun of the fair

2010-09-15T22:19:00.003+01:00

Some pictures from the Pier on Tuesday night. The Waltzer really did feel as if it was about to take off as caught on camera!

conference in high gear

2010-09-15T20:27:00.001+01:00

Indeed the annual meeting of the RSS is in full swing, and, sadly, I have to leave early tomorrow morning. But today was splendid, everything one hopes for in a meeting.

The highlight of the conference today was the presentation I made at noon. OK, not really, but I did have the opportunity to present a talk titled “Building Trust: Accreditation and the Professionalization of Statistics.” In it, I explored ways we might take advantage of the synergy created by accreditation programs in four statistical societies (the American Statistical Association (ASA), the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), and the Statistical Society of Australia, Inc. (SSAI)) to further advance the status of statistics as a profession. The RSS and the ASA are finding a number of ways to collaborate, and accreditation is one of them.

The real highlight of the conference today, for me, was the preliminary announcement of the “getstats” program, a 10-year statistical literacy campaign created and led by the RSS. Martin Dougherty, Executive Director of the RSS, presented an overview of the campaign, which will launch officially on October 20 (20.10.2010), which the UN has designated as World Statistics Day. The goal of this campaign is well and succinctly stated: “A society in which our lives and choices are enriched by an understanding of statistics.” It is an ambitious goal, a truth that was brilliantly illustrated by a video Martin put together. The video is a “vox pop,” a series of interviews on the streets of London. People are asked some basic non-technical questions about the relevance and roles of statistics and statisticians. These were people who are clearly literate, but are also clearly not statistically literate. Clearly, there is work to be done.

The plenary sessions were excellent today as well. In the morning, Robert Groves, Director of the US Census Bureau, gave the Campion Lecture. Bob is a superb statistician and an extraordinary leader, and as Census Director he has served his country with distinction. He took on a census that was in the midst of some political turmoil, and quieted things down quickly. Thanks to his work, and that of the vast census team, the US has had a successful decennial census. One of the many things that impress me about Bob is his ability to listen constructively to criticism, even when it isn’t offered constructively.

In a thoughtful and informative talk, Bob reviewed the status of the 2010 census in the US, considered measures of data quality, and provided a look ahead at issues that will need to be addressed.

In the afternoon, Tim Davis, who is both a Chartered Statistician and a Chartered Engineer, discussed the role of statistics and statisticians in engineering. He encouraged early career statisticians to consider going to work in industry, where he said there is great need for their skills. Among many interesting things Tim said, I was particularly interested in his observation that it is the job of the statistical investigator/collaborator to a) encourage creativity (in research and experimentation) and b) ensure convergence (between theory and practice, or theory and data).

Once again, there was an excellent variety of concurrent sessions. I focused on sessions relating to the growth of professionals and the profession, but there was something for virtually everyone. I particularly enjoyed a session on statistical education in the UK, with the clever title “Cornish pasties and learning from teaching statistics.” Unfortunately, convention centre rules made it impossible for us to taste test the pasties.

In the late afternoon, I had the opportunity to get out and stimulate the local economy, and greatly added to the weight of my suitcase going home.

So I will wrap up my blogging from Brighton with three sets of thank yous: (1) to Gerald Goodall and Andy Garrett of the RSS, Judy-Anne Chapman of the SSC, and Nick Fisher of the SSAI for their wisdom and insight, which helped my presentation immensely; (2) to the staff of the RSS for warm hospitality and a superbly executed conference; and (3) to the ASA for making my participation at this conference possible.

Carry on, then!

Statistical Engineering @ Brighton - Slides available

2010-09-15T17:05:00.001+01:00

Thanks to those of you that came to my talk - if you would like a copy of the slides, they can be downloaded here.

Thanks

Tim Davis

The Poster Competition

2010-09-15T12:25:00.003+01:00

This year I have been allowed to judge a bit of the poster competition. Judging is fun. Specially when you are allowed to do it with a glass of wine in your hand.

I and the proper judges wandered round the posters on Tuesday evening, chatting as we went to the posters’ creators. My colleagues judged no doubt according to quality of statistics, innovative thought, relevance of methodology and analysis and suchlike. I had a much easier brief. It was: Could I understand it?

This year, the poster competition has an additional prize: The Significance prize for the poster which best communicates its message. That’s the bit that I was judging. Judges in past years have complained that some entries contained excellent and advanced statistics that were completely incomprehensible. I was looking for the reverse: I was looking for a poster which might translate into the sort of article that could go into Significance – in other words, a poster that even a non-statistician would find interesting.

Going round, you notice some points straight away. Print size is one. Does it contain acres of small print that you have to read with your nose up against the poster, blocking everyone else’s view for the 20 minutes it takes to slog through it? Or is there nice big print, not too many words, easily readable by the middle-aged like me from a reasonable distance? Layout helps. I was slightly baffled by one otherwise excellent poster, laid out in three columns, til I realised that I was supposed to start reading at the top of the middle column; I’d started, as with a newspaper, on the left.

Say ‘Poster’ to most people and what they think of is pictures not words. A picture is worth a thousand words; and a thousand words is far too many to fit on a poster. But you can fit three or four pictures on, – so, presumably, three or four times the amount of information.

