December 28-30, 2004

The primary purpose of the conference is to bring together statisticians from developed and developing countries to present their latest research findings in statistics and to interact and exchange ideas. It is hoped that such a forum will initiate fruitful interaction among all participants and stimulate research. It is expected that this venture will ultimately modernize the educational curricula for students and will generate new opportunities for researchers. That is the futuristic view - the theme for this conference.

See website below for details:
http://www.st.rmit.edu.au/~desilva/conference/slstat.htm

February 6-11, 2005.

Thredbo Village is a small, picturesque, exclusive resort in Kosciuszko National Park in the high country of SE NSW. Situated in the heart of the village, the Thredbo Alpine Hotel is a boutique chalet style hotel in tranquil surroundings with uninterrupted views of the high country. It is an ideal place to avoid the summer heat, forget the hustle and bustle of city life, clear your mind and start afresh in 2005.

We invite proposals for oral and poster presentations at the Thredbo Statistical Meeting. Submitted abstracts should address one of the conference themes or any other current statistical topic. We particularly encourage young statisticians and students to submit proposals for oral presentations and encourage others to submit proposals for posters.

• model selection
• multivariate analysis
• joint modelling of discrete longitudinal data
• capture/recapture
• MCMC
• splines

David Baird (AgResearch),
Steve Brooks (U Cambridge),
John Eccleston (U Queensland),
Malcolm Faddy (Queensland U of Technology),
Chris Field (Dalhousie U),
Robin Henderson (Lancaster U),
Wojtek Krzanowski (U Exeter),
Xihong Lin (U Michigan),
Roger Payne (VSN International),
Alison Smith (DPI Agriculture) ,
Sue Welham (Rothamsted)

Professor C R Rao
Emeritus Holder of the Eberley Family Chair in Statistics and Director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis at Penn State College of Science
Tuesday 22 March, 2005
McMeekan Centre, Ruakura, Hamilton

Details will be posted on the website:
http://www.stats.waikato.ac.nz/rao_workshop.html

Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand
March 29 - April 1, 2005

The purpose of the Workshop is to stimulate research and foster the interaction of researchers in the interface between statistics and matrix theory in an informal setting. It will provide a forum through which statisticians may be better informed of the latest developments and newest techniques in linear algebra and matrix theory and may exchange ideas with researchers from a wide variety of countries.

Supported by the NZSA
Satellite meeting for 55th Biennial Session of the ISI,
Sydney 5-12 April 2005

The conference will have a wide variety of invited and contributed papers. Potential participants are recommended to pre-register on the website http://iwms2005.massey.ac.nz. The deadline for early registration and submission of abstracts of contributed papers is February 11, 2005.

Invited Speakers include

Moshe Haviv (Hebrew U Jerusalem, Israel),
Nye John (Waikato U, Hamilton),
A Krishnamoorthy, (Cochin U of Science and Technology, India),
Alan Lee (U Auckland),
Shuangzhe Liu, (U Canberra, Australia),
Augustyn Markiewicz (Agricultural U of Poznan, Poland),
Carl Meyer (North Carolina State U, Raleigh, N.C.),
Robin Milne (U Western Australia, Perth, Australia),
Simo Puntanen (U Tampere, Finland),
C R Rao (Pennsylvania State U, USA),
Alastair Scott (U Auckland, NZ),
Shayle Searle (Cornell U, Ithaca, N.Y., USA),
George Seber (U Auckland),
Jennifer Seberry (U Wollongong, Australia),
Eugene Seneta (U Sydney, Australia),
George Styan (McGill U, Montreal, Canada),
Garry Tee (U Auckland),
Hans Joachim Werner (U Bonn, Germany).

International Organising Committee:

George Styan (Chair) (McGill U, Montreal, Canada)
styan@math.mcgill.ca,
Hans Joachim Werner (Vice Chair) (U Bonn, Germany),
Simo Puntanen (U Tampere, Finland)

Jeffrey Hunter (Massey U, Auckland, NZ) j.hunter@massey.ac.nz

Sponsors: Massey University, NZIMA, RSNZ

55^th Session of the ISI

55^th Session of the ISI

April 5-12, 2005

Sydney, Australia

Registration is now open for the world's premier statistical conference - the 2005 International Statistical Institute (ISI) Session - scheduled for Sydney, Australia, 5-12 April 2005. 

Professional statisticians, plus those who want to stay in touch with latest developments in the field, will find it of great interest and should register their interest now.

Venue 

The 55^th Session of the ISI will be held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour.

Scientific Program

A diverse and cutting edge Scientific Program has been developed for the 2005 ISI Session and includes Invited Paper Meetings, Contributed Paper Meetings, Key Note Speakers, Poster Sessions, Tutorials and Short Courses.  Theme days will cover Statistics and Finance, Environmental Statistics and Genomic Data.

All the details for the Scientific Program, including the list of Invited and Contributed Paper Meetings, are listed on the 2005 ISI website at www.tourhosts.com.au/isi2005

Did you know that you can submit your papers online? See the website for more details. 

Social Program

The Social Program will be a highlight of the Session and has been designed to provide participants with an opportunity to relax, experience a taste of Australian culture and maximize networking opportunities.  See the website for more details.

Tours

A range of mid–Session and pre and post Tours will be provided for delegates and accompanying persons.

Register NOW!!