So I was tempted by posters like P31, Andrea Roalfe’s ‘Working as an Applied Statistician in Primary Care and General Practice’; each type of illness she worked on had a picture to illustrate it. Much better than a dry list. Even more than pictures, people like pretty pictures. P9, ‘Supporting statistics in schools,’ scored highly there with its fluffy koala – but came from Australia, where they are entitled to use fluffy koalas as relevant to almost everything. How do you get an attractive picture into, for example, P14, ‘Assessing the Effect of Informative Censoring in Piecewise Parametric Survival Models?’ I don’t know. Probably you cannot. Still, those ones can still be in contention for the proper prize. P6, Tom Gerlach’s ‘Census rehearsal 2009’, with its image of a red-curtained theatre stage, looked marvellous – though it did perhaps lack content. Still, if statistics ever fails him, he should have a great future in design or advertising.

The real key, though, is clarity. Call it the quality of explaining things. Can you understand it at a glance? At first reading? It obviously helps if the message itself is fairly simple. As I have said, I was not looking for cutting-edge statistics. A useful application of standard statistical techniques is just as good for telling the great public why we all need statistics and statisticians.

The winner I chose uses simple statistics and clear graphs and explains its purpose clearly. I could understand what it was saying almost at first glance; three minutes reading it enhanced that understanding. It has a clear conclusion as well, and that conclusion is an important and an interesting and a useful one, and one which should influence real-life decisions and what people actually do. All of which makes it ideal for the basis of an article in Significance magazine – and, I suppose, a near-ideal poster as well. It will be announced at the conference dinner on Thursday. Before then, see if you can guess which one I have chosen.

Julian Champkin,Editor, Significance

breadth of statistics profession evident at RSS annual meeting

2010-09-14T20:30:00.000+01:00

The conference was launched with an interesting and compelling talk by Peter Donnelly, Professor of Statistics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, which is affiliated with Oxford. His talk, “Statistics, Genomics, and Human Diseases,” focused on recent developments in identifying parts of the genome related to disease and traits in humans. These discoveries may provide new ways to understand the biology of disease development. At one time, Donnelly said, statisticians in genomics could be described humorously as people who “model genes.” “Now,” he said, “we are more explorers than modelers.”

David Hand, RSS President, brought words of welcome to the conferees. He noted the upcoming World Statistics Day on 20.10.2010, and emphasized the significance of the United Nations’ recognition of the important contributions of statistics and statisticians. Unfortunately, Hand noted, the level of public recognition is still rather small.

President Hand then presented an Honorary Fellowship to Janet Derbyshire for her important work in clinical trials, especially for her consistent recognition of the role of statistics in drug development. According to the RSS website, “Honorary fellowships are awarded for the Society to recognise the contribution of individuals of great eminence working in fields related to statistics who are not members of the statistical profession.”

In the concurrent sessions, there were a rich variety of themes addressed. Kudos are due to Vern Farewell and the rest of the programme committee for a job very well done.

Genomics, climate science, statistics and the law, and adaptive clinical trials are just some of examples of today’s presentations, reflective of the breadth of our profession. I attended a particularly interesting session in which three sources of data for climate science (plankton, surface temperatures, and ice cores) were discussed. Methods of measurement and modeling of uncertainty were shown. The speakers were clear, and did a nice job of talking in understandable terms about the science of measurement and the statistical science involved as well. However, as happens sometimes in discussions of climates, some of the questions after the talks reflected the biases of the questioners rather than the content presented.

A very nice set of posters were on display during the day and featured in the late afternoon. The topics and the locales represented were diverse, though a majority of them focused on some aspect of statistical work in the health sciences. The quality of the work was quite impressive.

The day was capped by the conference social, held out on the Brighton Pier, which was virtually empty (except for RSS conferees) due to the high winds lashing the area. But inside the pub I found cold drinks, warm food and even warmer fellowship. Some of the planned activities had to be cut back because of the weather, but it was a delightful evening nonetheless.

I am already regretting that I have to return home on Thursday, as I realize how many excellent sessions I will miss. In the future I will ask my friends to look at the RSS calendar before setting their wedding dates.

Fishy Business

2010-09-14T11:53:00.007+01:00

Our opening social event had us getting lost in the labyrinth of fish tanks in the Brighton Sea Life centre. The catfish, parrotfish, angelfish, sea anaemonies and companions looked on as we enjoyed a glass of wine and canapes in the Victorian splendour, meet up with old friends and welcomed first-timers to conference. Once you ventured through to the hall of mirrors (aagh!) to the coral reef, you found a 'variance' of statisticians in an orderly queue waiting for a trip on the new glass bottom boat. Looking down on the sharks and fish living on the coral reef, you could imagine being transported to Australia on the Great Barrier Reef. Certainly the walk through the glass canopy under the tank, gave you the perception of diving in the reef. It was feeding time, so the fish were very active, apart from a sleeping basking shark. The finale was the feeding of the turtles with their daily ration of lettuce leaves.

One hot topic for canapes chatter was who are the top 10 statisticians in the last century. Leading names were Cox, Fisher, Lindley, Box, Nelder ...now thrown open to the conference to add another 5 and agree the ranking!

Mary Sweetland

lovely reception, slightly less lovely weather

2010-09-13T20:30:00.000+01:00

The RSS conference social programme got underway this evening with a lovely reception at the Sea Life Centre in Brighton. The centre is a large aquarium with a series of interesting displays of aquatic life, and the venue was open this evening only for participants of the conference. So we had the run of the place, enjoying juice, wine, and hors d'oeuvres, while marveling at the undersea world and reveling in the joy of renewing old acquaintances and making new ones.

Registration began this afternoon, and in typical sharp RSS fashion, it was well organized. I was in and out of registration in under a minute, but spent several very pleasant minutes afterward meeting and greeting RSS staff.

The weather got quite blustery and then rather wet this afternoon. Medium-sized waves crashed loudly against the beach and the Brighton Pier. It is a bit chilly as well, or so it seems to someone coming from the lingering summer weather in the US. Nonetheless, the coast and the town are spectacular, a great setting for the conference.

The scientific programme begins tomorrow with opening remarks from David Hand, RSS President and a plenary talk by Peter Donnelly of Oxford. We’ll all be there Brighton-early (sorry, I have a rather nasty addiction to puns).

Statistical Engineering and a theory that dates back to 1914

2010-09-13T20:02:00.001+01:00

One of the best methods that I have come across which exemplifies the inductive-deductive iterative nature of statistical investigations (see my first post) dates back to 1914 – the so-called “Pi” theorem of E Buckingham; I will illustrate the use of the “Pi” theorem using the well known paper-helicopter experiment, which many people who have taught statistical methods to engineers will be familiar with. If we adopt a completely empirical approach, we might decide to run a response surface experiment to model the flight time of the helicopter as a function of various design parameters; three design parameters might require about 15 runs in the experiment to develop the transfer function. However, if we think for a minute about the physics, we know that the flight time will be a function of the mass of the helicopter, and the area swept out by the rotors, together with the force due to gravity, and the density of air – and all of these quantities are known. The application of the “Pi” theorem, which reduces the dimensionality of the problem, and does not require linearity to ensure dimensional consistency, reveals that the number of experimental runs can be reduced to about three. It is a mystery as to why the “Pi” theorem isn’t referenced in any of the classic texts on response surface methodology and design of experiments; is it because not enough statisticians are interested in engineering?

getstats zone at RSS 2010

2010-09-10T16:30:00.004+01:00

The getstats team are looking forward to RSS 2010 in Brighton next week. All of the delegates are encouraged to visit the getstats zone which will have information about the campaign and the ways you can get involved and answer any questions. We are also going to be doing some filming of vox pops to get everyone’s views on the importance of statistics and the campaign. Please drop by the zone to find out more! We look forward to seeing you there.

Robustness in Engineering

2010-09-09T22:25:00.001+01:00

In engineering, reliability problems come about for essentially only two reasons 1) mistakes, and 2) lack of robustness. Genichi Taguchi did much to bring to our attention the idea of robustness (making designs insensitive to variation, or “noises”), although others had been there too, notably RSS Fellow and Greenfield medallist Jim Morrison as far back as 1957. Taguchi had some important things to say about strategies for improving robustness, one being that engineers should first look to desensitize their designs to variation through experimenting with design parameters related to geometry, material properties and the like, and not to choose the more obvious path of trying to reduce or eliminate the noises. I will explain some of Taguchi’s ideas, and hope to demonstrate that he didn’t deserve some of the attacks on him by the statistical profession at the time, in stark contrast to the way our profession seems to have embraced the Six Sigma movement with nothing like the same scrutiny afforded to Taguchi’s work.

Tim Davis

The role of likelihood in statistical science

2010-09-08T10:34:00.003+01:00

There have been many interesting developments in theoretical statistics since you were in graduate school, but do these have any relevance for the practice of statistics? What is needed to make the translation from nice new mathematics to "on-the-ground"improvements? In my talk I survey some of the advances in likelihood-based inference, and try to identify the most promising links to better analysis of data.

Nancy Reid

University of Toronto

Predicting Credit Default Rates

2010-09-07T14:03:00.002+01:00

Predicting spatial processes often involve using many, many parameters. That approach requires using Bayesian methods -- or something with the same effect -- to shrink the predictions back to something more reasonable. I'm going to use something simpler, regression. No, not a ridge estimator either. Rather, by constructing a particular explanatory variable, I can achieve much the same effect at the cost of just a few parameter estimates. My talk will cover this trick as well as show a variety of maps of the evolution of default rates in the US. Hope this is enough to lure you back inside from the beach next week!