The final registration form is now available on
www.tourhosts.com.au/isi2005.  To register please visit the Session website and complete the online registration form.

For more details on the 2005 ISI Session see
www.tourhosts.com.au/isi2005  or email the conference managers on isi2005@tourhosts.com.au.

Contact Details

ISI 2005 Conference Managers
GPO Box 128
Sydney NSW 2001
Telephone: +61 2 9248 0800
Fax: +61 2 9248 0800
Email:  isi2005@tourhosts.com.au
Website: www.tourhosts.com.au/isi2005

Key Dates

Before 6 December 2004 -Authors of invited and contributed papers to submit the final manuscripts
Before 31 January 2005 - Early Registration Fee cut off 
After 31 January 2005 - Late Registration Fee applies

Measuring Small and Indigenous Populations
IAOS Satellite Meeting

The IAOS (International Association of Official Statisticians) satellite meeting on "Measuring Small and Indigenous Populations" will be held at Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand, on 14-15 April 2005, and will be hosted by Statistics New Zealand. Te Papa Tongarewa is a high-quality conference venue, situated close to all facilities, and is right on the Wellington waterfront.

While the main focus is on methodological issues, the conference will be of direct interest to economic and social researchers, as the theme encompasses the challenges of measuring small domains in economic, social and population statistics. Among the themes likely to be covered by the satellite meeting are: statistical methods used to collect information in censuses or other large-scale surveys; measurement and improvement of data quality; the derivation of indicators on indigenous populations, communities or subnational areas; statistical use of administrative data sources; experience with data integration initiatives; small area estimation; other new developments in satisfying the growing demand for disaggregated statistical measures.

The conference programme will consist of three keynote plenary sessions and an array of concurrent sessions. The registration fee for the two-day conference meeting is $NZ350 (including GST), but to encourage participation of students, the registration fee for fulltime students is just $NZ50. This includes morning and afternoon teas, and lunches on 14-15 April, and the pre-conference reception on 13 April. A conference dinner is planned for Thursday, 14 April 2005 (estimated cost - $NZ80).

The conference organisers are inviting ‘expressions of interest’ from prospective authors of papers. The last date for submission of abstracts is 29 October 2004. An ‘Expression of Interest’ form, a formal registration form, and other information for conference delegates is available on the website http://www.stats.govt.nz/ISIsatellitemeeting. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please contact Mansoor Khawaja, Chief Demographer, Statistics New Zealand, Private Bag 4741, Christchurch, New Zealand; Email: ISIsatellite@stats.govt.nz ; Phone: +64 3 964 8794.

Complex sampling, retrospective sampling and missing data: A Conference in honour of Alastair Scott
IASS Satellite Meeting

Alastair has made many fundamental contributions to the analysis of survey data, often in collaboration with J.N.K. Rao and T.M.F. Smith. His 1981 JASA paper with Jon Rao was selected as one of the 19 landmark papers in the history of survey sampling for the 2001 IASS Centenary volume. He has guided the official statistics agencies in Australia and Canada as well as Statistics New Zealand. He has also made fundamental contributions to many other areas of statistics including the design and analysis of retrospective studies extending classical results for case control studies.

The conference is to be held in the Auckland Maritime Museum, immediately following ISI 55 in Sydney. The first day will be devoted to survey sampling and the second to applications and medical and general statistics.

Confirmed invited speakers include:

David Brillinger (University of California, Berkeley),
Ray Carroll (Texas A&M University),
Ray Chambers (University of Southampton),
Wayne Fuller (Iowa State University),
Steve Haslett (Massey University),
Jack Kalbfleisch (University of Waterloo),
Graham Kalton (Westat),
John Neuhaus (University of California, San Francisco),
Danny Pfefferman (Hebrew University, Jerusalem and University of Southampton),
Jon Rao (Carleton University).

Registration details can be obtained from the website http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/iass55/.

The next NZSA conference will take place from July 4-6, 2005, at the University of Otago. The main theme will be "Statistics in the 21st Century in New Zealand". We will soon be advertising on the anzstat list server, once the conference web page (http://www.maths.otago.ac.nz/nzsa2005/) is up and running. Enquiries can be sent to the conference administrator, Irene Goodwin (igoodwin@maths.otago.ac.nz). This is the first time the conference has been beyond 45ºS since 1995, so we are planning to make southern hospitality even more evident than usual!

Planning is continuing for the 2006 joint conference between the Statistical Society of Australia Inc. and the NZSA, to be held in Auckland, from July 3-7, 2006.

Professor William Dunsmuir from the University of New South Wales (w.dunsmuir@unsw.edu.au) has agreed to chair the Program Committee for the conference.

A site visit to view the facilities at Sky City and possible locations for social events is to be undertaken in mid-September. One important task over the next month is to select members for the Organising Committee and the Program Committee. I would welcome your suggestions for these committees.

The theme of the conference has been decided as Statistical Connections. The first obvious reference is to the connection between the two learned societies. The theme also is meant to highlight the importance of statistical relationships: between predictors and response, or within multivariate observations for example. It is designed to be vague enough to allow a broad range of sessions.

We will shortly be considering ideas for sessions and keynote speakers. If you have any suggestions please email me (d.scott@auckland.ac.nz).

I consider the provision of short courses and/or workshops to be a very important adjunct to the traditional conference format and I would be very interested in receiving suggestions as to possible topics and presenters for these.