Statistical Engineering & Reliability

2010-09-05T09:39:00.002+01:00

High profile cases like BP, Toyota, and Firestone bring into sharp relief the subject of engineering for reliability. As statisticians, we seem to have got everybody from ourselves, to scientists & engineers, to senior management and to regulatory authorities, comfortable with the idea of expressing reliability as a probability. Indeed, in media interviews, the BP CEO quoted a failure probability of “about 10^-5” for the oil rig that exploded causing the spill. In his investigation into the 1986 Challenger disaster, when NASA management had quoted a similar probability for the reliability of the Space Shuttle, Richard Feynman said in his report into the accident “What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?” Probability measures for reliability may be appropriate for some fields of engineering, but I will introduce an information based definition that is better suited to many engineering situations (including automotive) where the probability definition simply can’t be measured. I will argue that the focus should be on evaluating the efficacy of counter measures for identified potential failure modes, and the statistical methods required to evaluate this efficacy are much different to those required in attempting to measure reliability through a probability.

Tim Davis

Special offers for conference delegates

2010-09-01T14:42:00.013+01:00

We have teamed up with Visit Brighton to get some special offers which are available for all delegates to take advantage of while in Brighton. Why not check out a local restaurant or attraction during your stay?

Some more on Statistical Engineering

2010-08-30T21:31:00.002+01:00

My previous comments on problem solving lead me to think about how I might illustrate the use of statistical methods in directly solving engineering problems. I have been involved in many interesting and challenging problems in my 30 years in the automotive industry. The recent media coverage of both the Toyota problem with sticking accelerator pedals and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused me to think back to my involvement in a similarly high profile case - the Firestone tire crisis of 2000/1, which resulted in around 300 fatalities and a $3Bn recall of 20 million tyres. There are many similarities in all three of these cases (not least the role of the media, and government agencies), but in the case of Firestone, I will show how a range of statistical methods was used (from simple EDA methods like box plots, to more sophisticated methods such as competing risk proportional hazard regression) to get to the root cause of the problem, and to quickly get ahead of the game, and decide on what actions to take, before the regulatory authorities told us what to do.

Statistical Engineering - more thoughts

2010-08-25T18:17:00.002+01:00

Some statistically based initiatives aimed at solving engineering and quality problems often tend to over-emphasise empirical methods at the expense of deductive logic; the Six Sigma movement is a good example of this – the problem solving algorithm of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma for some background to what these steps entail) puts great store in solving problems by measuring lots of characteristics, and analysing the resulting data. However, Six Sigma has nothing to say about eliminating hypotheses through deductive logic. In my Brighton talk, I will introduce a simple method to facilitate this step in problem solving and root cause determination, so that an empirical approach using statistical methods can then be better targeted. This method is not taught in Six Sigma classes (groping around in Minitab output for “significant” p-values seems to be the preferred approach), or even referenced in statistical texts; which is strange given the central role of statistical methods generally in problem solving.

Tim Davis

Statistical Engineering

2010-08-19T22:27:00.001+01:00

I have started to think about what I want to say on Statistical Engineering at the RSS conference in Brighton next month. I have been thinking a lot about the iterative learning cycle involving the interchange between inductive and deductive logic; as statisticians, do we pay enough attention to this distinction? It seems to me that the scientific context of the problems we are involved in solving should play a central role in this iteration. I will say something about this with regard to engineering problems.... but what do statisticians working in other fields think about this? Your thoughts ahead of conference would be welcome...

Tim Davis

Young Statistician's Training Day- Monday 13 September

2010-08-19T09:52:00.000+01:00

Looking forward to the YSS pre-conference training day. This year we have presentations on

- A young statisticians experience of the RSS conference
- Creating posters with impact
- How to market yourself and network at the conference

In the afternoon there will be a workshop on how to write a good conference abstract. The session aims to

- provide examples of good and bad abstracts
- explain the conference committee guidelines for accepting abstracts
- feature working in groups to create an abstract for an article from Significance to be reviewed using the committee guidelines.

Prizes will be awarded for the best abstract!

See you there,

Paul Baxter (YSS Secretary)

Social events at RSS 2010

2010-08-16T16:43:00.000+01:00

After coming back from our site visit in Brighton, we are really looking forward to the evening events during conference week.

We are just putting the finishing touches together for our social events, however we can guarantee something for everyone! Whether it’s increasing your knowledge for aquatic sea life by enjoying the fantastic scenery at the Sea Life Centre, testing your driving skills on the dodgems, holding your nerve on the roller coaster ride at our event on the pier or joining us for our evening drinks reception followed by dinner on the seafront, we are confident a good time will be had by all.

On the Waterfront: Welcome from the conference chair

2010-07-20T10:37:00.001+01:00

If there is anyone who has not seen Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront, then they can get the video. But, if you miss the RSS `On the Waterfront` Conference, there will not be a second chance. Let me, therefore, extend an invitation to all to join us at the Brighton Convention Centre from September 13th to 17th for both a scientific and waterfront experience.

The Programme Committee have put together conference sessions which we hope will have appeal to all in the Society. Our aim was to provide the opportunity to both engage with others working in members’ particular areas of interest and to allow all who attend to learn something of work in other areas. The many areas will be of interest in themselves but will also provide insight into how the challenges of our subject cut across areas and reflect the unity and diversity of our society.

In particular, we look forward to the plenary sessions, one organized by our Significance staff, and others that will feature Tim Davis on statistical engineering, Peter Donnelly on statistical genetics, Robert Groves on censuses, Nancy Reid on likelihood, and Robert Stine on financial statistics. There will also be another `retrospective read paper’, presented by Rob Tibshirani on the lasso.

The systematic component of the conference has two aspects, the scientific programme and the range of social events. The latter includes a welcome reception at the Brighton Sealife Centre, a fish and chips evening on Brighton Pier and the conference dinner, all conveniently located `on the waterfront’. The random component also has two elements, who will be there and the weather. The uncertainty of the weather we cannot control but we can be hopeful. The uncertainty of the attendees has been reduced by our many committed speakers. I hope that many others will join them and help reduce uncertainty further by visiting www.rss.org.uk/rss2010 where the conference programme can be seen and where you can register for the conference, with 10% discounts still available

Please do consider joining us.

Vern Farewell
Chair, Programme Committee, RSS 2010

One year on for the UK Statistics Authority

2009-09-10T17:01:00.000+01:00

UK Statistics Authority chair, Sir Michael Scholar, has said he hopes that delegates will agree that the Authority has "done some things well and is showing promise with others".

In addressing a conference session, Sir Michael reflected on progress since he had similarly done so at last year's conference in Nottingham. He opened with user engagement, noting that the Code of Practice had been published with a commitment to users highlighted in its first principle and embedded throughout out. He described the Society's Statistics User Forum as a "vitally important voice in the chorus of user voices", later saying it was both "distinctive" and "authoritative". Sir Michael said he was looking forward to working with new SUF chair, Andrew Dilnot.

In later comments he noted that he had said in Nottingham that the Authority had teeth and would use them when circumstances demanded. Few will doubt that the Authority used them over the knife crime statistics episode in late 2008. He described this as a "flagrant breach" of the Code, and noted that a consequence had been that top civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, had issued guidance that all civil servants were subject to the Code. Sir Michael noted that he had seen a summary of this guidance displayed in prominent places around the various government buildings he had subsequently visited.

Following a recap of other Authority work - on monitoring and assessment - Sir Michael turned to thoughts on the future. He talked about the vital place of statistics in political debate and described how, though he accepted that statistics would be selectively used in political argument, the Authority would intervene when their use was egregiously misleading or mendacious. He also noted that a General Election was certain to take place in 2010 and the Authority might have views on what it hoped might be adddressed. First mentioned was pre-release access, where his view is that there should none or very little. Second, he spoke about crime statistics as a work in progress. Third he discussed the funding position of the Authority. And fourth he spoke of the Authority's campaign for an ongoing national address register.

Military matters

2009-09-10T11:40:00.000+01:00

Colonel Clive Fairweather, honorary fellow of the RSS, has just delivered a compelling presentation on the analysis of military casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is work he has done in collaboration with RSS vice-president Sheila Bird.

The RSS cèilidh 2009

2009-09-09T19:24:00.001+01:00

Can you spot yourself treading the boards at the Hub on Tuesday night?

Wednesday morning round-up

2009-09-09T10:49:00.000+01:00

Session 3A Retrospective read paper meeting (invited)

Yoav Benjamini (Tel Aviv University)
Discovering the false discovery rate

Session 3B International statistics 2 (invited)

Sally C Morton (American Statistical Association/RTI International)
Present and future challenges in statistics, and collaborative solutions

Marie Bohatá (EuroStat)
The role of the European Union in mastering the challenges for official statistics

Session 3C Agriculture and environment
Jon Barry (Cefas)
A model-based framework for the estimation of species richness from grab samples

Esben Budtz-Joergensen (Department of Biostatistics, University of Copenhagen)
Different approaches to model averaging in environmental risk assessment

Sebastian Dietz (University of Passau, Germany)
A multivariate cointegration approach to the influence of bioethanol and biodiesel on the price levels of certain agricultural commodities

Alan Kimber (University of Southampton)
Ripeness of bananas and manure: a prediction problem using a least squares support vector machine

Session 3D General (contributed) 2

Jian Zhang (University of York)
Semiparametric plaid models with applications

Neil Spencer (University of Hertfordshire)
Detecting misspecification in the multilevel model using the forward search

Biiman Chakrobarty (University of Birmingham)
On a multivariate generalisation of quantile-quantile plot

Session 3E Complex interventions in primary care (invited)

Michael J Campbell (University of Sheffield)
Patient decision aids in primary care

Nigel Stallard (Warwick Medical School, The University of Warwick)
Designing clinical trials of complexinterventions – what can we learn from adaptive designs for drug trials?

Toby Prevost (King's College London)
Meta-analysis methods for planning and evaluating behaviour-change interventions

Session 4A The surveillance society and the role of the statistician (Invited)

Stephen Penneck (ONS Director of Methodology)

Hugh O’Donnell MSP

Andrew Garratt (RSS Press and Public Affairs Officer)

Session 4B Statistical image analysis (invited)

Kanti V Mardia (University of Leeds)
Has there been any real impact of statistics on image analysis in the last three decades?

Elke Thönnes (Department of Statistics, University of Warwick)
Characterising HRCT lung images using integral geometry

Gerie van der Heijden (Netherlands)
Particle filters for controlling robots

Session 4C Agricultural statistics (invited)

Roger Payne (VSN International)
90 years of research and collaboration by statisticians in agricultural research

Iain McKendrick (Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland)
Statistical models of veterinary diagnostic test characteristics: applying statistics for farmers and policy makers

Martin Boer (Biometris, WUR, Netherlands)
A mixed-model quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis for multipleenvironment trial data

Session 4D Statistical analysis of longitudinal data (contributed)

Dylan Kneale (Institute of Education, University of London)
A cross-cohort comparison to examine changing patterns in leaving the parental home in Britain across three decades (1974-2004)

Paola Zaninotto (UCL)
Socioeconomic status and age trajectories of health among the older

Jenny Head (UCL)
Estimating social inequalities in trajectories of health decline in studies with informativedrop-out: a sensitivity analysis

Amanda Sacker (University of Essex)
A multiple process latent transition modelof poverty and health

Session 4E Health-related 3 (contributed)

Stephen Duffy (Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry)
Problems and methods in deciding frequency of cancer screening

Marc Saez (GRECS, University of Girona, Spain)
Spatial variability in relative survival from female breast cancer

Paddy Farrington (Open University)
Self-controlled case series analyses with event-dependent observation periods

Karen J Cairns (Queens University Belfast)
Using discrete event simulation to assessthe impact of a colorectal screening programme

Session 4F Census and crime (contributed)

Jane Naylor (Office for National Statistics)
Balancing risk and utility – statistical disclosure control for the 2011 UK Census

Elizabeth Merrall (MRC Biostatistics Unit)
Multi-modal sentencing – potential forreduced pressure on the prison system and an in-built randomised controlled trial to assess impact on re-incarceration rates and costs

Insight from a 'maverick master'

2009-09-09T10:33:00.000+01:00

In opening his talk for Tuesday's second plenary session, Sir Iain Chalmers, related how he had left a calculus class "never to return". He said a colleague later reassured him that mathematical ability is a congenital abnormality.

While, on this basis, his 'abnormality' may not be mathematical, Sir Iain must have one to have achieved all that he has done leading to him having been described by another as the "maverick master of medical evidence".

Sir Iain took us on a historical tour of controlled trials. He opened by stressing that although the focus would be British, that the story was much more an international one. He noted, in particular, work done in the early part of the twentieth century in Boston, New York and Chicago.

It is impossible to do justice in this blog to the subjects covered in Sir Iain's talk. However, we understand that plenary sessions are being recorded to be made available over the internet so hopefully more will be able to appreciate this fascinating talk in the not too distant future.

Tripping the light fantastic

2009-09-09T08:57:00.001+01:00

In his lyric poem, L'Allegro, John Milton wrote:

"Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe"

from which we get the saying to trip the light fantastic as an extravagant way of describing dancing.

Of course, Milton's use of the word 'trip' was not to stumble as we might read it now. However, judging by the range of dance-related injuries sported by a number of delegates this morning it appears that some used the modern meaning at last night's Ceilidh! As to whether the collective moves made on the dance floor were fantastic, this blogger cannot deny that at least one of the following definitions of the word applies:

1. excellent: extraordinarily good
2. bizarre: extremely strange in appearance
3. incredible: apparently impossible but real or true
4. unlikely: unusual and unlikely to be successful
5. enormous: much larger than is usual, expected, or desirable
6. imaginary: existing only in the imagination

High praise for RSS Executive Editor

2009-09-08T15:22:00.001+01:00

Long-serving RSS staff member, Martin Owen, was praised for his dedication as Executive Editor by Sir David Cox in his talk in the opening plenary session. Those who've worked with Martin both as volunteers and as members of staff will know that this high praise is well-deserved.

Tuesday round-up

2009-09-08T12:51:00.003+01:00

Each day we will set out a list of all the sessions taking place.

We hope that some of the delegates attending the sessions will be able to comment on them through this blog.

NB Details are taken from the Conference Directory and may subsequently have been changed.

Session 1A International Societies 1 (invited)

Bernhard Huitfeldt (President, Swedish Statistical Association)
Swedish Statistical Society - the meeting place for Swedish
statisticians (and friends of statistics)

Avner Bar-Hen (President, French Statistical Society)
Presentation on the French Statistical Society

Maurizio Vichi (President, Italian Statistical Society)

Session 1B Some methodological issues in longitudinal studies (invited)

John Bynner (Longview)
Longitudinal and life course studies – a new interdisciplinary
international journal

Harvey Goldstein (University of Bristol)
Handling attrition and nonresponse in longitudinal data

Bianca de Stavola (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
Stockholm University and Karolina Institute)

Familial and socio-economic influences on foetal growth across
three generations: the Uppsala Birth Cohort Multigenerational
study, Sweden, 1915-2002

Session 1C General (contributed)

David Boniface (University College London)
Components of adjustment to regression sums of squares and their representation on a new generalisation of the Venn diagram

Charles Jones (University of Toronto)
Bootstrap estimation in practice: correcting for sample attrition in Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth

Giancarlo Manzi (University of Milan, Italy)
Nonlinear principal component analysis with missing data: a forward imputation approach

Karl Schlag (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
A new method for constructing exact tests without making any assumptions

Session 1D History of statistics (contributed)

Sheila Bird (Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit)
Learning from a random sample of the history of RSS external relations

Martin Forster (University of York)
Surviving slavery: mortality at Mesopotamia, a Jamaican sugar estate, 1762–1832

Christian Lewin
An early statistical framework

Peter Sprent
Statistics in Australia – the adolescent era

Session 1E Health related 1 (contributed)

Geoff Jones (Massey University)
Identifiability of models for multiple diagnostic testing in the absence of a gold standard

George Kafatos (Open University and Health Protection Agency)
Estimating seroprevalence: the impact of assay standardisation

Jaya Satagopan (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center)
An efficient sampling scheme for identifying an informative subcohort to measure new risk factors for a continuous outcome

Session 1F Census (invited)

Kevin Schurer (University of Essex)
The integrated census microdata project

Paul Boyle (St Andrews)
Linking the Scottish Longitudinal Study back through time

Peter Scrimgeour (General Register Office Scotland)
The 2011 Scottish Census: drawing on the lessons of the past

Session 2C Market research (invited)

David Walter (dunnhumby)
Market research in practice

Anatoly Zhiglivasky (Cardiff University)
Mixed Poisson models for modelling consumer purchase behaviour

Heiko Grossman (Queen Mary University of London)
Experimental designs for conjoint analysis studies

Martina Vandebroek (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
Sequential construction of choice sets for estimating the panel mixed
logit model

Session 2D Statistics & public accountability (invited)

Alysson Pollock
Statistics & public accountability: monitoring and evaluating new services delivery policies in the NHS

Alison MacFarlane (City University London)
How did we get here and where are we going: routine health service and public health data

Session 2E Health-related 2 (contributed)

Jane Warwick (Queen Mary University of London)
Mammographic breast density: why the most precise measure may not be
the most clinically useful

William D Grant (SUNY Upstate Medical University)
The statistician and small clinical trials: tales from the front lines

Nick Steen (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
The role of the patient preference arms in the analysis of a comprehensive cohort study

Chris Roberts (University of Manchester)
The design implications of care provider variation for nonpharmacological
treatment trials

Session 2F Statistical challenges in brain imaging (contributed)
Thomas Nichols (GlaxoSmithKline)
Statistical opportunities in brain imaging: a case study with neuroimaging meta analysis

John Aston (University of Warwick)
Twice the fun-ctional: using functional principal component analysis in functional neuroimaging

Giovanni Montana (Imperial College London)
Genomewide multivariate association discovery in imaging genetics studies

Plenary 2
Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Library)
Controlled trials and the RSS at 175

Conference under way

2009-09-08T12:41:00.001+01:00

Conference is now well under way, with a formal opening by RSS President, Professor David Hand, followed immediately by the first plenary session with Professor Sir David Cox as speaker.

In the Abstracts Book, Sir David's reads: "A broad view will be given of some of the strands of activity of the RSS. A few possible implications for
the future will be outlined." Delegates were rewarded with a talk that spanned the Society's history, and that of the development of the statistical discipline.

He noted along the way that till the 1920s UK Prime Ministers had shown a real interest in statistics by being fellows of the Society. Although Prime Ministers being fellows has subsequently been the exception, Sir David did note that Society fellow and senior politician, Jack Straw MP, had secured a commitment to reform of the government statistical system in the Labour Party manifesto for the 1997 General Election.

Sir David also commented on the "sociology" of past Society meetings. In the days before email and the internet, he observed that the meetings had been as much community occasions as discussive ones.

He outlined the intellectual challenges for the Society. The RSS, he said, must strive to keep in touch with all major new developments, and work to avoid the fragmentation of the statistical community into non-communicating sections.

Finally, for conference goers he provided some advice. Given a choice of parallel sessions, go to the one about which you know the least. This way, he suggested, provided a means of really finding out something new. He did wryly observe that this was advice that he was still working to put into practice.

A view from the Castle

2009-09-08T12:15:00.001+01:00

The ascent to Edinburgh Castle may be strenuous but delegates making their up the Royal Mile were rewarded with stunning views over the city and the opportunity to dip into a wealth of Scottish history.

In a speech in the magnificent Great Hall, Society President David Hand welcomed delegates. He made some observations on the longevity of both the Castle and of the Society - but noted that unlike the former the Society had never come under artillery fire!

The President then introduced Jim Mather MSP, Scottish minister with responsibility for statistics, who extended a welcome both from Edinburgh and Scotland. Mr Mather spoke of his interest in using processes of quality control in delivering public services.

Finally, a doyen of the Society, David Finney spoke. He noted humorously that if anyone had complaints about conference they might, in some part, lay the blame at him... havnig been jointly responsible in 1948 for convincing the Society to hold an annual conference.

Programme update: new speaker for Wednesday's session, "Surveillance Society"

2009-09-07T14:18:00.000+01:00

We have just heard that Hugh O'Donnell MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) will be speaking in place of Ivor Goddard in Wednesday's session, "Surveillance Society".

Edinburgh rocks!

2009-09-07T13:05:00.001+01:00

Darius Blaszczak, a local volunteer on the conference team, reports 14kg of Edinburgh rock has weighed down conference delegates' bags. But there is still plenty of rock underneath the Castle supporting it for tonight's reception hosted by Jim Mather MSP!

And, a weather update - sunny with occasional light showers.

Joining instructions etc now available for attendees

2009-09-05T13:30:00.004+01:00

If you're coming to conference then some important information is now available on the RSS web site:

Joining instructions (reproduced below)
Abstracts Book
Conference Directory

_____________________________

Registration for the Pre-Conference Short Courses:

All pre-conference courses and workshops are taking place in buildings on the Pollock Halls site participants will be advised separately which building their activity is taking place in and where they should register.

Registration for Courses A and B plus the Young Statisticians' Training Day will open at 9am and registration for Course C will be from 12.30pm.

Registration for the Main Conference:

The registration desk will be open at the following times:

Monday 7^th: 3.00pm to 6.30pm

Tuesday 8^th: 8.30am to 6.00pm

Wednesday 9^th: 8.30am to 6.00pm

Thursday 10^th: 8.30am to 6.00pm

Friday 11^th: 9.00am to 12 noon

On Monday registration will take place in Chancellors Court on the Pollock Halls site; for the rest of the week it will be in the foyer of Appleton Tower on Crichton Street.

University accommodation

For those pre-booked into University accommodation these are the arrangements for collection of keys:

Keys should be collected from the main reception at Pollock halls from 2pm on the day of arrival. Luggage can be stored in the Reception centre if required until rooms are available.

The Reception centre will be open until 11pm daily and keys can be collected from security after this time.

Please note you must be checked out from your room on the day of departure by 10am at the latest.

Getting to/from Appleton Tower from Pollock Halls:

The No 2 bus runs from opposite the Commonwealth Pool to Bristo Place running every 12-15 minutes.

Monday evening reception

For those attending the evening reception at Edinburgh Castle this will begin at 7pm.

Tickets will be issued at registration, however do not worry if you cannot make it to registration first you will still be able to gain admission to the castle.

Please make your way to the main gate of the Castle at the top of the Royal Mile. Please ensure you wear sensible shoes.

Ceud Mile Failte an Dùn Èideann [A hundred thousand welcomes to Edinburgh]

2009-09-03T10:28:00.005+01:00

RSS 2009 – Local Co-ordinating Committee Welcome

..but you don’t need to be bilingual to enjoy the RSS 175th Anniversary Conference here in Edinburgh!

As well as a packed programme of sessions covering Statistics in a Changing Society over the last 175 years, we have strived to give delegates a taste of our Scottish Heritage.

We start with the reception in Edinburgh Castle with spectacular views out over Auld Reekie [Scots for ‘old smoky’], where 300 delegates will be welcomed by the Scottish Minister for Enterprise, Energy & Tourism, Jim Mather. (His portfolio covers Official Statistics).

We end up at the foot of the Royal Mile (and round the corner) at Our Dynamic Earth for the Conference Dinner. In between we’ll have some fun and dance at the Ceilidh to Bella McNab Band (guidance provided), a sail on the Forth, tracing Scottish roots at Register House, or one of the many walking tours in the ‘auld toon’.

Finally a few words you may hear while at the conference and not be sure what they mean:-

Dreich – what the weather is likely to be while we are in the sessions. No chance of an Indian summer this year.
Bevied – hopefully few of the young statisticians will get to this state on Wednesday night after partaking of beers, wines and spirits
Stocious – another word for the above state
Birl – twirl your partner in Strip the Willow at the Ceilidh
Smashin – awesome – how you’ll describe the conference on Friday

Members:-

Mary Sweetland, NHS Scotland, ISD (Chairman)
Katy Barratt, Scottish Government
Darius Blaszczak, NHS Scotland, ISD
Natalia Bochkina, Edinburgh University
Anthony Fielding (retired, Birmingham University)
Alan Forrest, Royal Bank of Scotland
Scott Heald, NHS Scotland, ISD
Cecilia MacIntyre, General Registrar’s Office Scotland
Brian Miller, Institute of Occupational Medicine
Gillian Raab, Statistical Consultant
Jill Sales, Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland
Mairi Spowage, Scottish Government
Jill Tefer, Statistical Consultant

Blogging RSS Conference 2009

2009-08-27T15:17:00.003+01:00

So here we go with the first post on the RSS Conference blog for 2009.

We hope it's going to make conference an even better experience for those attending. And we also hope it will allow those who cannot join us to both follow what's going on and interact with those who are here.

Each day, at the very least, there will be a post on the plenary session or sessions taking place. And there will be a second post rounding up all the other sessions.

But we hope that speakers will put forward their own 'guest posts'. And if there is particular demand for a separate posting on any session then we hope to be able to do that.

Readers' comments are strongly encouraged.

There are two rules...

The first is that any comment should be in polite and acceptable language.

The second is that the moderator's verdict is final, though moderation will be light touch.

We hope you enjoy following this blog and we look forward to reading your comments.